
Max Weisbuch
- Media Contact
- SPN Mentor
I study social perception and social influence. My research has been guided by the idea that social perception processes play a key role in conformity, socialization, and persuasion. After all, it is only through perceptual processes that I encounter other people, and it is only through such social perception that I can be influenced by other people. With this in mind, the research in my lab currently focuses on two broad topics. First, nonverbal behavior seems to be privileged in social perception. People are extremely sensitive to others' nonverbal behavior and process it in the absence of intention or awareness. My colleagues, students, and I continue to examine how the perception of nonverbal behavior can influence everything from implicit race biases to subjective social norms. Second, emotional (affective) responses to other people sometimes precede conscious perception. My colleagues, students, and I have examined the antecedents and consequences of these fast affective responses. We have found that even when people cannot see or recall affective cues, these cues can influence self-esteem, cardiovascular responses, the processing of persuasive messages, and more.
In general, I'm interested in characterizing the extremely early stages of social thinking and examining how they contribute to social problems and solutions. For more information, please visit:
http://www.du.edu/psychology/people/weisbuch.htm
Primary Interests:
- Emotion, Mood, Affect
- Intergroup Relations
- Nonverbal Behavior
- Organizational Behavior
- Person Perception
- Persuasion, Social Influence
- Prejudice and Stereotyping
Research Group or Laboratory:
Journal Articles:
- Weisbuch, M., & Ambady, N. (2009). Unspoken cultural influence: Exposure to and influence of nonverbal bias. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96, 1104-1119.
- Weisbuch, M., & Ambady, N. (2008). Affective divergence: Automatic responses to others’ emotions depend on group membership. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 1063-1079.
- Weisbuch, M., & Ambady, N. (2008). Non-conscious routes to building culture: Nonverbal components of socialization. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 15, 159-183.
- Weisbuch, M., Ambady, N., Clarke, A. L., Achor, S., & Veenstra-VanderWeele, J. (2010). On being consistent: The role of verbal-nonverbal consistency in first impressions. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 32, 261-268.
- Weisbuch, M., Ivcevic, Z., & Ambady, N. (2009). On being liked on the web and in the “real world”: Consistency in first impressions across personal webpages and spontaneous behavior. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 573-576.
- Weisbuch, M., & Mackie, D. M. (2009). False fame, perceptual clarity, or persuasion? Flexible fluency attribution in spokesperson familiarity effects. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 19, 62-72.
- Weisbuch, M., Mackie, D. M., & Garcia-Marques, T. (2003). Prior source exposure and persuasion: Further evidence for misattributional processes. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29, 691-700.
- Weisbuch, M., Pauker, K., & Ambady, N. (2009). The subtle transmission of race bias via televised nonverbal behavior. Science, 326, 1711-1714.
- Weisbuch, M., & Pauker, K. B. (in press). The nonverbal transmission of intergroup bias: A model of bias contagion with implications for social policy. Social Issues and Policy Review.
- Weisbuch, M., Sinclair, S. L., Skorinko, J., & Eccleston, C. P. (2009). Self-esteem depends on the beholder: Effects of a subtle social value cue. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 143-148.
- Weisbuch, M., Slepian, M. L., Ambady, N., & Jimerson, D. C. (2010). Emotion contagion moderates the relationship between emotionally-negative families and eating behavior. International Journal of Eating Disorders.
- Weisbuch, M., Slepian, M. L., Clarke, A., Ambady, N., & Veenstra-Vander Weele, J. (2010). Behavioral stability across time and situations: Nonverbal versus verbal consistency. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 34, 43-56.
- Weisbuch-Remington, M., Mendes, W. B., Seery, M. D., & Blascovich, J. (2005). The non-conscious influence of religious symbols in motivated performance situations. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31, 1203-1216.
Other Publications:
- Ambady, N., & Weisbuch, M. (2010). Nonverbal behavior. In D. T. Gilbert, S. T. Fiske, & G. Lindzey (Eds.), Handbook of Social Psychology (5th ed., pp. 464-497). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons.
- Weisbuch, M., & Ambady, N. (2011). On perceiving facial expressions: The role of culture and context. In A. J. Calder, G. Rhodes, J. V. Haxby, & M. Johnson (Eds.), Oxford handbook of face perception (pp. 479-488). New York: Oxford University Press.
Courses Taught:
- Introduction to Psychology
- Introduction to Social Psychology
- Proseminar on Social Psychology
- Seminar on Social Perception
Max Weisbuch
Department of Psychology
University of Denver
2155 South Race Street
Denver, Colorado 80208
United States of America
- Phone: (617) 756-5954