Kentaro Fujita, assistant professor, psychology, is the recipient of the Foundation for Social and Personality 2010 SAGE Young Scholars Award. Fujita is one of only five recipients of the SAGE award from around the country.

The SAGE award recognizes outstanding young researchers in personality and social psychology. Awardees receive a one-time award of $5000 to be used at their discretion for research, study, or conference travel-related purposes.

Fujita earned a BA summa cum laude in psychology from Harvard College and a PhD in psychology from New York University. In 2006, Fujita joined the faculty in the Department of Psychology's Social Psychology Program. His primary research focuses on why, despite possessing remarkable intelligence and reasoning capacity, people often make decisions and behave in ways that undermine their valued goals and objectives. For example, why do smokers continue to smoke when they know the health risks? Why do consumers spend more money than they can afford? Why are dieters so tempted by indulgent foods? To understand these self-control failures, Fujita’s research draws from a number of areas in psychology, including motivation, cognition, and self-regulation, and judgment and decision-making.