Paul DiZio, Chair of the Psychology department, writes:
I am happy to announce that Jennifer Gutsell has accepted an offer for a faculty position in Psychology. Thanks to those of you who participated in the search. […]
In Jennifer, we sought and found an individual who takes a biological or neuroscience approach to social/development psychology. Jenifer got her PhD in Psychology at the University of Toronto and is currently doing a post-doc there. She studies neural mechanisms of human group formation and inter-group perception and attitudes. Her work has replicated and extended earlier reports that people accurately perceive the intentions and actions of others in the group they belong to but show less empathy for others outside their group, an effect which is greater in people who score higher on a scale of prejudice, and she also showed that the EEG mu rhythm, a non-invasive index of mirror system activation, is suppressed when people judge ingroup but not outgroup targets. Jennifer has cautiously interpreted this correlation between social empathy and neuromotor resonance, and one her first research aims at Brandeis will be conducting an experimental test of the direction of causality.
Jennifer will start at Brandeis in the fall, but will be available to meet with prospective grad students during recruiting. More about Jennifer’s research and publications can be found on her website at http://www.jennifergutsell.com/
