Professor Alison Bianchi and graduate student Donna Lancianese won the 2009 ASA Sociology of Emotions Section's Recent Contribution Award for their paper "Accentuate the Positive: Positive Sentiments and Status in Task Groups" Social Psychology Quarterly 70: 7-26. The award will be presented at the 2009 American Sociological Association's annual meeting. Congratulations to Ali and Donna! The article's abstract states: "We explore the capacity of positive sentiments, those enduring affective states one achieves when one likes another, to impact status structures. Do positive sentiments combine with existing aspects of interaction to create status hierarchies and potentially change the social order, or do they moderate the effects of extant structure by dampening the magnitude of status differences? Using the theoretical framework of Status Characteristics Theory (SCT) and the Camilleri-Berger model of decision-making, we designed an experiment to adjudicate between these two potentialities. Participation in the study consisted of 168 students. Results found support for the notion that positive sentiments moderate the effects of structural factors on indicators of social status; interestingly, this moderation effect varies by gender. We discuss the theoretical implications of these findings, and new directions for research concerning sentiment and status processes."