Avi is a senior lecturer in psychology at the School of Social Sciences and Professions
Avi Ben-Zeev
Avi Ben-Zeev is a Senior Lecturer in psychology. He received a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from Yale University and has been faculty at Brown, Williams College, and San Francisco State University, reaching a full Professorship. Avi has authored and edited nonfiction books, including Complex Cognition, the Psychology of Human Thought (Oxford University Press). His anthology, Trans Homo … Gasp! Gay FTM and Cis Men on Sex and Love was a Lambda Award Finalist. He’s also the author of high-impact research publications in top-tier journals, such as Psychological Science, and an invited speaker and Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) facilitator at leading academic and workplace settings (e.g., The George Lucas Educational Foundation).
A Cognitive Psychology Yale PhD, Avi loves teaching modules on the nature of the mind with implications for social justice. He is a fan of teaching what most students dread: Research Methods. Many, including himself, have been brought up to believe that they do not have the intellectual skills to contend with statistics (Avi grew up in a working-class neighborhood in the Middle East.) His philosophy: Learning and mastering research methods is empowering and political for all students, especially those from underrepresented backgrounds.
Dr. Ben-Zeev’s scholarship centers on uncovering and combatting social contextual factors (e.g, stereotype threat, microaggressions, and implicit bias) which have been documented to cause minoritized groups in academic and workplace environments (women, individuals from working-class backgrounds, and minoritized ethnic groups) to underperform intellectually and become susceptible to attrition and early exit.
Recently, Dr. Ben-Zeev and his team published the Speaking Truth to EmPower (STEP) intervention, which takes a novel approach by explicating the effects of structural ‘isms’ while harnessing underrepresented individuals’ lived experiences for turning intellectual threat into challenge and resilience. This intervention was funded by SF BUILD, an > $17 million NIH grant (awarded to Drs. Leticia Marquez-Magana and Avi Ben-Zeev, San Francisco State University multiple-PIs, in 2014).
Selected peer-reviewed publications
Ben-Zeev, A. (2023). Cold and Hot Cognition: How Jesmyn Ward Cultivates Moral Imagination in Men We Reaped. PsyArt, 27, 101-123.
Derreumaux, Y., ... & Ben-Zeev, A. (2023). Stereotypes Disrupt Probabilistic Category Learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.
Seliger, J., & Ben-Zeev, A. (2020). Race is Still Black and White: Voluntary Racial Phenotypic Change Elicits Meaning Threat and Backlash. International Journal of Psychological Studies, 12, 1-18.
Estrada, M., Young, G., Nagy, J., Goldstein, E. J., Ben-Zeev, A., Márquez-Magaña, L. & Eroy-Reveles, A. (2019). The Influence of Micro Affirmations on Undergraduate Persistence in Science Career Pathways. CBE: Life Sciences Education, 18, 1-15.
Ben-Zeev, A., Paluy, Y., Milless, K. L., Goldstein, E. J., Wallace, L., Márquez-Magaña, L., Bibbins-Domingo, K., & Estrada, M. (2017). ‘Speaking Truth’ Protects Underrepresented Minorities’ Intellectual Performance and Safety in STEM. Education Sciences, 65, 1-12.
Oliver, A, Andemeskel, G., Wallace, L., McDougal, S., Monteiro, K., & Ben-Zeev, A., (2017). “I’m Black and I’m Proud”: Stereotype Threat Impacts Affective Aspects of Black Identity. Race and Social Problems, 9, 313–320.
Estrada, M., Eroy-Reveles, A., Ben-Zeev, A., Baird, T., Domingo, C., Gomez, C., Bibbins-Domingo, K., Parangan-Smith, A., & Márquez-Magaña, L. (2017). Enabling full representation in science: the San Francisco BUILD project’s agents of change affirm science skills, belonging and community. BMC Proceedings, 11(Suppl 12):25.
Ben-Zeev, A. (2016). Straight Femme to Gay Man: A Feminist Transguy’s Journey Home. In M. E. Brown (Ed.), A Herstory of Transmasculine Identities. Trenton, NJ: Boundless Endeavors, Inc.
