I’m excited to join a super strong social psychology group at New York University Abu Dhabi as a Visiting Associate Professor for the 2023-24 academic year! Aside from getting the chance to teach the most diverse student body in the world, I look forward to deepening my research collaborations (running the longitudinal WeAreNYUAD Survey with PJ Henry) and developing my research in the wider region (in India with with Sujoy Chakravarty and Monisha Dhingra, and in Pakistan with Kausar Khan and Maryam Khan).
Incoming PhD student Sabrina Paiwand has been awarded a full scholarship and studentship from the LSE International Inequalities Institute! I’m delighted to have Sabrina take this next academic step with the support of an excellent interdisciplinary community, and look forward to exploring with her how neoliberal self construals shape political participation in the UK and Chile.
In March 2023 I was delighted to find out that I had passed Major Review at the LSE, and been promoted to Associate Professor with tenure! This is a welcome milestone on a lifelong academic journey, which I’m delighted to celebrate alongside my brilliant and supportive colleagues at the LSE Psychological and Behavioural Science Department.
In March 2023 I delivered a colloquium talk at the Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation at the University of Chicago as part of their seminar series on ‘Urban Cognition’. You can watch the full talk and Q&A session here.
In March 2023 I featured on the ePODstemology podcast with philosopher Mark Fabian (Warwick), discussing the question of how societal context affects human psychology. You can listen here, or access more episodes on the podcast site.
In February 2023 I was hosted by Tatiana Karabchuk in delivering a colloquium talk as part of Innovation Month at the Department of Goverment and Society at United Arab Emirates University, on research with Lotte Thomsen (Oslo), entitled ‘Politics at the Interface of Culture and Evolution’.
In January 2023 I co-organised a seminar on the ‘Psychology of classed (un)belonging in ‘elite’ work at Leeds Beckett University, including chairing a session at which lab member and PhD supervisee Julia Buzan presented on her research on the role of financial constraints in shaping graduate job choice. The seminar is part of a BPS-funded series of events being run by the Psychology of Social Class - UK Policy Implications (POSCUPI) interest group that I co-steer alongside Bridgette Rickett (LBU, POSCUPI Chair), Maxine Woolhouse (LBU), Paula Reavey (London South Bank), and Matt Easterbrook (Sussex). Check out the POSCUPI website and consider signing up to our mailing list!
In November 2022 lab member and PhD supervisee Iván Cano was awarded funding through the competitive Grants-in-Aid Program run by the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI) for his PhD research, ‘All in This Together? Combatting shaming of the poor in the context of widespread economic uncertainty’. Congrats, Iván!
It was an honour to deliver the final keynote speech at the Annual Conference on Discrimination hosted by the Centre for the Experimental Philosophical Study of Discrimination (CEPDISC) in October 2022, especially following greats such as Steve Neuberg (Arizona State), Paul Sniderman (Stanford), Josh Greene (Harvard), and Alan Fiske (UCLA). I applied insights from my psychology of poverty research to interrogate the notion of responsibility in luck egalitarianism, sparking a debate that continued in a CEPDISC-hosted workshop with Eva Green (Lausanne), Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen (Aarhus), Nils Holtung (Copenhagen), and Lotte Thomsen (Oslo) in Copenhagen in March 2023!
In September 2022 I was delighted to celebrate the graduation of my second PhD student, co-supervised by Ben Lauderdale (UCL), Denise Baron. Denise’s PhD examines the role of group-related concerns (with a particular focus on national identification, social dominance orientation, and authoritarianism) in voter behaviour, and has set her up for a career in political strategy, research, and communications.
Just over a year after his passing, in July 2023 I chaired a symposium in honour of Jim Sidanius at the annual conference of the one professional body he loved the most, the International Society for Political Psychology, featuring new research in the social dominance tradition from Stacey Sinclair (Princeton), Arnold Ho (Michigan), Lotte Thomsen (Oslo) and myself, and reflections from Felicia Pratto (UConn). Soon afterward, our obituary of Jim, co-authored with Arnold, Lotte, and Nour Kteily (Northwestern) was published in the American Psychologist.
