Psychology-Faculty SocPsych
Faculty Research Interests
2007-2008
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
Banaji, Mahzarin Rustum (Professional
Research). Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics, Carol K.
Pforzheimer Professor at Radcliffe — Mahzarin Banaji received her PhD
from Ohio State University in 1986 and taught at Yale University until
2001. She studies human thinking and feeling as it unfolds in social
context. Her focus is primarily on systems that operate in implicit or
unconscious mode and their relationship to conscious social cognition.
She is interested in the assessments of self and other humans that
reflect thoughts and feelings, often unintended, about their social
group membership (e.g., age, race/ethnicity, gender, class). Her work
relies on cognitive/affective behavioral measures and neuroimaging
(fMRI). Recently, she has begun exploring the origins of implicit
social cognition in young children to understand its acquisition and
development. From such study, she asks about the social consequences of
unintended thought and feeling, and its implications for theories of
individual responsibility and social justice.
Publications (2003-2004):
Devos, T. & Banaji, M.R. (2003). Implicit self and identity. In M. Leary and
J. Tangney (Eds.) Handbook of Self and Identity, 153-175. New York, The Guilford Press.
[Reprinted In J. LeDoux, J. Debiec and H. Moss (Eds.) The Self: From
Soul To Brain, Annals of the N.Y. Academy of Science, 1001, 177–211.
New York, AAAS].
Nosek, B. A., & Banaji, M. R. (2003). (At least) two factors
mediate the relationship between implicit and explicit attitudes. R. K.
Ohme & M. Jarymowicz (Eds.), Natura Automatyzmow, 49-55, Warszawa:
WIP PAN & SWPS.
Lane, K.A., & Banaji, M.R. (2003). Evaluative group status and
implicit attitudes toward the ingroup. In R. K. Ohme & M.
Jarymowica (Eds.), Natura Automatyzmow 25-30, Warszawa: WIP PAN & SWPS.
Banaji, M.R. (2003). Rejtzköd attit dök és szterertípiák. Budapest:
Osiris iadó. [Automatic attitudes and stereotypes. Collected papers
translated into Hungarian, Budapest: Osiris Kiadó.]
Jost, J., Banaji, M. R., & Prentice, D. A. (2003). The yin and yang
of progress in social psychology: Perspectivism at work. Washington,
DC: American Psychological Association.
Banaji, M. R. (2003). The opposite of a great truth is also true. In J.
Jost, D. Prentice, & M. R. Banaji (Eds.) The yin and yang of
progress in social psychology: Perspectivism at work, 127-140.
Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Greenwald, A.G., Nosek, B.A., & Banaji, M.R. (2003). Understanding
and using the Implicit Association Test: 1. An improved scoring
algorithm. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 197-216.
Mitchell, J. P., Nosek, B. A., & Banaji, M. R. (2003). Contextual
variations in implicit evaluations. Journal of Experimental Psychology:
General, 132, 455-469.
Cunningham, W. A., Johnson, M. K., Gatenby, J. C., Gore, J. C., Banaji,
M. R. (2003). Neural components of social evaluation. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 639-649.
Banaji, M. R. Bazerman, M., Chugh, D. (2003). How (Un)Ethical Are You? Harvard Business Review. 81, 56-64.
Jost, J. T., Banaji, M. R., & Nosek, B. A. (2004). A Decade of
System Justification Theory: Accumulated Evidence of Conscious and
Unconscious Bolstering of the Status Quo. Political Psychology, 25,
881-919.
Dasgupta, N., Greenwald, A. G., & Banaji, M. R. (in press). The
first ontological challenge to the IAT. Psychological Inquiry.
Kraut, R., Olson, J., Banaji, M. R., Bruckman, A., Cohen, J., Couper,
M. (2004). Psychological research online: Opportunities and challenges.
American Psychologist, 59, No. 2, 105-117.
