Tessa West, an assistant professor in NYU’s Department of Psychology, has been named the recipient of the 2012 Theoretical Innovation Prize, given by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP).

West will receive the award at SPSP’s annual meeting, to be held Jan. 17-19, 2013, in New Orleans.

She shares the prize with the University of Connecticut’s David Kenny for their co-authored 2011 Psychological Review article, “The Truth and Bias Model of Judgment,” which draws from multiple domains of psychological theory to create a framework for the study of accuracy and bias.

West’s research examines how the processes of social perception function in same- and cross-group interactions, with a specific focus on relations between Whites and racial and ethnic minorities. She is currently developing methods to improve communication between Whites and ethnic minorities both in the laboratory and in daily interactions between college roommates.