Biography

Steve is an incoming Assistant Professor of Human-Computer Interaction in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University (starting Fall of 2026), with a joint appointment (by courtesy) with the Department of Social and Decision Sciences.

Currently, he is an NSF and AXA postdoctoral fellow at New York University. He received his PhD from the University of Cambridge (Trinity College), where he was a Gates Cambridge Scholar. Previously, he studied Psychology and Symbolic Systems at Stanford University.

Steve studies the psychology of technology. He is interested in how important psychological phenomena—such as polarization, intergroup conflict, the spread of (mis)information, and mental health—interact with emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence and social media. Steve was named an APS “Rising Star” in 2024 and was included on the 2025 Forbes 30 Under 30 list. His thesis was awarded the Psychology of Technology Dissertation Fellowship and was a finalist for the SESP dissertation award. He has published 37 academic papers in journals such as the Science, Nature, and PNAS. His research has been covered by outlets such as the New York Times, BBC, NBC, CBS Sixty Minutes, the Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, and the Freakonomics podcast. He has received more than $2.7 million in grant funding from the National Science Foundation, the Templeton World Charity Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, and more. Steve is also very interested in science communication, and his writing has appeared in the Washington Post, the Guardian, the New York Times, the LA Times, the Boston Globe, and Psychology Today. He also makes science communication TikToks under the name @stevepsychology, and has more than 1 million TikTok followers. Steve is currently leading a 23-country field experiment testing the causal impact of social media reduction around the globe with hundreds of co-authors around the globe. You can learn more about this collaboration here: globalsocialmediastudy.com.

Previous Education

Stanford University