In July 2022 a major policy report I co-authored with Bridgette Ricket (Leeds Beckett University), Paula Reavey (London South Bank University), Maxine Woolhouse (London South Bank University) and Matthew Easterbrook (University of Sussex) entitled ‘Psychology of social class-based inequalities: Policy implications for a revised (2010) UK Equality Act’ was published by the British Psychological Society as part of their 2021-22 Priority Campaign (voted by BPS membership and Senate) on Tackling Social Class Inequalities. I gave an interview to LSE Research for the World Magazine on it and hosted a pre-launch event at the LSE featuring David Johnston MP (Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Social Mobility and former CEO of the Social Mobility Foundation) and Dr Suriyah Bi (Founder of the Equality Act Review Campaign) asking ‘What challenges does social class set for the leveling up agenda?’. This is part of a wider programme of work by us as founders of the psychology research and advocacy group, Psychology of Social Class - UK Policy Implications (POSCUPI).
It was an incredible experience to host the EASP-SPSSI-funded mini-conference, Society in the Classroom: Integrating perspectives on how socioeconomic disparities unfold in educational settings at the LSE from 30th June to 2nd July 2022, co-organised with Sébastien Goudeau (Univerity of Poitiers) and Nicole Stephens (Northwestern University). Thirty-five researchers gathered in London to present work on social class and education that was focused on the role of wider contexts (institutional, cultural, societal) in reproducing inequalities in the classroom. The event was kicked off with a keynote address from Hazel Markus (Stanford University) presenting ‘Experiments toward a Psychology of Society’ and closed with a keynote address from Peggy Miller on ‘How Poor Children are Defined Out of the Educational Game Before They Enter School’. This was the first time (that we are aware) societally-minded psychologists from the US and Europe had gathered to consider socioeconomic inequalities in education, and it was the first in-person conference for many after a long while!
In June 2022, the LSE Middle East Centre published a blog post, When Young Leaders Don’t Embrace Democracy, based on early analysis of data from our Global Identity in an Uncertain World longitudinal study of social attitudes among students enrolled in NYU Abu Dhabi, co-authored with Iván Cano, PJ Henry, and Cece Kim.
In March 2022, an article co-authored with Nikolai Eftedal (first author), Lotte Thomsen (senior author), and the team at University of Oslo focused on anlaysis of data from the Norwegian Twin Registry (Thomas Kleppestø, Nikolai Czajkowski, Espen Røysamb, Olav Vassend, and Eivind Ystrom) using biometric modelling to demonstrate the existence of two heritable moral traits (principled justice sensitivity and opportunistic justice sensitivity) was accepted for publication in the Nature journal, Scientific Reports. You can read it here.
A recent article of mine in Psyche Magazine on “Why We Shouldn’t Push a Positive Mindset on those in Poverty” seems to have struck a chord, both with those who have experienced poverty directly and who have worked on behavioural or mindset-based interventions with those living in or near poverty. It’s the first space in which I connect my lab’s work on psychological responses to socioeconomic strain with our more recent research into ‘market thinking’, as part of an argument I’ve started bringing to academic audiences for feedback, such as at Harvard University’s Social Lunch brown bag (March 2022), and in a seminar at the Centre for Social Norms and Behavioural Dynamics at UPenn (September 2022).
Given the state of the world, I felt very lucky to be able to travel to San Francisco for the SPSP Annual Convention in February 2022. I took advantage of emerging interest in the social psychology of neoliberalism to present data from my development (along with former MSc student, Sabrina Paiwand) of a scale indexing the ‘Marketised Self’. More on this research soon!
In February 2022 I participated in a panel discussion hosted by the LSE International Inequalities Institute, to launch their new research theme on Opportunity, Mobility, and the Intergenerational Transmission of Inequality. Philosopher Joey Fishkin, economist Marc Fleurbaey and I discusss ‘An Idea of Equality for Troubled Times’, with me contributing insights from my lab’s research on the psychology of poverty, relational underpinnings of political attitudes, and neoliberal subjectivity.
In January 2022 my interview with Ricardo Lopez for his YouTube channel, The Dissenter, was released. Ricardo and I talked about the biological roots of our understanding of hierarchy and groups, and how they reveal themselves in contemporary issues such as poverty, economic inequality, and ideological polarisation. Read the blurb to find links to specific topics.
In July 2021 I was awarded an LSE 2020-21 Excellence in Education Award, a large part of which was due to the success of my new MSc elective module, Political Psychology: Inequality and Intergroup Relations. It took all of my energy to build this during a pandemic year with young children at home, so it felt good to be recognised for pulling it off!
In July 2021, I published an article in the summer bumper issue of the British Psychological Society’s The Psychologist magazine, which was focused on their 2020-21 campaign, From Poverty to Flourishing. The article, ‘Taking context seriously’, contains some of my latest ideas on how viewing poverty through a socio-ecological lens can shed light on the adaptiveness of decision-making under socioeconomic strain and the need for policy interventions that go beyond the individual.
