Steve Rathje

Steve Rathje

Psychology Postdoctoral Researcher

Biography

Steve studies social media, misinformation, political polarization, and intergroup conflict using methods from experimental psychology and computational social science.

Steve is a postdoctoral researcher at New York University in the Social Identity and Morality Lab. He received his PhD from the University of Cambridge (Trinity College), where was a Gates Cambridge Scholar and a member of the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab. Previously, he studied Psychology and Symbolic Systems at Stanford University.

He has published in journals such as the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Psychological Science, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Nature Communications, and the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. His research has been covered by outlets such as the New York Times, BBC, NBC, the Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, and the Freakonomics podcast.

He has received grants from the Russel Sage Foundation, the Center for the Science of Moral Understanding, the AE foundation, and Google. His thesis was awarded the Psychology of Technology Dissertation Fellowship.

Steve is also very interested in Science Communication, and has written articles for the Washington Post, the Guardian, the LA Times, Quartz, and Psychology Today. He also makes Science Communication TikToks under the name @stevepsychology (1.1+ million followers).

Download Steve’s CV.

You can contact Steve at srathje@alumni.stanford.edu.

To learn if you have shared fake news on Twitter, you can try out his web app “Have I Shared Fake News” here.

Interests
  • Political Psychology
  • Misinformation
  • Computational Social Science
  • Social Media
  • Psychology and the Arts
Education
  • PhD Psychology, 2022

    University of Cambridge

  • BA in Psychology, Minor in Symbolic Systems, 2018

    Stanford University

Recent Publications

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(2022). Psychological inoculation improves resilience against misinformation on social media. Science Advances.

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(2021). How social media shapes polarization. Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

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(2021). Why Facebook really, really doesn’t want to discourage extremism. Washington Post.

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(2021). How Can Psychological Science Help Counter the Spread of Fake News?. The Spanish Journal of Psychology.

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(2021). Op-Ed: Why theater makes us better people. Bring it back. Los Angeles Times.

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