Cunningham, W. A., Nezlek, J., & Banaji, M. R. (2004). Implicit and
explicit ethnocentrism: Revisiting the ideologies of prejudice.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 1332-1346.
Walton, G. M., & Banaji, M. R. (2004). Being what you say: The
effect of essentialist linguistic labels on preferences. Social
Cognition, 22, 193-213.
Cunningham, W.A., Johnson, M.K., Raye, C.L., Gatenby, J.C., Gore, J.C.,
& Banaji, M.R. (in press). Dissociated Conscious and Unconscious
Evaluations of Social Groups: An fMRI Investigation.
Psychological Science.
Chugh, D., Bazerman, M. & Banaji, M. R. (in press). Bounded
Ethicality as a Psychological Barrier to Recognizing Conflicts of
Interest.
Mitchell, J. P., Macrae, C. N., & Banaji, M. R. (2004).
Encoding-specific effects of social cognition on the neural correlates
of subsequent memory. Journal of Neuroscience, 24, 4912-4917.
Gilbert, Daniel Todd — Professor Gilbert received his BA from the
University of Colorado (1981) and his PhD from Princeton University
(1985). His research on “affective forecasting” is an attempt to
understand how and how well people predict their emotional reactions to
future events.
Some recent publications on this topic:
Gilbert, D. T., Pinel, E. C., Wilson, T. D., Blumberg, S. J., &
Wheatley, T. (1998). Immune neglect: A source of durability bias in
affective forecasting. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
75, 617-638.
Gilbert, D. T., Brown, R. P., Pinel, E. C., & Wilson, T. D. (2000).
The illusion of external agency. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 79, 690-700.
Gilbert, D. T., & Ebert, J. E. J. (2002). Decisions and revisions:
The affective forecasting of changeable outcomes. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 503-514.
Gilbert, D. T., Lieberman, M. D., Morewedge, C. K., & Wilson, T. D.
(2004). The peculiar longevity of things not so bad. Psychological
Science, 15, 14-19.
Greene, Joshua — Joshua Greene received his AB in philosophy from
Harvard University in 1997 and his PhD in philosophy from Princeton
University in 2002. Since 1999 he has trained as a cognitive
neuroscientist in the Department of Psychology at Princeton University,
joining the department as a postdoctoral fellow in 2002. His primary
research interest is the psychological and neuroscientific study of
morality, focusing on the interplay between emotional and “cognitive”
processes in moral decision-making. His broader interests cluster
around the intersection of philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience. He
is currently writing a book about the philosophical implications of our
emerging scientific understanding of morality.
Selected recent publications:
Greene, J.D., Sommerville, R.B., Nystrom, L.E., Darley, J.M., &
Cohen, J.D. (2001). An fMRI investigation of emotional engagement in
moral judgment. Science, Vol. 293, 2105-2108.
Greene, J. and Haidt, J. (2002) How (and where) does moral judgment work? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6(12), 517-523.
Greene, J.D. (2003) From neural “is” to moral “ought”: what are the
moral implications of neuroscientific moral psychology? Nature Reviews
Neuroscience, Vol. 4, 847-850.
Greene, J.D., Nystrom, L.E., Engell, A.D., Darley, J.M., Cohen, J.D. (2004)
The neural bases of cognitive conflict and control in moral judgment. Neuron, Vol. 44, 389-400.
Greene, J. D. , Cohen J. D. (2004) For the law, neuroscience changes
nothing and everything. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
of London B, 359, 1775-17785.
Hackman, J. Richard — His research includes studies of the behavior and
performance of work teams, social influences on individual behavior in
organizations, and the leadership of groups and organizations. Recent
research includes studies of group and organizational factors that
influence the performance of aircraft cockpit crews, a series of
studies of leadership and ensemble dynamics in symphony and chamber
orchestras, and research on the dynamics of teams that analyze
intelligence data.
