How the Behavioral and Social Science Directorate at NSF Really Came to Be

Image above: The APS staff in 1991, including Alan Kraut (top left), the founding executive director, and Sarah Brookhart (top, third from left), executive director from 2015 through August 2020.

APS is the origin of the movement toward a separate directorate. 

 —Rep. Doug Walgren, APS Observer, November 1991 

Creating a directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE) at the National Science Foundation (NSF) was the first big item on the advocacy agenda of APS in 1989. Directorates are the core organizational components of NSF, and their directors comprise the leadership of the agency. Before APS, psychology research at NSF was housed in its biology directorate and was always led by biologist directors. Too often, our science got the short end of the stick there, both in terms of money and respect.

But, curiously up to then there also seemed to be a consensus among establishment psychology organizations that having a separate directorate would make us too easy a target for those who wanted to see less funding for basic research in our science. In fact, in meetings with the NSF director, some establishment behavioral and social science groups argued against creating a behavioral and social science directorate, asserting that we somehow needed the “protection” of being embedded within other sciences.

Enter APS—definitely not an “establishment” behavioral and social science organization! What followed was an approach to advocacy and education that became our playbook for APS’s numerous major achievements for psychological science in the public policy and research funding arenas. 

The inside story 

APS launched its Washington, DC office in August of 1989, with one of us (Kraut) as its first employee. The other (Brookhart) soon followed, and together, with support from the APS Board of Directors, we set about systematically putting a new NSF plan in place, one that aimed to make psychology and all social and behavioral science as visible as possible. 

The plan began with fostering relationships with relevant congressional offices on behalf of the new APS. Perhaps the most critical was with Pennsylvania’s Rep. Doug Walgren, then Chair of the House subcommittee that authorized NSF’s programs. Kraut met with Walgren in January 1990 to introduce APS and its new take on psychological science, and to ask for his support for APS’s proposal for a separate NSF directorate. In a follow-up letter, Kraut expressed the hope that Walgren would “push NSF to seriously examine creating a separate NSF Directorate for Behavioral and Social Science.” In fact, when the separate directorate was created in October of 1991, Walgren wrote in the Observer that “APS is the origin of the movement toward a separate directorate.”

[Note: APS was able to engage the influence of a number of key policymakers and psychology researchers in the effort toward a separate directorate at NSF — see related sidebars.] 

There are lots of “inside stories” to tell (and some not to tell) about how the separate directorate finally came to pass. Here is one that happened toward the very end and the one we think finally pushed the directorate across the finish line. It came after legislation was introduced in both the House and the Senate to create a separate directorate, after Congressional language encouraging NSF to consider a separate directorate was contained in both House and Senate NSF funding bills, after an NSF task force of outside experts recommended a separate directorate within NSF (Actually, this was the second of two NSF groups to recommend a separate directorate. The first was an internal NSF group that was basically ignored but that did lead to the second external group.), and after many meetings between behavioral and social science groups and NSF—including two days of hearings with multiple organizations presenting testimony to the NSF task force supporting the separate directorate (with other behavioral and social science organizations finally warming up to the issue). But even after all that (and more!), the powers that be at NSF still seemed unmoved.

Related content: Decades at the Helm: APS 2023 Convention Honors APS Founding Executive Director Alan G. Kraut

Sadly, one of the heroes of our story, House NSF authorizations chair and seven-term Congressman Doug Walgren, was unexpectedly defeated in the November 1990 election. He left Congress in January 1991. We offered him APS office space to give him a chance to think about his next career move. He moved in and, in turn, offered to keep advising us on our NSF strategy. APS also gave Walgren our very first Award of Appreciation at our 1991 convention. 

Walgren’s replacement as House Chair for Congressional NSF authorizations was Virginia Rep. Rick Boucher. Walgren passed the torch to him, introducing us as good-faith advocates in face-to-face meetings, and helping to convince Boucher of the importance attached to a separate directorate. There were follow-up letters between APS and Boucher and between Walgren and Boucher. We also had multiple meetings with staff of the House NSF subcommittee, most of whom had previously worked for Walgren. Then, as reported in the Chronicle of Higher Education, came an influential in-person meeting between Boucher and then-NSF Director Walter Massey where Boucher “lent his support to the idea of a separate directorate.”

What wasn’t reported in the Chronicle—but was told to us by the congressional staff in that meeting—was that Boucher spoke to Massey like a “Dutch uncle,” saying directly and without hesitation that if Massey didn’t create a separate directorate that he, Boucher, would do it legislatively, and that Massey wouldn’t want Boucher’s version. In October 1991, Massey announced the creation of a separate NSF Directorate “to promote Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences.” Among other things, this meant that our science finally had a seat at the leadership table when funding decisions were made at the highest levels of the agency. 

The story gets better 

Lots of good things followed but also some not so good things. An example of the good: Psychologist Anne Peterson was nominated by President Bill Clinton to be NSF Deputy Director. She told us, “This never would have happened without APS.” Of the initially bad but ultimately good: There continued to be efforts to defund social and behavioral science, as there had been before the separate directorate was created (which was why we never understood the earlier establishment strategy that hiding behind other sciences at NSF would “protect” us). But with SBE now in place, it was not only the newly empowered behavioral and social science community that defended against these proposed cuts but the leadership of NSF as well. The result was that this time, the attempts to cut the directorate’s funding were not successful. The creation of the directorate was a major reason why. 

The story’s not over 

The SBE at NSF funds well over $300 million a year in basic research, and psychology gets $60–80 million of that, and that’s not counting where psychology is funded elsewhere at NSF (similar to a university department of psychology vs. psychology in schools of education, computer science, business, departments of neuroscience, etc.) Yes, NSF likely faces major challenges with the current administration, but we believe that SBE will play an important role in meeting those challenges on equal footing with other directorates.

This is necessarily a condensed and simplified version of events leading to the creation of a separate directorate for behavioral and social sciences at NSF. It took time, and there were many moving parts. For a closer and more visual look at events, check out this set of old timey PowerPoint slides from 1992-ish that we used back then to tell this story.

But this success helped put APS on the map as the most effective organization representing the full range of areas within our science. More generally, it underscores the fundamental truth that success in the science policy arena requires direct and sustained engagement with policymakers on the Hill and in agencies. We strongly urge APS Members and leaders to redouble APS’s efforts in Washington, DC and in increasing public awareness of the value and impact of psychological science. 

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