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shir gnazer

Shir Genzer

PhD Student
shir.genzer@mail.huji.ac.il

 

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I am a student in the direct PhD program in Psychology at the Hebrew University, interested in the mechanisms that enable our understanding of others' emotions and feelings. Specifically, I investigate how different information channels (visual, auditory) contribute differentially to cognitive and affective empathy in neurotypical and autistic individuals.  In my research, I combine behavioral, psychophysiology and EEG methods as well as advanced statistical methods (e.g., mixed model analysis, Bayesian modeling analysis). I am also involved in projects investigating the effects of sleep disturbances on perception and behavior.

 

Publications:

  • Ben Adiva, Yoad., Genzer, S., & Perry, A. (in press). Vicarious pain experience and its relation to empathic processes.

     

    Inbar, M., Genzer, S., Perry, A., Grossman, E., & Landau, A. N. (2023). Intonation Units in spontaneous speech evoke a neural response. The Journal of Neuroscience, 43(48), JN-RM-0235-23. https://doi.org/10.1523/jneurosci.0235-23.2023

     

    Jospe, K., Genzer, S., Manson, L., Ong, D., Zaki, J., Soroker, N., & Perry, A. (2022). Impaired empathic accuracy following damage to the left hemisphere. Biological Psychology, 172, 108380. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2022.108380

     

    Choshen-Hillel, S., Sadras, I., Gordon-Hecker, T., Genzer, S., Rekhtman, D., Caruso, E. M., Clements, K. L., Ohler, A., Gozal, D., Israel, S., Perry, A., & Gileles-Hillel, A. (2022). Nightshift bias in pain management: Physicians in the emergency department experience less empathy for patients' pain and prescribe fewer analgesics during nightshifts. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 119(27). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2200047119

     

    Genzer, S., Ong, D. C., Zaki, J., & Perry, A. (2022). Mu rhythm suppression over sensorimotor regions is associated with greater empathic accuracy. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 17(9), 788-801. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsac011

     

    Rum, Y., Genzer, S., Perry, A., Markovitch, N., Jenkins, J., & Knafo-Noam, A. (2022). Are there positive effects of having a sibling with a disability? The development of empathy in children. Child Development, 93(4), 1121-1128. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13740

     

    Mandelkorn, U.,* Genzer, S.,* Choshen-Hillel, S., Reiter, J., Meira e Cruz, M., Hochner, H., Kheirandish-Gozal, L., Gozal, D., & Gileles-Hillel, A. (2020). Escalation of sleep disturbances amid the COVID-19 pandemic: A cross-sectional international study. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 17(1), 45-53. https://doi.org/10.5664/jcsm.8800

    *Contributed equally

     

    Jospe, K., Genzer, S., Klein Selle, N., Ong, D., Zaki, J., & Perry, A. (2020). The contribution of linguistic and visual cues to physiological synchrony and empathic accuracy. Cortex, 132, 296-308.‏ https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2020.09.001

      
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Yoad Ben-Adiva

Yoad Ben-Adiva

MA Student
Yoad.benadiva@mail.huji.ac.il

 

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I'm a MA student in the applied neuropsychology program. My current thesis research regards the relationship between individual differences in physical pain sharing and affective state sharing. My main research interest is the relationship between different components of empathic and prosocial processes.

 

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Naama Agari

Naama
Naama
Agari
MA Student
naama.agari@mail.huji.ac.il

 

I completed my BA in Psychology and Cognitive Sciences at the Hebrew university of Jerusalem. Currently I am a Master’s student in the experimental Psychology track under the supervision of Dr. Anat Perry. My research interests are the connection between empathic accuracy and physiological measures, specifically within people with depression, and the relation between eye-gaze to the ability to empathise and understand others.