Selected recent publications:
Allmendinger, J., Hackman, J. R., & Lehman, E. V. (1996). Life and
work in symphony orchestras. The Musical Quarterly, 80, 194-219.
Hackman, J. R. (2002). Leading teams: Setting the stage for great performances. Boston: HBS Press.
Hackman, J. R. (2003). Learning more from crossing levels: Evidence
from airplanes, orchestras, and hospitals. Journal of Organizational
Behavior, 24, 1-18.
Hackman, J. R., & Wageman, R. (2005). When and how team leaders matter. Research in organizational behavior, 26, 37-74.
Hackman, J. R., & Wageman, R. (2007). Asking the right questions about leadership. American Psychologist, 62, 43-47.
Langer, Ellen J. — Ellen Langer earned her PhD at Yale University in
1974 in Social and Clinical Psychology. She taught at the Graduate
Center of the City University of New York for three years before
joining the faculty at Harvard. She is a social psychologist whose
applied interests influence many of the problems she chooses to study.
From the perspective of her mindfulness theory, her research explores
both conscious and non-conscious influences regarding the general areas
of health, decision-making, aging, perceived control, and stereotyping
Representative publications:
Langer, E. (2005) On Becoming an Artist, Ballantine: NY
Langer, E.J. & Golub, S.A. (2004). Theories of adult development
and their implications for the health of older adults. In C.M. Aldwin,
C.L. Park, & A. Spiro (Eds.), Handbook of Health Psychology and
Aging: New Directions. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Moldoveanu, M.C. & Langer, E. (2002). False memories of the future:
A critique of probabilistic reasoning. Psychological Review, 358-375.
Langer, E. (2002). Well being: Mindfulness vs. Positive Evaluation. In
C.R. Snyder, (Ed.), Handbook of Positive Psychology. New York: Oxford
University.
1997. The Power of Mindful Learning, Addison Wesley.
1994. The Illusion of Calculated Decision Making. In R. Schank and E.
Langer (Ed.), Beliefs, Reasoning, and Decision Making, Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates.
1989. Mindfulness, Addison Wesley.
Mendes, Wendy — Wendy Berry Mendes obtained her Ph.D. in Social
Psychology from UC Santa Barbara in 2002 and then completed a
post-doctoral training program in Psychology and Medicine at UC San
Francisco. Her research falls at the intersection of psychology,
biology, and health, specifically the extent to which social factors
affect stress, motivation, and emotion as evidenced in observable
changes in endocrine, immune and autonomic nervous systems. From a
psychological perspective, she focuses on social factors such as social
isolation, rejection, concealment, discrimination, and stigmatization.
In the context of these social factors, her work examines acute changes
in biological functioning in laboratory-based studies. These studies
represent more traditional social psychological methodologies. Similar
to medical and health research, her research also relies on field and
prospective studies in which she examines how these factors experienced
chronically can alter physiology and how the effects of these
alterations may relate to mental and physical disease etiology and
disease progression.
Some relevant publications:
Mendes, W. B., Gray, H., Mendoza-Denton, Major, B. & Epel, E. (in
press) Why egalitarianism might be good for your health: Physiological
thriving during inter-racial interactions. Psychological Science.
Mendes, W. B., Major, B., McCoy, S., & Blascovich, J. (in press).
How attributional ambiguity shapes physiological and emotional
responses to social rejection and acceptance. Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology.
Mendes, W. B., Blascovich, J., Hunter, S., Lickel, B., & Jost, J.
(2007). Threatened by the unexpected: Challenge and threat during
inter-ethnic interactions. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology.
Weisbuch, M., Mendes, W. B., Seery, M D., & Blascovich, J. (2005).
The psychological influence of stimuli outside of subjective awareness
during motivated performance situations. Personality and Social
Psychology Bulletin, 31, 1203-1216.
Mendes, W. B., Reis, H., Seery, M.D., & Blascovich, J. (2003).
