Dr. Jay Van Bavel
Jay Van Bavel is an Associate Professor of Psychology at New York University and Director of the Social Perception and Evaluation Laboratory. His research examines how our collective concerns—group identities, moral values, and political beliefs—alter our perceptions and evaluations of the world around us.
Professor Van Bavel has received a number of awards, including the Young Investigator Award for distinguished contributions in social neuroscience from the Society for Social Neuroscience, the SAGE Young Scholars Award for outstanding achievements in social and personality psychology from the Foundation for Personality and Social Psychology, and the Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions from the Association for Psychological Science. He has published over forty academic papers and chapters in many of the top journals in psychology and neuroscience.
He has also written about psychological science for The New York Times, Scientific American Mind, and the Washington Post and his research has been covered in major international media outlets, including TIME, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Huffington Post, The Daily Telegraph, CBC News, Women’s Health, Newsweek, and Salon. His research has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and the John Templeton Foundation. You can follow his research on Twitter (@vanbavellab) or Facebook (www.facebook.com/vanbavellab).
Primary Interests:
- Attitudes and Beliefs
- Emotion, Mood, Affect
- Ethics and Morality
- Group Processes
- Intergroup Relations
- Motivation, Goal Setting
- Neuroscience, Psychophysiology
- Person Perception
- Prejudice and Stereotyping
- Self and Identity
- Social Cognition
Research Group or Laboratory:
Internships and Assistantships:
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Image Gallery
Video Gallery
The Dangers of the Partisan Brain
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15:25 The Dangers of the Partisan Brain
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32:27 Leadership in Groups and Followship
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41:28 Using Social and Behavioral Science to Support COVID-19 Pandemic Response
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55:28 Uncover the Secret to Becoming the Architect of Your Own Identity
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56:43 The Partisan Brain
Length: 56:43
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3:22 Outrageous Advice for Answering the Question "What Do You Do?"
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1:18:23 Shared Identities and Decision Making
Length: 1:18:23
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5:27 Why Some Teams Are Smarter Than Others
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41:58 Overview of "The Power of Us"
Length: 41:58
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10:06 How Does Perception Influence Reality?
Length: 10:06
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22:18 Making Your Research and Teaching More Efficient, Transparent, and Impactful
Length: 22:18
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56:42 "The Power of Us"
Length: 56:42
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16:58 The Neuroscience of Cooperation
Length: 16:58
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3:16 Identity Myths Busted
Length: 3:16
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5:37 Do Politics Make Us Irrational?
Length: 5:37
Additional Videos
Journal Articles:
- Brosch, T., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2012). The flexibility of emotional attention: Accessible social identities guide rapid attentional orienting. Cognition.
- Cikara, M., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2014). The neuroscience of intergroup relations: An integrative review. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 9, 245-274
- Cunningham, W. A., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2009). Varieties of emotional experience: Differences in object or computation? Emotion Review, 1, 56-57.
- Cunningham, W. A., Van Bavel, J. J., Arbuckle, N. L., Packer, D. J., & Waggoner, A. S. (2012). Rapid social perception is flexible: Approach and avoidance motivational states shape P100 responses to other-race faces. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 6, 140.
- Cunningham, W. A., Van Bavel, J. J., & Johnsen, I. R. (2008). Affective flexibility: Evaluative processing goals shape amygdala activity. Psychological Science, 2, 152-160.
- Cunningham, W. A., Zelazo, P. D., Packer, D. J., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2007). The iterative reprocessing model: A multilevel framework for attitudes and evaluation. Social Cognition, 25, 736-760.
- Gantman, A.P., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2014) The moral pop-out effect: Enhanced perceptual awareness of morally relevant stimuli. Cognition, 132, 22-29.
- Gill., M. J., Packer, D. J., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2013). More to morality than mutualism: Consistent contributors exist and they can inspire costly generosity in others. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 36, 90.
- Hackel, L. M., Looser, C. E., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2014). Group membership alters the threshold for mind perception: The role of social identity, collective identification, and intergroup threat. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 52, 15-23.
- Kaul, C., Ratner, K. G., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2014). Dynamic representation of race: Processing goals shape race decoding in the fusiform gyri. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.
- Ratner, K. G., Kaul, C., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2012). Is race erased? Decoding race from patterns of neural activity when skin color is not diagnostic of group boundaries. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.
- Van Bavel, J. J., & Cunningham, W. A. (2012). A social identity approach to person memory: Group membership, collective identification, and social role shape attention and memory. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38, 1566-1578.
- Van Bavel, J. J., & Cunningham, W. A. (2009). Self-categorization with a novel mixed-race group moderates automatic social and racial biases. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35, 321-335.
- Van Bavel, J. J., Packer, D. J., & Cunningham, W. A. (2011). Modulation of the Fusiform Face Area following minimal exposure to motivationally relevant faces: Evidence of in-group enhancement (not out-group disregard). Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 23, 3343-3354.
- Van Bavel, J. J., Packer, D. J., & Cunningham, W. A. (2008). The neural substrates of in-group bias: A functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging investigation. Psychological Science,11, 1131-1139.
- Van Bavel, J. J., Packer, D. J., Haas, I. J., & Cunningham, W. A. (2012). The importance of moral construal: Moral versus non-moral construal elicits faster, more extreme, universal evaluations of the same actions. PLoS ONE, 7, e48693.
- Van Bavel, J. J., Swencionis, J. K., O’Connor, R. C., & Cunningham, W. A. (2012). Motivated social memory: Belonging needs moderate the own-group bias in face recognition. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48, 707-713.
- Van Bavel, J. J., Xiao, Y. J., & Cunningham, W. A. (2012). Evaluation is a dynamic process: Moving beyond dual system models. Social & Personality Psychology Compass, 6, 438-454.
- Wohl, M. J. A., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2011). Is identifying with a historically victimized group good or bad for your health? Transgenerational post-traumatic stress and collective victimization. European Journal of Social Psychology.
- Xiao, Y. J., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2012). See your friends close, and your enemies closer: Social identity and identity threat shape the representation of physical distance. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38, 959-972.
Courses Taught:
- Graduate - Attitudes and Evaluation
- Graduate - Intergroup Relations
- Undergraduate - Social Attitudes
- Undergraduate - Social Psychology
Dr. Jay Van Bavel
Department of Psychology
New York University
6 Washington Place
New York, New York 10003
United States of America
- Fax: NA
- Email: jay.vanbavel@nyu.edu