Assistant Professor of Psychology
Social
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Research

I am broadly interested in how values, identities and motivations organize social perception and evaluation. I take a social neuroscience approach to these issues, integrating theory and methods from social psychology and cognitive neuroscience.My primary line of research has shown that mere membership in a racially diverse team is sufficient to reduce racial biases in memory and automatic evaluations toward team members, and identified the neural mediators of these processes. My other lines of research explore the processes and outcomes associated with moral (versus non-moral) construals; the structure, antecedents and consequences of hate (versus dislike); and the effects of race and stigma consciousness on perceptions of threat and peripheral circulation.

Education:

PhD in Psychology University of Toronto (2008)
Summer Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience (2007)
MA in Psychology, University of Toronto (2004)
BA in Psychology, University of Alberta (2002)

Positions:

Assistant Professor, New York University Department of Psychology (starting January 2010)
SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow, The Ohio State University Department of Psychology (2008-2009)
Visiting Scholar, The Ohio State University Department of Psychology (2006-2008)

Selected Publications

Van Bavel, J. J., & Cunningham, W. A. (in press). A social cognitive neuroscience approach to intergroup perception and evaluation. To appear in W. P. Banks (Ed.), Encyclopedia of consciousness. Elsevier.

Cunningham, W. A. & Van Bavel, J. J. (in press). A neural analysis of intergroup perception and evaluation. To appear in G. G. Berntson & J. T. Cacioppo (Eds.), Handbook of neuroscience for the behavioral sciences. Wiley.

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.

Cunningham, W. A., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2009). Varieties of emotional experience: Differences in object or computation? Emotion Review, 1, 56-57.

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, 19, 1131-1139.

Cunningham, W. A., Van Bavel, J. J., & Johnsen, I. R. (2008). Affective flexibility: Evaluative processing goals shape amygdala activity. Psychological Science, 19, 152-160.

Cunningham, W. A., Packer, D. J., Kesek, A., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2008). Implicit measurement of attitudes: A physiological approach. To appear in R. E. Petty, R. H. Fazio, & P. Briñol (Eds.), Attitudes: Insights from the new implicit measures (485-512). Erlbaum.

Cunningham, W. A., Zelazo, P. D., Packer, D. J., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2007). The iterative reprocessing model: A multi-level framework for attitudes and evaluation. Social Cognition, 25, 736-760.

Note

I am looking for qualified graduate students to join my lab. Please feel free to email me if you are interested in joining the lab.

Address

Jay Van Bavel
Assistant Professor of Psychology (starting January 2010)
jay.vanbavel@nyu.edu
Department of Psychology
New York University
6 Washington Place
New York, NY 10003

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