Sean Stevens

Sean, a native of New Jersey, obtained his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey – New Brunswick in 2013. From 2013 to 2016, he continued to work at Rutgers University, first as the Research Director of the Social Perception Lab and then as a Postdoctoral Fellow, also in affiliation with the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. In 2016, Sean became Heterodox Academy’s first Director of Research where he developed the Campus Expression Survey. In 2020, Sean joined FIRE as a Senior Research Fellow in Polling and Analytics. For almost two decades, Sean's research has focused on understanding how moral convictions produce motivated reasoning within the political domain, how this motivated reasoning can distort research in the social sciences, and how motivated reasoning can lead to political intolerance and create obstacles to political compromise. More recently, he has begun investigating the psychological factors that motivate support for censorship and self-censorship. Sean is also a member of the Best Practices in Science Movement, and he works to promote scientific integrity practices in the social sciences.