Many of us in the political and wider social psychology community were devastated to hear of the passing of Jim Sidanius on 29th June 2021. Jim was my PhD adviser and the single person responsible for my decision to conduct a PhD in psychology, aswell as for the approach I take to understanding the psychological roots and consequences of inequality. With Lotte Thomsen, Nour Kteily, and Arnold Ho, I was honoured to coordinate a virtual memorial for Jim on 17th July, from which we are still compiling photos and remembrances submitted from far and wide. You can read about Jim’s story and legacy in this Harvard Gazette article, and this moving obituary and set of memories posted by the International Society for Political Psychology. To really grasp the importance of his work, however, I highly recommend reading his classic 1999 book with Felicia Pratto, Social Dominance: An Intergroup Theory of Hierarchy and Oppression.
In June 2021, I spoke on a panel chaired by Paul Dolan and Simon Hix, and also featuring Tiffany Watt Smith, Lasana Harris, and Anil Seth, considering what psychology and neuroscience have to offer in understanding the question, What drives our polarised culture?. You can find the event podcast and video here, and an abridged recording at the Duck-Rabbit podcast.
In April 2021, I delivered a talk on the impact of poverty on decision-making at a BPS-sponsored symposium as part of the BNA Festival of Neuroscience. You can watch all the talks in our session here.
In April 2021, I joined the Editorial Board of the British Journal of Psychology as an Associate Editor. This is the flagship outlet of the British Psychological Society, with an impact factor of 4.267, ranking in the top quartile of multidisciplinary psychology journals.
In April 2021, my article with Hannah Waldfogel (first author), Nour Kteily (corresponding author), Arnold Ho, and Oliver Hauser on how egalitarianism shapes basic visual processing of inequality-relevant information was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. You can find it and related papers on my Publications page.
In March 2021, I chaired a panel discussion entitled, We Are All in This Together: Has COVID-19 taught us how to save the world?, featuring Ganga Shreedhar, Sanchayan Banerjee, Nick Chater, and Adam Oliver. We considered whether the experience of the Covid-19 pandemic has shifted the way we relate to each other and the state, with implications for policy possibilities. Part of the LSE Festival, the event was recorded for video and podcast, both available at this link.
In November 2020, along with lab member Monisha Dhingra (project lead) and collaborator Sujoy Chakravarty (Jawaharlal Nehru University), I was awarded a Regional Global South Grant by the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI) for a project entitled, Does Poverty Know no Caste? Unpacking the Relationship between Caste and Poverty in India. Read Monisha’s account of the context and goals of the research in the SPSSI newsletter.
In October 2020, I was awarded funding by the European Association of Social Psychology (EASP) and Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI) to support a Small Group Meeting entitled, Society in the classroom: Integrating perspectives on how socioeconomic disparities unfold in educational settings, co-organised by Sébastien Goudeau (University of Poitiers) and Nicole Stephens (Northwestern University), to take place at the LSE in July 2021…update: now postponed to June 2022!
In September 2020, I gave a talk at the Changemakers Speaker Series hosted by students at the Department of Psychology & Language Sciences at UCL, on my professional journey and research agenda.
In June 2020, a piece writen in collaboration with Sandra Obradovic (LSE) and Seamus Power (University of Copenhagen) on “The Psychological Appeal of Populism” was accepted into a special issue of Current Opinion in Psychology on “Social Change: Riots, Rallies, and Revolutions”. In it, we argue for the importance of core relational concerns regarding social groups, social hierarchy, and collective emotion, in understanding contemporary populist movements at the interface of ‘supply’ and ‘demand’ -side political processes.
Two pieces of good news for lab member (and former PhD supervisee) Sandra Obradovic, who in has accepted a permanent Lectureship in the psychology department at the Open University, commencing August 2020! Sandra and I also recently had our mixed-methods paper on the role of power asymmetries in shaping identification with and support for joining the EU (based on her PhD research), accepted at the European Journal of Social Psychology.
Delighted to report that former Research Assistant and current MSc Supervisee Julia Buzan has been awarded a highly competitive PhD Studentship from the LSE International Inequalities Institute. Julia will be my second (primary-supervised) PhD student, and will be working with me to advance our understanding of the impact of socioeconomic strain on cognition and decision-making.
Our lab is welcoming applications for a research internship to be completed remotely over Summer 2020. The main focus will be on updating our set of systematic reviews of the relationship between poverty and decision-making processes, though interns can gain exposure to projects across the lab if desired. To inquire, please send your CV and expression of interest to Jessica Rea before the end of May 2020.