 

Alumni

Noam Markovitch, PhD

Dr. Noam Markovitch
Noam
Markovitch, PhD
Postdoctoral Researcher
noam.markovitch@mail.huji.ac.il

 

I’m interested in understanding what drives human behavior in real-world ambiguous situations that are highly consequential for the individual. Possible factors are either personal, or situational factors. In my PhD, I approached this topic from the perspective of the “person”, trying to understand whether there are personal characteristics that predict greater susceptibility to environmental influences. However, I found that the effects of the environment are very context-specific, so it may be misleading to discuss broad personal characteristics as main causes for differential environmental effects. As a result, in my postdoctoral research, I chose to shift my focus to a specific context (or environment) that has important repercussions, that of ambivalent and ambiguous sexual interactions. I am interested in understanding how basic psychological processes are operating within sexual interactions and can lead to a negative experience. As a first step, I am studying whether and why we misinterpret social cues in high (sexual) arousal states. In the future I hope to also study when and why certain people knowingly decide to participate in sexual relations even though they don’t want to.
I completed my PhD in the Social Development Lab with Prof. Ariel Knafo-Noam at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and received the Wiener awards for an outstanding dissertation. I am currently working on my postdoctoral research with Dr. Anat Perry (the Social Cognitive Neuroscience Lab) and Dr. Tali Kleiman (the Social Cognition Lab) at the Hebrew University as well. 

 

Selected recent publications:

  • Markovitch, N., Kirkpatrick, R. M., & Knafo-Noam, A. (2021). Are Different Individuals Sensitive to Different Environments? Individual Differences in Sensitivity to the Effects of the Parent, Peer and School Environment on Externalizing Behavior and its Genetic and Environmental Etiology. Behavior Genetics, 51, 492–511. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1007/s10519-021-10075-7
  • Markovitch, N., & Knafo-Noam, A. (2021). Sensitivity, but to Which Environment? Individual Differences in Sensitivity to Parents and Peers Show Domain-Specific Patterns and a Negative Genetic Correlation. Developmental Science, 00(e13136), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13136

Media coverage: 

  • Interview on my research as part of ”The best scientific discoveries of 2021” show on Galei Zahal (2021). Can be heard here.

 

Alumni

Michal Lehmann, PhD

Dr. Michal Lehmann
Michal
Lehmann, PhD
Postdoctoral Researcher
michal.lehmann@mail.huji.ac.il

 

I study the causes, outcomes, and boundary conditions of virtues, specifically in the workplace.
A unique focus of my research is on how humility increases the objective understanding of
people from diverse backgrounds.
In my Ph.D. (with Prof. Avi Kluger in the School of Business Administration at HUJI), I focused
on humility among team members and how the humble behavior of one team member
contributes to other team members’ psychological safety and performance. Furthermore, I
explored interventions to increase humility, using different paradigms of listening in the lab and
in the field.
In my postdoctoral research with Prof. Anat Perry, I test whether intellectually humble people
are more empathically accurate in general and even more so towards people from an outgroup or
people with disabilities.
 

Selected publications:

  • Lehmann, M., Pery, S., Kluger, A. N., Hekman, D. R., Owens B. P., & Malloy T. E., (2022) Relationship-specific (dyadic) Humility: How Your Humility Predicts my Psychological Safety and Performance. Journal of Applied Psychology. Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/apl0001059
  • Lehmann, M., Kluger, A. N., & Van Tongeren, D. R. (2021). Am I arrogant? Listen to Me and We Will Both Become More Humble. The Journal of Positive Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2021.2006761

 

Alumni

Dana Leshem

Dana Leshem
Dana
Leshem
MA Student
dana.leshem1@mail.huji.ac.il

 

I am Dana Leshem, a B.Sc. student of Psychology and Cognitive Sciences at the Hebrew University. This is the second year I have been working as a research assistant in the lab. I am interested in learning more about empathy and its underlying brain mechanisms. Now, I am leading an EEG experiment examining neural evidence for empathy for groups of different sizes.

