Steven Neuberg

Steven L. Neuberg is an experimental social psychologist whose research has contributed to topics pertaining to person perception, impression formation, stereotyping, prejudice, self-fulfilling prophecies, stereotype threat, and prosocial behavior. His research can be broadly characterized as exploring the ways motives and goals shape social thought processes; extending this approach, his later work employs the adaptationist logic of evolutionary psychology to inform the study of social cognition and social behavior. Neuberg has published over fifty scholarly articles and chapters, and co-authored a multi-edition social psychology textbook with his colleagues Douglas Kenrick and Robert Cialdini.

Academic Career

Neuberg received his undergraduate degree in 1983 from Cornell University, majoring in Psychology; his undergraduate honors thesis, under the supervision of Thomas Gilovich, received the Thomas Arthur Ryan Undergraduate Research Award. He earned Ph.D. in 1987 from Carnegie-Mellon University, specializing in social psychology, under the supervision of Susan Fiske. After completing a NATO post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Waterloo, working with Mark Zanna, he joined the faculty at Arizona State University in 1988, where he is currently Professor of Psychology, and where he has won multiple teaching awards.

Neuberg is a Fellow of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology, Association for Psychological Science, Society for Personality and Social Psychology, and the American Psychological Association. He has been Associate Editor of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, and has served on multiple journal editiorial boards and federal grant panels.

Selected Publications

Neuberg, S. L., Kenrick, D. T., & Schaller, M. (2010). Evolutionary social psychology. In S. T. Fiske, D. Gilbert, & G. Lindzey (Eds.), Handbook of Social Psychology (5th ed., pp. 761-796). New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Shapiro, J. S., & Neuberg, S. L. (2007). From stereotype threat to stereotype threats: Implications of a multi-threat framework for causes, moderators, mediators, consequences, and interventions. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 11, 107-130.

Cottrell, C. A., Neuberg, S. L., & Li, N. P. (2007). What do people desire in others? A sociofunctional perspective on the importance of different valued characteristics. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 208-231.

Kurzban, R., & Neuberg, S. L. (2005). Managing ingroup and outgroup relationships. In D. Buss (Ed.), Handbook of evolutionary psychology (pp. 653-675). New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Cottrell, C. A., & Neuberg, S. L. (2005). Different Emotional Reactions to Different Groups: A Sociofunctional Threat-Based Approach to ‘Prejudice.’ Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 88, 770-789.

Neuberg, S. L., Smith, D. M., Asher, T. (2000). Why people stigmatize: Toward a biocultural framework. In T. Heatherton, R. Kleck, J. G. Hull, & M. Hebl (Eds.), The social psychology of stigma(pp. 31-61). New York: Guilford.

Neuberg, S. L., & Newsom, J. T. (1993). Personal Need for Structure: Individual differences in the desire for simple structure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 113-131.

Fiske, S. T., & Neuberg, S. L. (1990). A continuum of impression formation, from category-based to individuating processes: Influences of information and motivation on attention and interpretation. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 23, pp. 1-74). New York: Academic Press.

External Links

Steven L. Neuberg profile on the Social Psychology Network

Neuberg research laboratory at Arizona State University