Giuliana Spadaro

Giuliana Spadaro is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Behavioural and Movement Sciences (Social Psychology Department) and holds affiliated roles at the IBBA and the Amsterdam Sustainability Institute at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her research focuses on social psychology topics such as cooperation in social dilemmas, conspiracy theories, and meta-analytic methods. She has received notable awards including the APS Rising Star Award (2024) and the NWO Open Science Fund (2023), reflecting her contributions to open science and behavioral research. Her work bridges interdisciplinary themes like AI ethics, environmental psychology, and cross-cultural studies.

Spadaro’s research interests are driven by UN Sustainable Development Goals related to sustainable communities and responsible consumption. She has contributed to over 25 peer-reviewed publications, including influential studies on artificial intelligence distrust, institutional trust dynamics, and automated hypothesis generation in cooperation research. Her editorial roles include co-editing Journal of Experimental Social Psychology and reviewing for journals like PLoS ONE and Cognition.

Key achievements include developing the Cooperation Databank for accelerating research synthesis and advancing machine learning applications in behavioral science. She has supervised one PhD thesis and teaches courses like Advanced Research Methods. Her grants include collaborative projects on open science and institutional trust mechanisms.