Faculty Research Interests

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.

Recent publications include:

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.

Chugh, D., Bazerman, M. & Banaji, M. R. (in press). “Bounded Ethicality as a Psycho­logical Barrier to Recognizing Conflicts of Interest.”

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.

Walton, G. M., & Banaji, M. R. (2004). “Being what you say: The effect of essentialist linguistic labels on preferences.” Social Cogni­tion, 22, 193-213.

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., More-wedge, 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 PhD 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).

Recent publications include:

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.

Recent publications include:

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). P”erson­organization Congruence and the Main­tenance of Group-Based Social Hierarchy: A Social Dominance Perspective.” Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 8, 187-203.

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.

Recent publications include:

Gray, H., Gray, K., & Wegner, D. M. (2007). “Dimensions of mind perception.” Science, 315, 619.

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.

Sparrow, B., & Wegner, D. M. (2006). “Unpriming: The deactivation of thoughts through expression.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91, 1009-1019.

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.