People
Director
Kurt Gray
is the Weary Foundation Endowed Chair in the Social Psychology of Polarization and Misinformation at the Ohio State University and an expert in the psychology of people’s deepest beliefs and why they matter for society and organizations. He is also the Director of the Center for the Science of Moral Understanding, which uses interdisciplinary science to bridge social divides. He grew up in Canada, completed his BSc at the University of Waterloo and his PhD at Harvard with the late Daniel Wegner. He was almost a geophysicist instead of a social psychologist, but a cold night stranded and stalked by lynx in Northern Alberta convinced him otherwise. He is married to a neuroscientist, together they have two daughters.
Email | CV | Personal Website
Post-Doctoral Fellows
Emily Kubin
Studies how people (and the media) can reduce negative perceptions of political opponents--focusing on interventions to bridge political divides.
Danica Wilbanks
is a 3rd-year student who studies how social network structures impact affective polarization. She also investigates how religious beliefs change over time, and how people adapt to new technology.
Sharlene Fernandes
Studies how emotions, personality traits, and cognitive biases shape moral decision-making, both in human interactions and in the development of AI. Sharlene’s research seeks to uncover the psychological mechanisms behind moral choices and their implications for ethically aligned AI and emerging technologies.
Graduate Students
Lab Managers
Sam Pratt
studies the dynamics of moral outrage as well as strategies to foster mutual understanding across moral divides.
Undergraduate Research Assistants
Former Undergraduate Research Assistants
Francisco Ceccotti, Marcella Kingman, Fatima Alanis, Kyra Klemes, Maggie Wong, Athena Zhou, Arthi Annadurai, Idil Baran, Mike O’Brien, Kirti Nimmala, Anna Wei, Vishanth Palanivel, Yuyao Huang, Andrea Bermudez, Sruthi Mannepalli, Noor Ghoneim, Ellison Commodore, Blake Ryan, Sydney Hall, Matthew Davis, Andre Chiquito, Longjiao Li, Alex Stubblebine, Anton Cedergrund, Ben Bramson, Dean Van Voorhis, Hanna Li, Jade Tsai, Kaylee Parish, Levin Low, Mariam Ehab, Nivedha Prathap, Sadej Singh, Siya Patel
Lab Alumni
Belinda Woodard Samantha Abrams (Amtrak) Connor O’Fallon (U.S. Census Bureau) Will Blakey (Stanford) Carlos Rebollar (NC State) Curtis Puryear (Northwestern University) Jake Womick (Cal State Bakersfield) Joshua Jackson (Northwestern University) Rachel Hartman (CloudResearch) Yochanan Bigman (Yale University)
Daryl Cameron (Penn State)
Cameron Doyle (Facebook)
Amelia Goranson (Knox College)
Neil Hester (McGill University)
John Michael Kelly (UC-Irvine)
Chelsea Schein (Wharton)
Mihai Sirbu (Capital One)
Andrew Vonasch (Canterbury)