Principal Investigator
Gil Diesendruck
Prof. Diesendruck did his B.A. in Psychology and Economics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, his PhD at the University of Michigan, and a post-doc at the University of Arizona. He has been at Bar-Ilan University since 1998. He has served as chair of the Department of Psychology (2014-2017) and was the Head (Dean) of the Interdisciplinary Studies Unit (2019-2023).
Postdoc Fellow
Yazeed Ghanaim
An effective approach for improving intergroup relations is getting members from different groups to meet in collaborative contexts. Unfortunately, that is impractical for Jewish and Arab children in Israel. Instead, I'm introducing Persona Dolls to Arab kindergartens, each with a biography representative of different groups, and assessing their impact on children's group concepts and attitudes.
Ph.D Students
Hagar Raban
In recent times, we have been seeing a steep rise in political polarization, with people developing strong feelings and biases based on political affiliation. I'm interested in understanding the scope of this polarization, and how people's political identification and values impact their emotional, cognitive, and moral biases regarding political groups.
Ben-Shalom Cohen
Children live in a world filled with norms on how to behave. I'm especially interested in understanding how children distinguish among moral, conventional, and religious norms, and what are the social and cognitive factors that guide this understanding. For instance, how do children's religious identity and parents' talk about religion, shape children's judgment of religious norms?
Adi Danan
I'm interested in how children's conceptions of the supernatural influences their judgments of religious norms. I'm also interested in the extent to which parents' own concepts and socialization practices may affect children's concepts and judgments.
Yara Nassir
Children develop social groups concepts and attitudes that shape the way they relate to people from different groups. These processes arguably differ between children from majority and high-status groups, and children from minority and lower-status groups. My research has been focusing on these differences: describing them and attempting to understand the causes for the differences.
MA Students
Shuki Wexler
Religion serves as an organizing systems of beliefs, values, and practices for many people around the world. I'm interested in investigating the meaning adults and children attribute to religious practices. Why should one abide by them? Do people view others' religious practices as similarly justified as one's own? What shapes these judgments?
Moria Shemesh
My thesis is looking at the process of dehumanization in different social media platforms.
Lab Manager
Stav Bar-Maoz
Collaborators
Mahesh Srinivasan
Associate Professor, University of California at Berkeley
Fei Xu
Professor, University of California at Berkeley
Rongzhi Liu
Post-Doctoral Researcher, University of Chicago
Margalit Ziv
Professor, Kaye Academic College of Education
Hannes Rakoczy
Professor, University of Gottingen
