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Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab

Department of Psychology
 

Dr Fatih Uenal

Fatih Uenal is a postdoctoral researcher at the Consumer Decision & Sustainable Behavior Lab in the Department of Psychology at the University of Geneva. He was previously a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab.

He received his PhD in social sciences from Humboldt University Berlin. His research is situated at the intersection of evolutionary, political, and social psychological theories. Prior to Cambridge, he has worked at the Sidanius lab at Harvard University on social dominance, prejudice, climate change, and prosociality. At Cambridge, he studies dominance motives in intergroup, environmental, and interspecies prosociality. In his work utilizes surveys, experimental methods, and Machine Learning techniques (e.g., Artificial Neural Networks).

Overall, his research aims at contributing to timely and urgent social and political issues through theoretically and methodologically rigorous analysis, advancing scientific theory and methodology. Equally importantly, he is interested in utilizing research to inform public policy and debate in the context of local and global challenges such as climate change with the goal of facilitating prosocial and pro-environmental behavior and collective action.

Social and ecological dominance motives
Racism, sexism, speciesism, anthropocentrism
Machine Learning and Behavioral Sciences

Biography

Academic Career

10/2019 – to present University of Cambridge (UK)
Visiting Postdoc at the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab. "Sharing = Caring? Behaviors benefitting nature, non-human animals, and humans at the intersection of hierarchy, empathy, and resource competition: A psychological and socio-ecological perspective on intraspecies, interspecies, and environmental prosociality across relational-domains."
https://www.sdmlab.psychol.cam.ac.uk/people

09/2018 – to present Harvard University (USA)
Associated Research Fellow at Sidanius Lab. "The resurgence of right-wing populism in the EU and the USA. Islamophobia, anti-immigration, social inequality, protest vote? An analysis of the social psychological underpinnings of support for populism and the role of contextual factors in cross-country comparison."
https://scholar.harvard.edu/fatih-uenal/home

09/2018 – 12/2019 Humboldt University Berlin (Germany)
Visiting Scholar at the Department of Psychology. "Intersectional Discrimination - Ethnic, racial, gender and class disparities in post-migrant Germany."

08/2016 – 08/2018 Harvard University (USA)
Post-doctoral Fellow at Sidanius Lab. "The resurgence of right-wing populism in the EU and the USA. Islamophobia, anti-immigration, social inequality, protest vote? An analysis of the social psychological underpinnings of support for populism and the role of contextual factors in cross-country comparison."
https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/sidaniuslab/people/fatih-uenal

03/2017 – 03/2019 Bielefeld University (Germany)
Associated Research Member. Collaboration with Harvard University: A cross-country validated Islamophobia Measure.

10/2015 – 03/2016 Istanbul Şehir University (Turkey)
Visiting researcher. Research-project “The social psychological mechanisms of conspiracy theories in contemporary Turkey.”

10/2013 – 03/2017 Humboldt University of Berlin (Germany)
Doctoral Student in the Discipline of Political Science. Research on “Islamophobia: Structure, Causes, and Consequences.” (summa cum laude)
Scholarship by the Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation

03/2013 – 10/2013 University of Bielefeld (Germany)
Doctoral Student in the Discipline of Psychology of Religion / Biographical Research in Contemporary Religion. Dissertation project: "Xenosophia and Xenophobia in Islam. Religiosity, Prejudice and Anomia under young Muslims in Germany. An Analyses from socio-psychological and psychology-of-religions Perspectives"

10/2003 – 07/2011 Free University of Berlin (Germany)
Middle Eastern Studies & Ethnomusicology (M.A.)
Focus on Democracy, Human Rights & Social Development in the MENA Region.
Scholarship by the Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation

Publications

Key publications: 
Fatih Uenal, Jim Sidanius, Jon Roozenbeek, and Sander van der Linden. Submitted. “Climate change threats increase modern racism as a function of social dominance orientation”.
 

 

Fatih Uenal, Jim Sidanius, and Sander van der Linden. Submitted. “The roots of ecological dominance orientation: Assessing individual preferences for an anthropocentric worldview”.

 
 
Fatih Uenal, Jim Sidanius, and Sander van der Linden. Forthcoming. “Social and ecological dominance orientations: Two sides of the same coin?”.
 
 
Uenal, F., Bergh, R., Sidanius, J., Zick, A., Kimel, S., & Kunst, J. R. (2021). The Nature of Islamophobia: A Test of a Tripartite View in Five Countries. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 47(2), 275–292.
 
 
Fatih Uenal. 2016. “Disentangling Islamophobia The Differential Effects of Symbolic, Realistic, and Terroristic Threat Perceptions as Mediators Between Social Dominance Orientation and Islamophobia.” Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 4, 1, Pp. 66-90.
 
 
Fatih Uenal. 2016. “Islamophobia & Anti-Semitism. Comparing the social psychological underpinnings of Anti-Semitic and Anti-Muslim Beliefs in Contemporary Germany.” Islamophobia Studies Journal, 3, 2, Pp. 35-55.

 

Fatih Uenal. 2016. “The “Secret Islamization” of Europe: Exploring Integrated Threat Theory for Predicting Islamophobic Conspiracy Stereotypes.” International Journal of Conflict and Violence, 10, 1, Pp. 93-108.

 

Fatih Uenal. Submitted. “Die geheime Islamisierung des Abendlandes: Großgruppenverschwörungstheorien als Nährboden von Fremdgruppendiskriminierung und Rechtspopulismus.”.

Contact Details

Email address: 
fu212@cam.ac.uk
University of Cambridge, Department of Psychology, Cambridge CB2 3EB
Cambridge
CB2 3EB
Harvard
Data Science for Social & Behavioral Scientific Research

Affiliations

Classifications: 
Graduates and Previous Lab Members

Study at Cambridge

About the University

Research at Cambridge