Marc Berman comes to us from the University of South Carolina where he was an Assistant Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience. He completed his post-doctoral training at the University of Toronto’s Rotman Research Institute after receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in psychology, specializing in cognition and cognitive neuroscience, and industrial and operations engineering. Berman, named a Rising Star by the American Psychological Society (APS) in 2013, joined the faculty this summer and is the director of the Environmental Neuroscience Lab. In his research, Berman looks at the relationship between individual psychological processing and environmental factors. He utilizes brain imaging, computational neuroscience and statistical models to quantify the person, the environment and their interactions.

Some of the findings from Berman's lab include showing that brief interactions with natural environments (such as a walk in a park) can improve memory and attention by 20%. In addition, he and his collaborators have shown that more efficient brain networks are linked to enhanced self-control throughout the lifespan. At the University of Chicago he hopes to advance this work to uncover the physical low-level features of nature (such as color and spatial properties) that lead to these improvements as well as other manipulations that may make the brain more efficient thereby improving self-control and other motivational factors. With a better understanding and quantification of the relationships between the human mind and the environment he hopes to aid in the design of physical environments in ways that will optimize human mental health, physical health and overall well-being. 

Jennifer Kubota comes to the University of Chicago from New York University where she completed a postdoctoral fellowship in social neuroscience after receiving her PhD from  the University of Colorado, Boulder. The aims of Kubota’s research are to explore the origins of prejudice and characterize reliable prejudice interventions. To achieve this goal, Kubota explores how our emotions, cognitions, and motivations influence our thoughts, feelings, and actions towards members of other social groups. Her work has advanced theory on how the brain processes race and how this influences intergroup relations.

Kubota's research is interdisciplinary, utilizing both innovate neuroscience (e.g. fMRI and EEG) and behavioral research methods (reaction time and self-report). For example, her research combines classic behavioral economic paradigms and computational tools to model intergroup decision-making. This approach allows researchers to better understand why and when discrimination occurs in everyday interactions and, importantly, provides insight into the mechanisms of prejudice and prejudice reduction. To explore the real-world consequences of these psychological and neurological intergroup processes, Kubota’s Social Justice Neuroscience and Psychology Lab conducts research both basic and applied research within the community. Ultimately, Kubota strives to translate empirical evidence into formulations that can shape and inform equality-based public policies.

Alex Shaw will begin his appointment in the Department in Summer 2015 after completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business. He received his PhD in developmental psychology from Yale University. Alex researches how children and adults navigate the complex social world by maintaining their own and tracking other people’s reputations—the behavioral strategies that people deploy to manipulate their public image, and counter-strategies that others use to see through such self-promotion.

His research to date has been primarily focused on why people have a concern with fairness, a desire for people to be paid equally for doing equal work. In this research line, Shaw has demonstrated that adults will waste resources in the name of fairness and that children will even throw resources in the trash in order to be fair. He argues that these results suggest that fairness is not really about creating an optimal distribution of resources, but instead that fairness concerns are really focused on avoiding the appearance of partiality—favoring someone based on a non-socially agreed upon rule. In favor of this hypothesis, Shaw demonstrates that adults and children will create unequal work for equal pay if they can do so using an impartial procedure. He hypothesizes that people are concerned about fairness because they see open displays of favoritism as threatening behaviors that can be used to form new alliances or engender undesirable subsequent favoritism.

Shaw’s investigations draw on theories from philosophy and behavioral economics as well as developmental, social, and evolutionary psychology to investigate the ways in which people modify their behavior to change how others see them. Shaw also has research on children’s developing intuitions about intellectual property, morality, resource conflict, gossip, and alliances (friendships).