Jay Van Bavel PhD

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 Identity & Morality Lab. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Toronto and a postdoctoral fellowship at The Ohio State University before joining the faculty at NYU in 2010. He received the NYU Golden Dozen Teaching Award for teaching courses on Social Psychology, Social Neuroscience, Attitudes and Evaluation, Intergroup Relations, Group Identity, Moral Psychology, Professional Development, as well as an Introduction to Psychology.

From neurons to social networks, Jay’s research examines how collective concerns group identities, moral values, and political beliefs shape the mind, brain, and behavior. 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, cross-cultural surveys, and linguistic analysis of social media posts.

Jay has published over 100 academic publications and written research essays in The New York Times, BBC, Scientific American, Wall Street Journal, Quartz, and the Washington Post. He also co-authors a mentoring column, entitled Letters to Young Scientists, for Science Magazine. His work has appeared in academic papers as well as in the US Supreme Court and Senate. He has also given talks at dozens of the Psychology Departments and Business Schools, as well as academic conferences, professional events, and non-academic organizations. His research was also featured in TEDx and TED-Ed videos.