Dr. Joshua Jackson

Biography

Joshua Conrad Jackson is an assistant professor of Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, where he teaches strategies processes negotiation. His research focuses on cultural evolution, with a special emphasis on how people's emotions intersect with moral psychology and religion to drive large-scale societal changes. Jackson is particularly interested in understanding how social psychology evolves as societies become larger, more diverse, and more interconnected due to globalization. His work addresses public policy issues that lie at the intersection of cultural evolution and psychology, aiming to underscore the connections between these fields. He has published significant papers discussing the influence of political leaders during the COVID-19 pandemic, the rise of populist leaders across Europe in the early 21st century, and the role of algorithms in contributing to political polarization and false beliefs. His research has appeared in prestigious journals such as Science, Nature Human Behavior, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Additionally, he has written for outlets like the Huffington Post and Scientific American. Jackson has received several accolades for his work, including the Sage Emerging Scholar Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology and the Dissertation Award from the Society for Experimental Social Psychology. Prior to his appointment at Booth, he was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, and has worked as a visiting scholar at the University of Melbourne and the Max Planck Institute for Human History. Jackson earned his PhD in social psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and holds a B.A. in Psychology and East Asian History from McGill University.

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