SWPA works to promote and strengthen psychology’s scientific, professional and educational facets. At its annual meeting, SWPA offers paper, poster, continuing education sessions, workshops, symposia, and invited talks. SWPA prides itself on serving the psychological community by providing access to scientific advances and professional development within a collegial atmosphere. Students are welcomed and treated as active and valued participants in the discipline.

SWPA strives to maintain diversity in its membership, its leadership and its program. A mark of the program’s diversity is the number of special interest groups that choose to meet with SWPA. These organizations include the Psi Chi, the Society for Applied Multivariate Research (SAMR), the Southwestern Comparative and Behavioral Neuroscience Association (SCBNA), and the Southwest Teaching of Psychology Organization (SWToP). Members of TOPPS, Teaching Psychology in Schools, and PT@CC, Psychology Teaching at Community Colleges, also meet with SWPA.