David Amodio, Ph.D.
Professor of Social Psychology, University of Amsterdam
Dr. Amodio studies the psychological processes involved in prejudice, impression formation, and social cognition, with a focus on roles of learning and memory in how social biases are formed, expressed, regulated, and reduced. His current work examines the sociocognitive mechanisms through which prejudice is transmitted between individuals and society, as well as the role of AI in propagating human social biases.
Amodio is a Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Amsterdam, an appointment he began in 2017 and held part-time between 2018 and 2021. Prior to returning to Amsterdam fulltime in 2022, he worked at New York University from 2005 to 2021, serving as coordinator of the NYU Social Psychology program from 2013 to 2016.
Amodio served as President of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology, was a co-founder of the Social and Affective Neuroscience Society, and served as Associate Editor for the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (2011-2016). He is an elected fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, Society for Personality and Social Psychology, and Society of Experimental Social Psychology.
Amodio’s research has been funded by the US National Science Foundation and the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research. His scientific contributions have been recognized by the Career Trajectory Award from the Society for Experimental Social Psychology, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) from The White House, the Janet T. Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions from the Association for Psychological Science, the Early Career Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Study of Social Cognition from the International Social Cognition Network, the F. J. McGuigan Young Investigator Prize from the American Psychological Association, the SAGE Young Scholars Award, from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, and the Gordon Allport Intergroup Relations Prize from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues.
Iris Traast
Doctoral Student
Iris is interested in the neural and cognitive mechanisms underlying social behavior. She uses computational, neuroimaging, and behavioral methods to research the formation and reduction of implicit prejudice.
Martin Baars
Research MA student, University of Leuven
Martin is studying the effects of fact-checking on explicit and implicit prejudices and intergroup behaviors. Does knowing that information is false matter to how we think about, and interact with, other people?
Avanti Vijay
Research Masters Student, UvA
Avanti is studying the learning processes through which explicit stereotype knowledge transforms into implicit prejudice and how this effect can be prevented.