Assistant Professor
Social Psychology
New York University
6 Washington Place
New York, NY 10003
jay.vanbavel@nyu.edu
Twitter: @vanbavellab

Join the Lab

I am looking for highly motivated students and scholars to join my lab. Please visit my lab website to learn more about joining the lab.

Research

I am 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.

Positions

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

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)

Selected Publications

Park, G. H., Van Bavel, J. J., Vasey, M. W., & Thayer, J. F. (in press). Cardiac vagal tone predicts inhibited attention to fearful faces. Emotion.

Van Bavel, J. J., Swencionis, J. K., O'Connor, R. C., & Cunningham, W. A. (in press). Motivated social memory: Belonging needs moderate the own-group bias in face recognition. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

Xiao, Y. J., & Van Bavel, J. J. (in press). See your friends close, and your enemies closer: Social identity and identity threat shape the representation of physical distance. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

Van Bavel, J. J. & Cunningham, W. A. (2011). A social neuroscience approach to self and social categorisation: A new look at an old issue. European Review of Social Psychology, 21, 237-284. DOI: 10.1080/10463283.2010.543314

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. DOI: 10.1162/jocn_a_00016

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, 41, 818-824. DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.844

Cunningham, W. A. & Van Bavel, J. J. (2009). A neural analysis of intergroup perception and evaluation. In G. G. Berntson & J. T. Cacioppo (Eds.) Handbook of neuroscience for the behavioral sciences (Vol I). (pp. 975-984). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Cunningham, W. A., Packer, D. J., Kesek, A., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2009). Implicit measurement of attitudes: A physiological approach. In R. E. Petty, R. H. Fazio, & P. Briñol (Eds.), Attitudes: Insights from the new implicit measures (485-512). New York: Psychology Press.

Cunningham, W. A., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2009). Varieties of emotional experience: Differences in object or computation? Emotion Review, 1, 56-57. DOI: 10.1177/17540739090010011302

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. DOI: 10.1177/0146167208327743

Van Bavel, J. J., & Cunningham, W. A. (2009). A social cognitive neuroscience approach to intergroup perception and evaluation. In W. P. Banks (Ed.) Encyclopedia of consciousness (pp. 379-388). New York: Academic Press.

Cunningham, W. A., Van Bavel, J. J., & Johnsen, I. R. (2008). Affective flexibility: Evaluative processing goals shape amygdala activity. Psychological Science, 19, 152-160. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02061.x

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. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02214.x

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. DOI: 10.1521/soco.2007.25.5.736

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