Cardiovascular correlates of emotional expression and suppression: Do
content and gender context matter? Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 84, 771-792.
Mendes, W. B., Blascovich, J., Lickel, B., & Hunter, S. (2002).
Cardiovascular reactivity during social interactions with White and
Black men. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 939-952.
Mendes, W. B., Blascovich, J., Major, B. & Seery, M. D. (2001).
Challenge and threat during upward and downward social comparisons,
European Journal of Social Psychology, 31, 477-479.
Mitchell, Jason — Jason Mitchell received his BA/MS from Yale
University (1997) and his PhD from Harvard University (2003). His
research focuses on the cognitive processes that allow perceivers to
infer the mental states of other people. Recently, this work has used
neuroimaging techniques (fMRI) to examine the neural basis of
understanding mental state terms, forming impressions of other people,
and using knowledge about oneself as the basis for inferring the mental
characteristics of others (i.e., simulation theory).
Mitchell, J. P., Macrae, C. N., & Banaji, M. R. (2004).
Encoding-specificeffects of social cognition on the neural correlates
of subsequent memory. Journal of Neuroscience, 24, 4912-4917.
Mitchell, J. P., Macrae, C. N., & Banaji, M. R. (2005). Forming
impressions of people versus inanimate objects:
Social-cognitiveprocessing in the medial prefrontal cortex, NeuroImage,
26, 251-257.
Mitchell, J. P., Banaji, M. R., & Macrae, C. N. (2005). The link
betweensocial cognition and self-referential thought in the medial
prefrontal cortex. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 17, 1306-1315.
Mitchell, J. P., Banaji, M. R., & Macrae, C. N. (2005). General
andspecific contributions of the medial prefrontal cortex to knowledge
about mental states. NeuroImage.
Mitchell, J. P. (2005). The false dichotomy between simulation and
theory-theory: The argument’s error. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9,
363-364.
Mitchell, J. P. (2006). Mentalizing and Marr: An information processing
approach to the study of social cognition. Brain Research, 1079, 66-75.
Mitchell, J. P., Macrae, C. N., & Banaji, M. R. (2006). Dissociable
medial prefrontal contributions to judgments of similar and dissimilar
others. Neuron, 50, 655-663.
Sidanius, James — Jim Sidanius received his PhD at the University of
Stockholm, Sweden in 1977. Before joining the faculty at Harvard in
2006, he taught at several universities in the United States and
Europe, including the University of Stockholm, Carnegie-Mellon
University, the University of Texas at Austin, New York University,
Princeton University, and UCLA. His primary research interests include
the interface between political ideology and cognitive functioning, the
connection between ethnic and national identities within the context of
multiethnic states, the political psychology of gender, prejudice and
institutional discrimination, and the evolutionary psychology of
intergroup prejudice and conflict. Most of his recent work has
concerned some of the implications of social dominance theory, a
general model concerning the development and maintenance of group-based
social hierarchy and social oppression.
Publications (2003-2005)
Haley, H., & Sidanius, J. (in press). The Positive and Negative
Framing of Affirmative Action: A Group Dominance Perspective.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
Sidanius, J., Sinclair, S. & Pratto, F. (in press). Social
Dominance Orientation, Gender and Increasing College Exposure. Journal
of Applied Social Psychology.
Henry, P.J., Sidanius, J., Levin, S., & Pratto, F. (2005). Social
Dominance Orientation, Authoritarianism, and Support for Intergroup
Violence between the Middle East and America.
Political Psychology, 26,
569-583.
Staerklé, C., Sidanius, J., Green, E.G.T., & Molina, L. (2005).
Ethnic minority-majority asymmetry and attitudes towards immigrants
across 11 nations. Psicologia Política, 30, 7-26.
Haley, H., & Sidanius, J. (2005). Person-organization Congruence
and the Maintenance of Group-Based Social Hierarchy: A Social Dominance
Perspective. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 8, 187-203.
