Sandra L. Murray is Professor of Psychology at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. She is a social psychologist known for her work on close relationships and their trajectories over time. Murray received the American Psychological Association Award for Distinguished Scientific Early Career Contributions to Psychology (Area: Social Psychology) in 2003 for "distinguished and original contributions to an understanding of motivated social cognition in relationships." Other awards include the New Contribution Award from the International Society for the Study of Personal Relationships in 1998 and 2000, the Outstanding Early Career Award from the International Society for Self and Identity in 2000, the Career Trajectory Award from the Society of Experimental Social Psychology in 2012, and the Mid-Career Distinguished Contribution Award from the International Association for Relationship Research in 2016. Murray received the Wegner Theoretical Innovation Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology in 2007 for collaborative work with John G. Holmes and Nancy Collins. Their theoretical paper titled Optimizing Assurance: The Risk Regulation System in Relationships provided a model of how people cope with the perceived risks of romantic relationships by balancing the need for intimacy and closeness with the need to minimize the risk of experiencing the pain of rejection. She and John Holmes are co-authors of the book Interdependent minds: The dynamics of close relationships, which is part of a book series on “Distinguished Contributions in Psychology” edited by Susan Fiske. This book introduces a motivation management model for understanding how romantic partners accommodate each other's needs for commitment, reciprocity, and responsiveness, and establish habitual ways of relating to one another. Murray and Holmes also authored the book Motivated cognition in relationships.