Faculty
Randy L. Buckner
randy_buckner@harvard.eduInterim Department Chair
Sosland Family Professor of Psychology and of Neuroscience
Randy Buckner received his BA in Psychology and his PhD in Neurosciences from Washington University in St. Louis. He is a member of the Center for Brain Science at Harvard University, and the Director of the Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Division and...
George A. Alvarez
alvarez@wjh.harvard.eduFred Kavli Professor of Neuroscience
The human visual system can only select and keep track of a small handful of objects at any given moment. Yet, for the most part, people successfully navigate through busy intersections, find items of interest such as food or friends in a crowd, and...
Ashwini Ashokkumar
ashwiniashokkumar@g.harvard.eduAssistant Professor of Psychology
Ashwini studies how our identities shape (and are shaped by) how we think about, talk about, and do politics. Her research examines how identity processes impact political discourse and discussion, and how discourse, in turn, shapes social cohesion...
Mahzarin R. Banaji
mahzarin_banaji@harvard.eduRichard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics
Harvard College Professor, 2014-2019
Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at Radcliffe, 2002-2008
Professor Banaji studies thinking and feeling as they unfold in social context, with a focus on mental systems that operate in implicit or unconscious mode. She studies social attitudes and beliefs in adults and children, especially those that have roots...
Elika Bergelson
elika_bergelson@fas.harvard.eduJohn L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences
The work in the Bergelson lab seeks to uncover how infants learn language from the world around them, i.e. how language develops, and in particular, how infants and toddlers learn words. We approach this by studying learners and their environments...
Mark Chen
markchen@fas.harvard.eduAssistant Professor of Psychology (Starting July 1, 2026)
Dr. Chen’s research focuses broadly on stress and psychopathology across the lifespan, with a central interest in the transdiagnostic roles of emotion and emotion regulation processes: (1) how they are shaped by adverse life experiences, (2) how their...
Mina Cikara
mcikara@fas.harvard.eduFredric Wertham Professor of Law and Psychiatry in Society
Professor Cikara studies how the mind, brain, and behavior change when the social context shifts from “me and you” to “us and them.” She focuses primarily on how group membership, competition, and prejudice disrupt the processes that allow people to see...
Fiery Cushman
cushman@fas.harvard.eduDirector of Graduate Studies
Professor of Psychology
Cushman's research aims to organize the astonishing complexity of moral judgment around basic functional principles. Much of it is motivated by a simple idea: Because we use punishments and rewards to modify others’ behavior, one function of morality is...
Samuel J. Gershman
gershman@fas.harvard.eduProfessor of Psychology
The Gershman lab's research aims to understand how richly structured knowledge about the environment is acquired, and how this knowledge aids adaptive behavior. The lab uses a combination of behavioral, neuroimaging and computational techniques to pursue...
Daniel Gilbert
Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology
Professor Gilbert has won numerous awards for his research and teaching. His popular book, Stumbling on Happiness, spent 6 months on the New York Times bestseller list, sold over a million copies worldwide, and was awarded the Royal Society’s General Book...
Joshua D. Greene
jgreene@wjh.harvard.eduAlfred and Rebecca Lin Professor of Civil Discourse
The Greene lab studies the mechanics of moral thinking, and high-level cognition more generally, using behavioral experiments and functional neuroimaging. Much of their research has focused on the respective contributions of “fast” automatic processes...
Mark L. Hatzenbuehler
markhatzenbuehler@fas.harvard.eduProfessor of Psychology
Professor Hatzenbuehler’s research focuses broadly on identifying the biopsychosocial mechanisms that contribute to adverse mental health outcomes among minority group members, with a particular focus on the role of stigma in shaping the development and...
Jill M. Hooley
jmh@wjh.harvard.eduJohn Lindsley Professor of Psychology in Memory of William James
Director of Undergraduate Studies
A major focus of Professor Hooley’s research interests concerns psychosocial (especially family) predictors of psychiatric relapse in patients with severe psychopathology such as schizophrenia, depression, and borderline personality disorder. She is also...
Joshua Conrad Jackson
Assistant Professor of Psychology (Starting July 1, 2026)
Joshua Conrad Jackson’s research focuses on the intersection of cultural evolution and psychology. He studies how people’s psychologies change as societies become larger, more diverse, more economically developed, and more connected to each other. He has...