Van Laar, C., Levin, S., Sinclair, S., & Sidanius, J. (2005). The
Effect of University Roommate Contact on Ethnic Attitudes and Behavior.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 41, 329-345.
Sidanius, J., Pratto, F., van Laar, C., & Levin, S. (2004). Social
Dominance Theory: Its Agenda and Method. Political Psychology, 25,
845-880.
Peña, Y., Sidanius, J., & Sawyer, M. (2004). “Racial Democracy” in
the Americas: A Latin and North American Comparison.” Journal of
Cross-Cultural Psychology, 35,
749-767.
Sidanius, J., Van Laar, C., Levin, S., & Sinclair, S. (2004).
Ethnic Enclaves and the Dynamics of Social Identity on the College
Campus: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.” Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 87, 96-110.
Sidanius, J., Henry, P.J., Pratto, F., & Levin, S. (2004). Arab
Attributions for the Attack on America: The Case of Lebanese
Sub-Elites. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 35, 403-416.
Haley, H., Sidanius, J., Lowery, B. & Malamuth, N. (2004). The
Interactive Nature of Sex and Race Discrimination: A Social Dominance
Perspective. In G. Philogene (Ed.), Racial Identity in Context: The
Legacy of Kenneth B. Clark. American Psychological Association pp.
149-160.
Sawyer, M. Q., Peña, Y. & Sidanius, J. (2004). Cuban
Exceptionalism: Group Based Hierarchy and the Dynamics of Patriotism in
Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Cuba. The Dubois Review. 1,
93-114.
Sidanius, J., & Pratto, F. (2003). Social dominance theory and the
dynamics of inequality: A Reply to Schmitt, Branscombe, & Kappen
and Wilson & Liu. British Journal of Social Psychology, 42, 207-213.
Sidanius, J. and Kurzban, R. (2003). Evolutionary Approaches to
Political Psychology. In D.O. Sears, Huddy, L., and Jervis, R. Handbook
of Political Psychology, pp. 146-181. New York: Oxford University Press.
Levin, S., Henry, PJ, Pratto, F. & Sidanius, J. (2003). Social
Dominance and Social Identity in Lebanon: Implications for Support of
Violence against the West. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 6,
353-368.
Sidanius, J., Van Laar, C., Levin, S. & Sinclair, S. (2003). Social
Hierarchy Maintenance and Assortment into Social Roles: A Social
Dominance Perspective. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 6,
333-352.
Sidanius, J., & Peña, Y. (2003). The Gendered Nature of Family
Structure and Group-based Anti-egalitarianism: A Cross-national
Analysis. Journal of Social Psychology, 143, 243-251.
Levin, S., Van Laar, C., & Sidanius, J. (2003). The effects of
ingroup and outgroup friendships on ethnic attitudes in college: A
longitudinal study. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 6, 76-92.
Wegner, Daniel — Daniel Wegner received his BS in 1970 and PhD in 1974
from Michigan State University. His research focuses on the role of
thought in self-control and social life. This includes topics such as
thought suppression and mental control, transactive memory in
relationships and groups, the experience of conscious will, and the
perception of other minds.
Some publications representative of these interests include:
Wegner, D. M. (2002). The illusion of conscious will. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press/ Bradford Books.
Wegner, D. M., Sparrow, B., & Winerman, L. (2004). Vicarious
agency: Experiencing control over the movements of others. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 86, 838-848.
Sparrow, B., & Wegner, D. M. (2006). Unpriming: The deactivation of
thoughts through expression. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 91, 1009-1019.
Pronin, E., Wegner, D. M., McCarthy, K., & Rodriguez, S. (2006).
Everyday magical powers: The role of apparent mental causation in the
overestimation of personal influence. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 91, 218-231.
Gray, H., Gray, K., & Wegner, D. M. (2007). Dimensions of mind perception. Science, 315, 619.
