Dolores Albarracín, is a recipient of the 2024 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Social Sciences. The honor recognizes recipients as “revolutionizing the way we understand and measure attitudes” through their research. Dolores Albarracín has focused her research on understanding how attitudes can be changed, especially with regard to persuasive messages. In her book Action and Inaction in a Social World: Prediction and Change of Attitudes and Behaviors, she shows that appeals to action are more effective than those encouraging inaction when the goal is to achieve a given behavior, and that when a recipient lacks time to analyze a persuasive message, their attitude and behavior will be determined by the emotional factor.
Citation: "Dolores Albarracín: 2024 BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award," University of Pennsylvania Almanac, May 13, 2025.