Dr Emily Balcetis is an Associate Professor of Psychology at New York University and a social psychologist of international renown. Her areas of specialty are perception, motivation, goal setting and decision-making. She is particularly interested in the conscious and non-conscious ways that we understand and respond to the world.

Dr Balcetis investigates motivational biases in visual and social perception and the consequences of these biases for our behavior and our navigation of the social world. One of her most notable studies found that the people who saw Barack Obama as lighter-skinned before the election were more likely to actually vote for him in the 2008 presidential election. Her work has also used eye-tracking to focus on unconscious biases in jurors.

Dr Balcetis is widely published in peer-reviewed journals, and she is the author of the book Clearer, Closer, Better: How Successful People See the World. Her awards include the Outstanding Early Career Award from the International Society for Self and Identity, and the SAGE Young Scholars Award from the Foundation for Personality and Social Psychology.