3rd lecture of the IQS-Harvard Talks series «Reference dependence in coalitions. How do we know to which groups we belong? How do we assign others to groups?» by Prof. Mina Cikara

The next IQS–Harvard Talks will have the honour of welcoming Professor Mina Cikara. She is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University and Director of the Harvard Intergroup Neuroscience Lab, where she is internationally recognized for her influential research on intergroup relations, empathy, and prejudice.

Her work explores how the mind and brain change when social perception shifts from “me and you” to “us and them,” integrating social psychology with cognitive and affective neuroscience to explain how group membership can disrupt empathy, foster dehumanization, and contribute to discrimination, conflict, and harm. Trained at Princeton University, where she earned her PhD in Psychology and Social Policy, and with postdoctoral training at MIT, Professor Cikara has built an outstanding scholarly career marked by methodological rigor and conceptual depth.

Her research has been widely published in leading journals such as Science, Nature Human Behaviour, and Psychological Science, and has significantly shaped contemporary understanding of phenomena including empathic failure, schadenfreude, and moral judgment across group boundaries. Her work has also reached broader audiences through major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the Science Channel.

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