My research focuses primarily on the psychology of religion, with interests in causal thinking and explanation, perception of agency in self and others, and moral cognition.

I received my B.A. (honours) in Psychology from the University of Winnipeg in 1999, and my Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Harvard University in 2005 . From 2005-2007, I was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Western Ontario, with fellowship support from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada . Since 2007, I have been an assistant professor at the Univeristy of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Primary Interests:

Attitudes and Beliefs
Causal Attribution
Culture and Ethnicity
Ethics and Morality
Social Cognition

Attitudes and Beliefs
Causal Attribution
Culture and Ethnicity

Ethics and Morality
Social Cognition

Research Group or Laboratory:

Psychology of Religion, Agency, and Morality (PRAM Laboratory)
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Journal Articles:

Dijksterhuis, A., Preston, J., Wegner, D. M., & Aarts, H. (2008). Effects of subliminal priming of self and God on self-attribution of authorship for events. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44, 2-9.
Hernandez, I., & Preston, J. L. (2013). Disfluency disrupts the confirmation bias. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49, 178-182.
Morewedge, C. K., Preston, J., & Wegner, D. M. (2007). Timescale bias in the attribution of mind. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93, 1-11.
Preston, J. (2011). Religion is the opiate of the masses (but science is the methadone). Religion, Brain, & Behavior, 1, 231-233.
Preston, J., & Epley, N. (2009). Science and God: An automatic opposition between ultimate explanations. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 238-241.
Preston, J., & Epley, N. (2005). Explanations versus applications: The explanatory power of valuable beliefs. Psychological Science, 16, 826-832.
Preston, J., Gray, K., & Wegner, D. M. (2006). The Godfather of soul. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 29, 481-482.
Preston, J. L., Ritter, R. S., & Hepler, J. (2013). Neuroscience and the soul: Competing explanations for the human experience. Cognition, 127, 31-37.
Preston, J. L., Ritter, R. S., & Hernandez, J. I. (2010). Principles of religious prosociality: A review and reformulation. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 4, 574-590.
Preston, J., & Wegner, D. M. (2007). The eureka error: Inadvertent plagiarism by misattributions of effort. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 575-585.
Ritter, R. S., & Preston, J. L. (in press). Representations of religious words: Insights for religious priming research. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion
Ritter, R. S., & Preston, J. L. (2011). Gross gods and icky atheism: Disgust responses to rejected religious beliefs. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47, 1225-1230.
Ritter, R. S., Preston, J. L., & Hernandez, J.I. (in press). Happy Tweets: Christians are happier, more socially connected, and less analytical than Atheists on Twitter. Social Psychological and Personality Science.
Yang, Y. J., Preston, J. L., & Hernandez, I. (2013). Partisan attitudes toward the Ground Zero Mosque are reduced by high-level construal. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 4 (2).

Other Publications:

Courses Taught:

Research Methods in Social Psychology

Research Methods in Social Psychology

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Jesse Preston
Department of Psychology
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
603 East Daniel Street
Champaign, IL 61820
United States

Fax: (217) 244-5876