Dr. Julian Scheffer (starting Aug. 2024)

Biographical Information

BSc – University of Toronto Scarborough Campus (2013)
MA – University of Iowa (2016)
PhD – The Pennsylvania State University (2021)
Postdoctoral Research Fellow – University of California, Berkeley (2021-2024)

Selected Publications

Cameron, C.D., Scheffer, J.A., Hadjiandreou, E., & Anderson, S. (2022). Motivated empathic choices. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 66, 191-279. https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.aesp.2022.04.005

Scheffer, J.A., Cameron, C.D., & Inzlicht, M. (2022). Caring is costly: People avoid the cognitive work of compassion. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 151(1), 172-196. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001073

Scheffer, J.A., Cameron, C.D., McKee, S., Hadjiandreou, E., & Scherer, A.M. (2022). Stereotypes about compassion across the political spectrum. Emotion, 22(3), 466-478. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/emo0000820

Cameron, C.D., Conway, P., & Scheffer, J.A. (2021). Empathy regulation, prosociality, and moral judgment. Current Opinion in Psychology, 44, 188-195. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2021.09.011

Cameron, C.D., Hutcherson, C.A., Ferguson, A.M., Scheffer, J.A., Hadjiandreou, E., & Inzlicht, M. (2019). Empathy is hard work: People choose to avoid empathy because of its cognitive costs. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 148, 962-976. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000595

Cameron, C.D., Payne, B.K., Sinnott-Armstrong, W., Scheffer. J.A., & Inzlicht, M. (2017). Implicit moral evaluations: A multinomial modeling approach. Cognition, 158, 224-241. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2016.10.013

Research

My research broadly examines the utility of socioemotional processes such as empathy and compassion for building interpersonal and intergroup connection. I study how mental effort perceptions, neural damage, and neurodegeneration impact people’s propensity and capacity to share in and understand the perspectives of other people as well as foster concern for their well-being. Further, I examine how these same processes wax and wane across challenging interpersonal and intergroup contexts, such as in the context of political rivals, in caregivers of people diagnosed with neurodegenerative disease, and in forging allyship to address social injustices.