On 5th March 2020 I delivered a talk as part of the 250th Anniversary of the College Historical Society at Trinity College, Dublin. The culmination of a week of high profile commemorations, our session, entitled The Future of Global Development, was chaired by Senator Ivana Bacik and featured Mary Robinson (former President of Ireland and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights), Kumi Naidoo (former head of Amnesty International and Greenpeace), and Paul Collier (Oxford Professor of Economics and Public Policy and former Director at the World Bank). Responding to the theme, ‘The Future of Capitalism’, I offered some thoughts on how an evolutionarily-informed social psychology can yield insight for political economy. Recording here.
In January 2020 I was invited to join the Expert Reference Group formed by the British Psychological Society to address their priority theme for 2020: From Poverty to Flourishing. The group published two policy briefing papers, both of which featured my research: ‘Foundations for the Best Start in Life’ and ‘Agency and Empowerment’.
A new volume on the Social Psychology of Inequality (edited by Jolanda Jetten and Kim Peters) is now out, featuring a chapter on my ‘psychological shift’ model of decision-making under socioeconomic threat. The chapter and a preproof version of the full book can be downloaded from my Publications page.
In September 2019, I was delighted to take on my first (primary-supervised) PhD student, Iván Cano-Gomez. You can read about Iván’s background and research at the webpage for the newly-named Societal Psychology Lab, which now meets biweekly in termtime.
In August 2019, another article of mine was accepted at Current Opinion in Psychology, this time co-authored with Lotte Thomsen at University of Oslo. It is a novel a theoretical proposal for considering the psychological foundations of egalitarianism, weaving together biological and the societal influences, and was written for a special issue on Socio-ecological Psychology, guest edited by Ayse Uskul and Shige Oishi.
I was on maternity leave from February to August 2019, welcoming lovely little Amber, our second child.
In July 2019, our article on the heritability of SDO was accepted for publication in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This work, co-authored with colleagues at the University of Oslo (first author Thomas Kleppestø) and based on multivariate behavioural genetic analyses of data from the large Norwegian Twin Registry, provides evidence for substantial heritability in both sub-dimensions of SDO, and a genetic grounding of the shared variance between SDO and policy attitudes. You can find it and related papers on my Publications page.
In July 2019, I had an article accepted at Current Opinion in Psychology consisting of a theoretically informed summary of research on the impact of experiences of low socioeconomic status on decision-making. It is set to appear in a special issue on Power, Status, and Hierarchy, guested edited by Gerben van Kleef and Joey Cheng. You can find it and related papers on my Publications page.
I have been presenting and getting feedback on my research on ideology and inequality perceptions (with Nour Kteily, Hannah Waldfogel, Arnold Ho, Oliver Hauser, and Jonathan Mijs), in October 2018 at the PBS Research Seminar Series, in December 2018 at the LSE Behavioural Economics Society, and in August 2019 (just after returning from maternity leave) at the UCL Political Cognition Seminar. While I was on leave, Julia Buzan (incoming LSE MSc student and new collaborator on one tranche of this work) has led the recoding of our commuting data and matching with UK and US Census information, so we hope to analyse and write up results by the end of 2019.
In December 2018 I presented our systematic review of the relationship between poverty and decision-making processes (co-authored with Jessica Rea, funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation) at the UCL Psychology Society.
The new PBS Research Seminar Series has launched! Join us at noon on Wednesdays to hear from a range of internal and external speakers. As you’ll see here, the series will cover topics from biochemistry to sociology, showing just how wide-spanning our research interests are at the department.
In October 2018 I travelled to the Society for Experimental Social Psychology (SESP) conference in Seattle, where took part in a symposium with Ashley Whillans (HBS), Lora Bunting (Buffalo) and Serena Chen (Berkeley). I presented new data from my research stream on ideology and perceptions of inequality, proceeding in collaboration with Nour Kteily (Kellogg), Hannah Waldfogel (Kellogg), Jonathan Mijs (LSE), Arnold Ho (Michigan), and Oliver Hauser (Exeter).
A new volume (edited by Bastiaan Rutjens and Mark Brandt) on how belief systems shape our perception of reality is out today, featuring a chapter by Denise Baron, Nour Kteily and myself on how ideology shapes inequality perceptions. You can download our chapter on my Publications page, and read a press release here.
The LSE PBS Department is hiring! Check out the information for the positions, Assistant Professor of Behavioural Science, Assistant Professor of Psychological and Behavioural Science (quantitative methods & stats), and Professor of Psychological and Behavioural Science, deadline 5th November.