Talia Konkle
talia_konkle@harvard.eduProfessor of Psychology
Talia Konkle's research focuses on the cognitive and neural organization of high-level visual experience: how do we see and understand the visual world around us? She employs a combination of behavioral techniques, human functional neuroimaging and...
Ellen Langer
langer@wjh.harvard.eduProfessor
Ellen Langer earned her Ph.D. at Yale University in Social and Clinical Psychology and joined the faculty at Harvard in 1977. In 1981, she became the first woman tenured in Harvard's Department of Psychology. She is considered the mother of mindfulness...
Richard J. McNally
rjm@wjh.harvard.eduProfessor
Professor McNally’s main research emphasis has concerned the psychopathology of anxiety and related disorders (e.g., panic disorder, specific phobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder [OCD], social anxiety disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder)...
Jason P. Mitchell
jason_mitchell@harvard.eduProfessor
I use a combination of neuroimaging and behavioral measures to investigate the cognitive processes that support inferences about the psychological states of other people and introspective awareness of the self. Jason Mitchell received his BA/MS from Yale...
Matthew K. Nock
nock@wjh.harvard.eduEdgar Pierce Professor of Psychology
Professor Nock’s research is aimed at advancing the understanding why people behave in ways that are harmful to themselves, with an emphasis on suicide and other forms of self-harm. His research is multi-disciplinary in nature and uses a range of...
Elizabeth A. Phelps
phelps@fas.harvard.eduPershing Square Professor of Human Neuroscience
The primary inspiration behind Professor Phelps’ research is the observation that emotions color our lives, and even subtle, everyday variations in our emotional experience can alter our thoughts and actions. By uncovering the impact of emotion and affect...
Steven Pinker
pinker@wjh.harvard.eduJohnstone Family Professor of Psychology
Steven Pinker is an experimental cognitive psychologist and a popular writer on language, mind, and human nature. A native of Montreal, he earned his bachelor’s degree at McGill University in 1976, his PhD from Harvard in 1979, and taught at Harvard...
Daniel L. Schacter
dls@wjh.harvard.eduWilliam R. Kenan, Jr. Professor
Schacter’s research is broadly concerned with understanding the nature and function of human memory, using cognitive, neuropsychological, and neuroimaging approaches. He is especially interested in understanding the constructive nature of memory: why it...
Jesse Snedeker
snedeker@wjh.harvard.eduProfessor of Psychology
Affiliate of the Department of Linguistics
My laboratory explores many facets of language development, comprehension, production and representation. We study typically developing children (from infancy into middle childhood), adults and a variety of special populations (e.g., children with...
Leah H. Somerville
somerville@fas.harvard.eduGrafstein Family Professor of Psychology
Leah Somerville is the Grafstein Family Professor of Psychology and Director of the Affective Neuroscience and Development Laboratory. She received a PhD in Psychological and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth College and completed postdoctoral training at the...
Elizabeth S. Spelke
spelke@wjh.harvard.eduMarshall L. Berkman Professor of Psychology
Spelke’s laboratory focuses on the sources of uniquely human cognitive capacities, especially young children’s prodigious capacities for fast and flexible learning. She studies these capacities by investigating their origins and growth in human infants...
Ashley Thomas
athomas@g.harvard.eduAssistant Professor of Psychology
Laboratory for Developmental Studies
Humans are born into complex social networks. My work investigates how infants, toddlers, and children learn about and navigate this network (i.e., their naive sociology). I've studied how young humans think and feel about social hierarchy (i.e...
Tomer D. Ullman
tomerullman@gmail.comMorris Kahn Associate Professor of Psychology
Tomer Ullman is a cognitive scientist interested in common-sense reasoning, and building computational models for explaining high-level cognitive processes and the acquisition of new knowledge by children and adults. In particular, he is focused on how...
John R. Weisz
john_weisz@harvard.eduHenry Ford II Research Professor
One in five children and adolescents will experience a mental health disorder in any given year, and many more struggle with serious mental health challenges. John Weisz’s research involves development and testing of interventions for these disorders and...
