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Steven Most

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Associate Professor, School of Psychology, UNSW Sydney

Steve's research is grounded in cognitive psychology, with strong links to social psychology, clinical psychology, and neuroscience. His lab specialises in relationships between motivation, emotion, and attentional control. Topics include mechanisms of emotion-driven attentional bias, how attention and emotion shape our awareness of the world, impacts of physical and emotional stress on cognition, and emotion regulation. He also specialise in understanding the implications of these processes for real-world safety, including on the roadways.

Steve received his B.A. in Psychology at Brandeis University in 1994, followed by a PhD in Psychology at Harvard University in 2002. This was followed by postdoctoral fellowships at Yale and Vanderbilt Universities. Prior to taking up his position at UNSW Sydney, he was Assistant Professor and then tenured Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Delaware (USA), where he continues to maintain Affiliated Associate Professor status. He is the recipient of multiple teaching and mentoring awards. In 2021, he co-authored a new textbook on Cognition (Oxford University Press), which received the Most Promising New Textbook Award from the Textbook and Academic Authors Association.

He is passionate about fostering understanding of psychology outside the university. Please feel free to contact him if you would like to arrange an educational workshop or presentation to your school or organisation.

Experience

  • –present
    Adjunct Associate Professor, University of Delaware
  • –present
    ARC Future Fellow and Senior Lecturer in Psychology, University of New South Wales
  • 2006–2013
    Assistant Professor, University of Delaware
  • 2013–2013
    Associate Professor, University of Delaware
  • 2003–2006
    Postdoctoral Fellow, Yale University
  • 2002–2003
    Postdoctoral Fellow, Vanderbilt University

Education

  • 2002 
    Harvard University, Ph.D. in Psychology
  • 1994 
    Brandeis University, B.A. in Psychology

Grants and Contracts

  • 2014
    Appareo Vision 1000 flight data acquisition system and the Mobile Eye gaze tracking system
    Role:
    Investigator
    Funding Source:
    UNSW MREII
  • 2012
    How emotion shapes perception: Delineating structural, temporal, and representational properties of emotion-induced blindness
    Role:
    Chief investigator
    Funding Source:
    Australian Research Council
  • 2010
    Emotion’s impact on mechanisms of conscious perception
    Role:
    Principal investigator
    Funding Source:
    National Institutes of Health
  • 2009
    Neuro-cognitive self-regulation mechanisms and their relation to childhood and adolescent obesity
    Role:
    Principal investigator
    Funding Source:
    National Institutes of Health
  • 2003
    Attentional guidance by emotional salience
    Role:
    Principal investigator
    Funding Source:
    National Institutes of Health