People


Director

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Kurt Gray

is a Professor at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an expert in how to study 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

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Emily Kubin

Studies how people (and the media) can reduce negative perceptions of political opponents--focusing on interventions to bridge political divides.

Email

 

Graduate Students

Sam Abrams

is a 4th-year student who studies how intuitive religious beliefs shape our understanding of the natural world, and consequently our moral judgments of innovative science and health technologies.

Twitter

Connor O’Fallon

is a 5th-year student who studies perceived morality and how similar situations are construed differently by people especially as it relates to the growing political divide in America.

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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.

Email | Personal Website


Lab Manager

Sam Pratt

studies the dynamics of moral outrage as well as strategies to foster mutual understanding across moral divides.

Email | Twitter | Personal Website

 

Undergraduate Research Assistants

Francisco Ceccotti

Marcella Kingman

Fatima Alanis

Ben Bramson

 

Former Undergraduate Research Assistants

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

Lab Alumni

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)