Selma Rudert and I, Mariela Jaffé, participated in the 19th Conference for Personality and Social Psychology, which took place end of January 2017 in San Antonio, Texas. Different topics were covered, such as big data, preregistration, new research tools such as automated text or image analysis, and many more. Additional sessions also offered an overview about job opportunities for social psychologists outside of academia. And of course every other talk had some side remark about the ongoing political changes in the US (yes, it was inauguration day during the conference).

Selma and I attended a lot of sessions on social groups and belonging, as well as morality and social cognition. During the conference Selma chaired a symposium on ostracism and social exclusion together with Andrew Hales and gave a talk about the importance of receiving acknowledgement after a social exclusion episode. I presented a poster on the topic of diversity, to show work in which I investigated the potential double standard of individuals’ choices that show that individuals themselves might prefer to work with a similar other, while they think that others should rather work with a more different person.

We both very much enjoyed the discussions during the conference and collected lots of good input and ideas for our further research.