Ben-Zeev, A. & Dennehy, T. C. (2014). When boys wear pink: Gendered color cue violations evoke
risk taking. Psychology of Men and Masculinity, 15, 486-489.
Ben-Zeev, A., Dennehy, T. C., Goodrich, R. I., Kolarik, B. S., & Geisler. M. W. (2014). When an “educated” Black man becomes lighter in the mind’s eye: Evidence for a skin tone memory bias. SAGE Open, 4, 1-9.
Dennehy, T. C., Ben-Zeev, A., & Tanigawa, N. (2014). “Be prepared!”: A mindset for alleviating social identity threat. British Journal of Social Psychology, British journal of social psychology, 53, 585-594.
Ben-Zeev, A., Scharnetzki, L., Chan, L. & Dennehy, T. C. (2012). Hyper-masculinity in the media: When men “walk into the fog” to avoid affective communication. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 1, 53-61.
Ben-Zeev, A. & Kirtman, N. (2012). Stereotype threat beyond the laboratory: Do single sex colleges signal a safety in the air? In B. O. Hunter & T. J. Romero (Eds.), Psychology of Threat. Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science.
Morsella, E., & Ben-Zeev, A. (2012). Cognition and action in the social world. In S. T. Fiske & C. N. Macrae (Eds.), Sage handbook of social cognition (278-294). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Ben-Zeev, A., Dennehy, T. C., Sackman, R., Olides, A., & Berger, C. C. (2011). Flirting with threat: Social identity and the perils of the female communality prescription. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47, 1308-1311.
Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) trainer/consultant
Ben-Zeev, A. (2023*, November). Speaking Actionable Truth to Stereotype Threat and Microaggressions. *Invited workshop to-be-delivered in June, 2023, for the George Lucas Educational Foundation. Marin, CA.
Ben-Zeev, A. (2022, November). Speaking Actionable Truth to Diversification (Part 2). Invited workshop, Skywalker Ranch (writer and producer George Lucas’s movie ranch/workplace), Nicasio, CA.
Ben-Zeev, A. (2021, October). Speaking Truth to Stereotype Threat. Invited workshop, Woodland College, Woodland, CA.
Ben-Zeev, A. (2021, August). Speaking Actionable Truth to Diversification (Part 1). Invited workshop, Skywalker Ranch (writer and producer George Lucas’s movie ranch/workplace), Nicasio, CA.
Ben-Zeev, A. (2020, October). Causal deviants. Social, Personality and Affective Science and Mind, Brain and Behavior Brownbag. San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA.
Ben-Zeev, A. (2017, November). Speaking Truth to Empower: An Interactive Workshop for Combatting Stereotype Threat Effects. Foothill College, Los Altos, CA.
Ben-Zeev, A. & Wallace, L. (2017, March). Does a Speaking Truth Intervention Pose a Threat to Majority Groups in STEM? RaSCL Lab, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA.
Ben-Zeev, A. (2017, February). Speaking Truth: An intervention to mitigate stereotype threat in STEM. University of California at Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA.
Ben-Zeev, A., & Marquez-Magana, L. (2016, April). Stereotype Threat in STEM: Knowledge is Power! Programs to increase Diversity among Individuals Engaged in Health-Related Research (PRIDE), supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) /National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), Bethesda, MD.
Recognition and Media Coverage
2023 Short Story Winner, The Prose Purple Transgender Writing Competition, UK.
2016 Filmed for Bob Greenberg’s The Brainwaves Video Anthology, which includes world-renowned scholars such as, Noam Chomsky, Howard Gardner, Sir Ken Robinson, and Jerome Bruner (March, 2016).
2016 Research on stereotype threat was selected for the Women and Public Policy Program's Gender Action Portal (GAP) at Harvard University (gap.hks.harvard.edu). GAP serves as a resource for “helping translate research into action and take successful interventions to scale.” The selection process was highly rigorous.
2014 Press release and interviews (e.g. The Times) for discovery of skin tone memory bias.