 

Alumni

Tom Gordon, PhD

Tom Gordon, PhD
Tom
Gordon, PhD
Post doc

 

I am post-doctoral research in the lab, under joint mentorship of Dr. Anat Perry and Dr. Shoham Choshen-Hillel. In my current work I examine how empathy is affected by contextual aspects, such as impaired sleep and the number of people towards which the empathy is directed. I completed my MA and PhD at Ben-Gurion University under joint supervision of Prof. Yoella Bereby-Meyer from Ben-Gurion University and Prof. Shaul Shalvi from the University of Amsterdam. During my doctoral studies I focused on conflicts between equity and efficiency in resource allocation dilemmas, and developed the idea that people are not averse to inequity, but rather to the personal responsibility of determining how inequity is implemented (i.e., who gets what). Additionally, I am interested in behavioral ethics, moral psychology, and employment of process-tracing techniques as an unobtrusive way to measure thinking processes underlying people's decisions. Publications:
  • Gordon-Hecker, T., Schneider, I., Shalvi, S., & Bereby-Meyer, Y. (In press). When Do People Experience an Equity-Efficiency Conflict? Journal of Behavioral Decision Making.
  • Gordon-Hecker, T., Pittarello, A., Shalvi, S., & Roskes, M. (2020). Buy-One-Get-One-Free Deals Attract More Attention than Percentage Deals. Journal of Business Research, 111, 128-134.
  • Leib, M., Pittarello, A., Gordon-Hecker, T., Shalvi, S., & Roskes, M. (2019). Loss framing increases self-serving mistakes (but does not alter attention). Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 85, 103880.
  • Gordon-Hecker, T., Rosensaft-Eshel, D., Pittarello, A., Shalvi, S., & Bereby-Meyer, Y. (2017). Not Taking Responsibility: Equity trumps efficiency in allocation decisions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 146(6), 771-775.
  • Gordon-Hecker, T., Choshen-Hillel, S., Shalvi, S., & Bereby-Meyer, Y. (2017) Resource Allocation Decisions: When do we sacrifice efficiency in the name of equity?. In Li, M., & Tracer, D. (Eds.), Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Fairness, Equity and Justice (pp. 93-105). New York. NY: Springer
  • Pittarello, A., Leib, M., Gordon-Hecker, T., & Shalvi, S. (2015). Justification creates ethical blind spots and increase dishonesty. Psychological science. 26(6), 794-804.

 

Alumni

Shai Shachar

Shai Shachar
Shai
Shachar
MA Student
Shai.shacher@mail.huji.ac.il

 

I am currently a psychologist and organizational consultant at a large organization. During my third year of B.Sc studies in psychobiology, I entered the M.A. fast-track program in experimental psychology. As part of the program I completed an M.A. thesis under the supervision of prof. Anat Perry and prof. Shoham Choshen-hillel. I was interested in the psychological experience of agency, and I wrote my thesis about the impact of this experience on economic decisions.

 

Publications: 

Sehtman-Shachar, S., Billig, P. C., Stein, A., & Kaplan, S. (2024). The immediate effects of vision-zero corridor upgrades on pedestrian crashes in New York: a before-and-after spatial point process approach. Accident Analysis & Prevention, 200, 107531

 

 

 

 

Alumni

Yonat Rum, PhD

Yonat Rum
Yonat
Rum, PhD
Postdoctoral Researcher
yonat.rum@mail.huji.ac.il

I am a Post-Doctoral student in the lab, under a joint mentorship of Dr. Anat Perry and Professor Ariel Knafo-Noam, Director of the Social Development Laboratory. I study empathy development and sibling relationship in the context of disability. A unique focus of my research is on positive aspects of development, such as the strengths and abilities of children with special needs and their families and flourishing in the context of disabilities. Specifically, I test the hypothesis according to which children who grow up with a sibling with a disability may show enhanced empathic abilities and greater empathic accuracy. My doctoral work focused on children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and their typically developing  iblings – was completed in the school of education at Tel Aviv University under the supervision of Professor Esther Dromi, and I was awarded the prestigious Azrieli fellowship. At HUJI, I joined the Autism Center, as my research will further include assessing empathic accuracy in the context of autism.

