Contact Information
Phone: 804-827-1709
Office: 820 W Franklin, rm 107
E-mail: jjoygaba@vcu.edu
Web site: Dr. Joy-Gaba's web site
Research Interests
My research interests span both cognitive and social psychology by examining how automatic processes influence thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. My main line of research focuses on the consequences of implicit cognition on social and perceptual judgments, as well the factors that influence implicit cognition malleability and change. In several of my projects I am examining the basic mechanisms that contribute to situational or long-term shifts in automatic racial biases, and interventions in real-world settings that apply that learning. For example, one project investigates the impact of educating physicians about their automatic racial biases to see if that knowledge mitigates the effects of implicit bias in predicting racial health disparities in treatment. My secondary line of research focuses on examining whether social factors, like explicit preference, influence visual perception.
Selected Publications
Lee, C., Linkenauger, S. A., Bakdash, J. Z., Joy-Gaba, J. A., & Proffitt, D. R. (in press). Putting like a pro: The role of positive contagion in golf. PLoS ONE.
Joy-Gaba, J. A., & Nosek, B. A. (2010). The surprisingly limited malleability of implicit race evaluations. Social Psychology, 41, 137-146.
Nosek, B. A., Graham, J., Lindner, N. M., Kesebir, S., Hawkins, C. B., Hahn, C., Schmidt, K., Motyl, M., Joy-Gaba, J. A., Frazier, R., & Tenney, E. R. (2010). Cumulative and career-stage impact of social-personality psychology programs and their members. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36, 1283-1300.
Ranganath (Ratliff), K. A., Spellman, B. A., & Joy-Gaba, J. A. (2010). Cognitive “Category-Based Induction” research and social “Persuasion” research are each about what makes arguments believable: A tale of two literatures. Perspectives in Psychological Science, 5, 115-122.
Recent Courses Taught at VCU
- Learning and Cognition, undergraduate level
- Experimental Methods, undergraduate level
Recent Award
- University of Virginia, Distinguished Teaching Fellowship, 2011

