Jay Van Bavel

Jay Van Bavel is an Associate Professor of Psychology & Neural Science at New York University, an affiliate at the Stern School of Business in Management and Organizations, and Director of the Social Perception and Evaluation Lab. He completed his PhD at the University of Toronto and a postdoctoral fellowship at The Ohio State University before joining the faculty at NYU in 2010. He won the NYU Golden Dozen Teaching Award for teaching an Introduction to Psychology, Social Psychology, Social Neuroscience, Attitudes and Evaluation, Intergroup Relations, Moral Psychology, and Professional Development. 

From neurons to social networks, Jay’s research examines how collective concerns—group identities, moral values, and political beliefs—shape the mind and brain. This work addresses issues of group identity, social motivation, cooperation, implicit bias, moral judgment and decision-making, and group regulation from a social neuroscience perspective. His research team studies these issues using a social neuroscience approach, that incorporates neuroimaging, lesion patients, social cognitive tasks, large-scale surveys, content analysis, and linguistic analysis of social media posts.

Jay has published 80 academic papers and written research essays in The New York Times, Scientific American, Wall Street Journal, Quartz, and the Washington Post. He is also writes a mentoring column, entitled Letters to Young Scientists, for Science Magazine. His work has been cited by the US Supreme Court. He has also given talks at numerous the Psychology Departments and Business Schools, as well as academic conferences, professional events, and organizations.

This research has received several awards, including the Young Investigator Award for distinguished contributions in social neuroscience from the Society for Social Neuroscience, the Young Scholars Award for outstanding achievements in social and personality psychology from the Foundation for Personality and Social Psychology, the Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions from the Association for Psychological Science, and F.J. McGuigan Early Career Investigator Research Prize from the American Psychological Foundation.

Jay’s work has been generously supported by the National Science Foundation, Russell Sage Foundation, American Psychological Foundation, Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, John Templeton Foundation, Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, and New York University, as well as grants and fellowships awarded to his students and postdocs.

You can see Jay’s CV here

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