 

 

Alumni

Jacob Israelashvili, PhD

Jacob Israelashvili
Jacob
Israelashvili, PhD
Postdoctoral Researcher

 

Humans made it to the moon, but sometimes we still find it hard to reach out and understand the person standing next standing to us. To bridge this gap, my research examines the emphatic processes that antecedent understanding and caring for others, building on my background in Psychology and Mathematics (B.A.). I completed my PhD in Social Psychology at Tel Aviv University with Prof. Rachel Karniol, then spent three years as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Amsterdam working with Prof. Agneta Fischer and Prof. Disa Sauter as part of the Social Psychology Department. Currently, I work with Dr. Anat Perry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as part of the Social Cognitive Neuroscience Lab. In my studies, I developed the idea of empathy as a result of shared experiences. My goal is to understand the strength as well as the weakness of shared experiences in the emergence of empathy, with an eye toward developing interventions that help people to care more and understand better.   

 

Publications:
  • Israelashvili, J., Sauter D., & Fischer, A. (2020) Different faces of empathy: Feelings of similarity disrupt recognition of negative emotions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2019.103912
  • Israelashvili, J., Sauter D.,& Fischer, A. (2020) Two facets of affective empathy: Concern and distress have opposite relationships to emotion recognition. Cognition and Emotion. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2020.1724893
  • Israelashvili, J., Sauter D., & Fischer, A. (2019) How well can we assess our ability to understand others’ feelings? Beliefs about taking others’ perspectives and actual understanding of others’ emotions. Frontiers in Psychology. 10:2475.https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02475
  • Israelashvili, J., Oosterwijk S., Sauter D. & Fischer, A., (2019) Knowing me, knowing you: Emotion differentiation in oneself is associated with recognition of others’ emotions. Cognition and Emotion. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2019.1577221
  • Israelashvili, J., Hassin R., & Aviezer, H. (2018) When emotions run high: A critical role for context in the dynamic unfolding of real-life intense facial affect. Emotion. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/emo0000441
  • Israelashvili, J., & Karniol, R. (2018) Testing Alternative Models of Dispositional Empathy: The Affect-to-Cognition (ACM) versus the Cognition-to-Affect (CAM) Model. Personality and Individual Differences, 121, 161-169. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.09.036
Alumni

Noam Mairon

noam_roth
Noam
Mairon
PhD Student
noam.roth@mail.huji.ac.il

 

I am broadly interested in the underlying mechanisms that enable social cognition in humans. More specifically, I am intrigued by self and other differentiation that lie in the basis of empathic perception, in the abilities to understand or to feel as the other. To this end, I currently develop a study that aims to examine the relationship between Executive Functions (EF) and Empathy. In particular, I am interested in finding efficient and informative ways to capture an in-depth understanding of these inter-relations to better understand how empathic behavior, as well as cognitive resources, interact to influence how human act in different social situations. My additional focus of interest is in assessing the dynamics and stability over time of various social cognitive processes under natural (as opposed to laboratory) settings. A long-term goal of mine is to establish assessment tools that can, on the one hand, help identify the specific brain circuits involved in social cognition deficiencies and, on the other hand, facilitate treating clinical patients suffering from those deficiencies.

 

Alumni

Karine Jospe, PhD

dr._karine_jospe
Karine
Jospe, PhD
Post doc
karine.jospe@mail.huji.ac.il

I completed my BA at the Open University and my MA and PhD at Bar Ilan University. My PhD was supervised by Prof. Michal Lavidor and I focused on the affects of manipulating the Action-Observation Network and its relationship with empathy. Currently, I am doing my postdoctural research at Dr. Anat Perry's Lab focusing on empathic accuracy in healthy individuals and lesion patients.

 

Alumni