Jeff Greenberg
University of Arizona
Jeff Greenberg, Ph.D., is a Regents Professor of Psychology and a College of Science Fellow at the University of Arizona. As a small child growing up in the Bronx, he was very curious about the human propensities for vanity and prejudice. Jeff majored in psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, but it wasn’t until he took social psychology in his final semester that he found a field where people were asking questions about these propensities. Soon after starting a master’s program in social psychology at Southern Methodist University, he knew this was the field that would allow him to study and teach the topics of interest to him. After receiving his M.A., Jeff completed his Ph.D. at University of Kansas in 1982, under the mentorship of Jack Brehm.
He has since received numerous research and teaching awards, including an Outstanding Lifetime Career Award from the International Society for Self and Identity. His research has been funded by numerous grants from NSF, NIH, and The Templeton Foundation. His work has contributed to understanding self-serving biases, how motivation affects cognition, the effects of ethnic slurs, the role of self-awareness in depression, cognitive dissonance, existential isolation, and how concerns about death contribute to prejudice, self-esteem striving, and many other aspects of social behavior. Jeff is co-creator of terror management theory and has co-authored or co-edited seven books, including the textbook Social Psychology, The Science of Everyday Life, the edited volume, TheHandbook of Experimental Existential Psychology, andthetrade book, The Worm at the Core: Understanding the Role of Death in Life.