Jay Van Bavel

Jay Van Bavel is an Associate Professor of Psychology and Neural Science at New York University, an affiliate at the Stern School of Business in Management and Organizations, Director of the Social Identity & Morality Lab, and co-author of The Power of Us: Harnessing Our Shared Identities to Improve Performance, Increase Cooperation, and Promote Social Harmony. Jay completed his BA at the University of Alberta, PhD at the University of Toronto and a Postdoctoral Fellowship at The Ohio State University.

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. His work addresses issues of group identity, social motivation, cooperation, implicit bias, moral judgment, decision-making, and social media. He studies these issues using a combination of neuroimaging, lesion patients, social cognition, behavioral economics, global surveys, and computational social science.

Jay has published over 100 academic publications and co-authors a mentoring column, called Letters to Young Scientists, for Science Magazine. He has written about his research for The New York Times, BBC, The Atlantic, Scientific American, The Wall Street Journal, Guardian, LA Times, and The Washington Post and his work has appeared in academic papers as well as in the US Supreme Court and Senate. His research was also featured in TEDx and TED-Ed videos and he has consulted with the White House, United Nations, European Union, and World Health Organization on issues related to his research.

Jay has given talks at dozens of psychology departments and business schools, as well as academic conferences, professional events, and non-academic organizations (including the World Science Festival). 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, and Introduction to Psychology.

His 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 Janet T. Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions from the Association for Psychological Science, the F.J. McGuigan Early Career Investigator Prize from the American Psychological Foundation, the Gordon Allport Intergroup Relations Prize and the SPSP Wegner Theoretical Innovation Prize.

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, AE Foundation, and New York University, as well as grants and fellowships awarded to his students and postdocs. His current grants explore the structure and impact of intellectual humility and the impact of social identity on belief updating.