Assistant Professor of Psychology
Social

Research

I am interested in the conscious and nonconscious ways people fundamentally orient to the world. In particular, I focus on how the motivations, emotions, needs, and goals people hold impact the basic ways people perceive, interpret, and ultimately react to information around them. I advocate for an interactive cognitive system where psychological states constrain the basic manner in which we perceive and react to our worlds. My work, then, explores motivational biases in visual and social perception and the consequential effects for behavior and navigation of the social world. In doing so, my research represents an intersection among social psychology, judgment and decision-making, social cognition, and perception.

Biography

Education:

Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Cornell University (2006)
B.A. in psychology from the University of Nebraska at Kearney (2001)
B.F.A. in music performance from the University of Nebraska at Kearney (2001)

Positions:

Assistant Professor of Psychology, New York University
Assistant Professor of Psychology, Ohio University (2006-2009)

Selected Publications

Balcetis, E., & Cole, S. (in press). Body in mind: The role of embodied cognition in self-regulation. Social and Personality Psychology Compass.

Balcetis, E, & Dunning, D (in press). Wishful seeing: Desired objects are seen as closer. Psychological Science.

Balcetis, E., & Lassiter, G. D. (eds.) (in press). The social psychology of visual perception. Edited volume. Psychology Press, New York, NY.

Balcetis, E. (2009). How a biased majority claim moral minority: Tracking eye movements to base rates in social predictions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 970-973.

Balcetis, E., Dunning, D., & Miller, R. (2008). Do collectivists “know themselves” better than individualists?: Cross-cultural studies of the “holier than thou” phenomenon. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 1252-1267.

Balcetis, E., & Dunning, D. (2008). A mile in moccasins: How situational experience diminishes dispositionism in social inference. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38, 102-114.

Balcetis, E. (2007). Where the motivation resides and self-deception hides: How motivated cognition accomplishes self-deception. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 1, 1-21.

Balcetis, E., & Dale, R. (2007). Conceptual set as a top-down constraint on visual object identification. Perception, 36, 581-595.

Balcetis, E., & Dunning, D. (2007). Cognitive dissonance reduction and perception of the physical world.Psychological Science, 18, 917-921.

Balcetis, E., & Dunning, D. (2006). See what you want to see: Motivational influences on visual perception. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91, 612-625.

Balcetis, E., & Dunning, D. (2005). Judging for two: Some connectionist proposals for how the self informs and constrains social judgment. Invited chapter for M. Alicke, D. Dunning, & J. Krueger (Eds.), Self and social judgment. New York: Psychology Press.


Address

Emily Balcetis
Assistant Professor of Psychology

Department of Psychology
New York University
6 Washington Place, Room 751
New York, NY 10003
Tel: (212) 998-3998
Fax: (212) 995-4966
Email: emilybalcetis@nyu.edu

Updated