Dolores Albarracín One of Five Honored with 2024 Frontiers of Knowledge Award

Dolores Albarracín, Alexandra Heyman Nash University Professor, is among five recipients of the 2024 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Social Sciences. The honor recognizes Albarracín and her fellow recipients as “revolutionizing the way we understand and measure attitudes” through their research.
 
The BBVA Foundation established the Frontiers of Knowledge Awards in 2008, and today, they are presented through a partnership between the financial services group BBVA and the Spanish National Research Council, a leading public research institution in Spain. In its announcement, the foundation says Albarracín’s work “has increased our understanding of how attitudes can be changed, particularly with regard to persuasive messages,” and pointed to her close scrutiny of strategies dealing with disinformation and conspiracy theories.
 
The Social Sciences Award is one of eight given out in different categories. Along with the distinction, recipients are allotted a €400,000 prize (more than $450,000), which they split equally. Albarracín’s fellow Social Sciences awardees include Icek Ajzen of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Mahzarin Banaji of Harvard University, Anthony Greenwald of the University of Washington, and Richard Petty of the Ohio State University.
 
Albarracín, who also serves as the director of the Communication Science Division of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, most recently began teaching at Penn in 2021. She has received numerous awards and accolades for her research into communication and behavior patterns, and has authored multiple books, including Prediction and Change of Health Behavior: Applying the Theory of Reasoned Action Approach and The Handbook of Attitudes.