Jason Plaks

Jason Plaks is a Professor at the University of Toronto specializing in Social and Personality Psychology. His research bridges motivation, social cognition, and moral judgment, with a focus on topics including AI ethics, political ideology, and implicit theories of personality.

Key research areas include:

• Moral judgment processes in human-AI interactions
• Political psychology linking disgust sensitivity to conservatism
• Implicit theories of personality and their impact on cognition
• Neuroscientific analysis of moral and social processing

His work spans multiple subfields including behavioral ethics, cognitive neuroscience, and social cognition. The Motivation and Social Cognition Laboratory, which he leads, utilizes EEG technology to explore these phenomena.

Notable trends in his recent publications include interdisciplinary approaches to AI ethics, longitudinal studies of political orientation, and applications of implicit theory research to healthcare behavior in aging populations.

Professor Plaks maintains active research programs examining the interplay between personality traits and ideological positions, as well as the cognitive mechanisms underlying moral decision-making in both human and artificial contexts.