Here's a BBC World News report featuring my thoughts on a recent mass media intervention shown to improve health-seeking behaviours among mothers in Burkina Faso. My comments were also reported in articles on CNN and BBC, and broadcast over BBC World Service Radio.
11th June 2018 was a big day for me as adviser, as Sandra Obradovic, supervised by myself and Caroline Howarth (first supervisor), was successful at her viva examination and awarded PhD with minor revisions.
On 22nd May 2018 we held the third Bridging Theory and Practice Seminar at the LSE PBS Department, which was also a second session for the newly formed Media & Social Norms Collaborator, led by Kavita Abraham-Dowsing. This was a gathering of behavioural scientists and practitioners converging on an interest in what role the media plays in influencing social norms with a view to behaviour change. As one of three academic talks, I connected this theme to my two research streams on intergroup inequality and the psychology of low SES. Some follow-up blogs here.
A video showcasing our brand new BSc in Psychological and Behavioural Science (commencing 2019-20) is now live on the LSE website and YouTube. Unlike other undergraduate programmes, our courses integrates psychology and behavioural science, situating the study of the mind within the broader social sciences and real world social issues, and equipping students with cutting edge methodological skills in which to study it. Check it out here.
On 7th March 2018 I spoke about the impact of poverty on young people at the Anna Freud Centre, as a guest speaker for the UCL Changemakers Student-led seminar series, Contemporary Challenges and Opportunities faced by Today's Youth. It was great to see so much synergy between my research and work ongoing at UCL on psychosocial problems faced by children who have grown up in adverse contexts.
Here is a video recorded by Faculti for their research dissemination platform, on our systematic review of the link between poverty and decision-making processes:
Here is a video recorded by Faculti for their research dissemination platform, concerning our recent work on the link between ideology and inequality perceptions:
I was in Atlanta, Georgia, from 1-3 March 2018, for the 2018 Annual Convention of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. Along with Michael Kraus and Paul Piff, I'll be hosting the Pre-Conference on the Psychology of Inequality and Social Class. Looking forward to catching up with old classmates and collaborators!
Two interviews on recent papers of mine are featuring on the Faculti research dissemination website. As the website it subscription only, I'll embed copies of the video here soon.
Monday 19th February 2018 saw the launch of the LSE Festival: Beveridge 2.0, for which I chaired a panel discussion on Identity and the Welfare State: Evolving Challenges for Sustaining Social Solidarity, featuring social policy expert Prof Peter Dwyer, writer David Goodhart, and social psychologists Prof Xenia Chryssochoou and Celestin Okoroji. Podcast now available here.
On 16th February 2018 it was a pleasure to return to the Wonder Foundation for their Knowing Me Knowing You conference, to provide feedback on policies developed by young people to improve social integration at local, national and European levels. Inspiring work!
On 13th January 2018 I took part in the Money Smart Kids workshop at the Museum of Childhood, along with Helen Pitman (Money Advice Service), Christina You (We Are Futures), Sharan Jaswell (MyBnk), and Heather Kappes (LSE, organiser). I talked about the importance of cognitive skills and how they are affected by our life experiences, while giving kids a chance to try out some brain games...on which they performed much better than most adults do!
On 12th January 2018 I gave a research talk at Said Business School (University of Oxford) to Oxford and Harvard MBA and MPP students as part of the Harvard Kennedy-Business School Immersive Field Course on Behavioral Insights.
On 1st December 2017 I delivered a keynote lecture at the 10th Annual Irish Policy, Economics, & Psychology Conference in University College Dublin, entitled, "Decision-making up against the wall: How socioeconomic status shapes basic psychological processes", during which I tried to convey the importance of psychological mechanisms to behavioural economics.
In December 2017 my research was featured in an article for BBC Futures on Educationism, the Hidden Bias we Often Ignore, by Melissa Hogenboom.
On Saturday 4th November I spoke on a panel at the 'Who Belongs?' conference hosted by the Wonder Foundation with young people from across London and Europe.
On Thursday 9th November I discussed my research as part of a Research Dialogue session at the LSE Department of Media & Communications, alongside sociologist Dr Rudy Leyva. The keywords for the day were 'neoliberal cognition'.
5th-8th July 2017 saw the 18th General Meeting of the European Association of Social Psychology in lovely Granada, where I presented in a symposium on The Socioecological Perspective in Social Psychology: Current Directions and Future Prospects, along with Ayse Uskul, Huadong Yang, and Tim Wildschut.
I was on maternity leave from December 2016 to June 2017, welcoming an adorable baby Daniyal, our first!