Meet the Team | NYU SPAM Lab

Our Team

Lab Director

Emily Balcetis, PhD

Over the last 20 years, Emily has become one of the most sought-after voices on motivation science, researching the factors that contribute to differences in judgments and behaviors among individuals. She delivers lectures, offers training and keynoting hundreds of programs and events at secondary schools, colleges, universities, community organizations, and corporations on the social, cognitive, and motivational mechanisms that lead impact obstacles and successes as people pursue their goals. She is also a frequent commentator on media, blogs, and podcasts, delivering a voice filled with knowledge and respect for the varied challenges people face.

View Emily's CV

Provost's Postdoctoral Fellow

Jordan S. Daley, PhD

Jordan received his PhD in social psychology from Northwestern University, where he was a member of the Social Cognition Lab. Jordan joins the SPAM Lab as a provost's postdoctoral fellow as of fall 2023. He studies biases related to and at the intersection of social cognition, social attitudes, person-person, and intergroup relations. He uses innovative methods to go beyond the identification of bias to reveal the constructs that relate to and the mechanisms that drive psychological biases that are relevant to real-world, lived experience. In his free time, Jordan spends a lot of time following sports, listening to the latest music, and hanging out with his friends, family, and dog.

View Jordan's CV

Graduate Students

Nallely De La Rosa

PhD Candidate

Nallely De La Rosa is a third-year Ph.D. student in the Social Psychology Program at New York University. She broadly researches topics in social perception and motivation. More specifically, her current work examines how stereotypes and intra-minority dynamics shape belonging and leadership opportunities for people of color. Combining experimental methods, surveys, and computational text analysis, she aims to produce research that centers historically excluded communities, examining experiences across the lifespan from adolescence to adulthood. Explore Nallely's work and access her CV on her GitHub page.

Jenna is a doctoral candidate in the social psychology program at NYU. She received her B.S. in human development (Department of Psychology) from Cornell University. Jenna is interested in how we generate inferences about others’ intentions by observing their behavior, and how these inferences are biased by our motivations, expectations, social relationships, and obligations. She is interested in how these inferences translate to judgment and action in domains including law, social justice, decision theory, and organizational behavior. In her spare time, you might find Jenna figure skating at an ice rink, watching stand-up at a comedy club, or searching for the best cannoli in NYC.

View Jenna's CV

Jenna Landy

PhD Candidate

Graduate Students

Ma Xiao

PhD Candidate

Ma Xiao (Ma-sh-iao) is a third-year doctoral student in the social psychology program at NYU. In 2019 received his BA in psychology and statistics from Carleton College in Minnesota. After graduation, he conducted clinical research as a post-graduate associate at Yale Psychiatry, OCD Research Clinic. His research interests focus on how factors affecting motivation and self-control processes across construal levels. He also wants to investigate motivational research in interpersonal settings to help facilitate growth and bridge performance gaps in minority students. For example, what factors change perception of “leaders” and “the successful” in minority students?

View Ma Xiao's CV here