Eric Vanman

Eric John Vanman is an Australian social psychologist and social neuroscientist whose work examines the emotional and neural mechanisms that shape intergroup relations, empathy, and social behaviour. He is a professor in the School of Psychology at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia.

Early life and education Vanman earned a Bachelor of Science degree in psychology, with a minor in German, from the University of Iowa in 1986. He went on to complete a Master of Arts in 1990 and a Doctor of Philosophy in social psychology in 1994 at the University of Southern California.

Academic career Vanman began his academic career as a Visiting assistant professor in cognitive and behavioural neuroscience at the University of Southern California and a Research Associate in the USC Psychophysiology Laboratory. In 1996 he joined the Environmental Psychophysiology Laboratory at Texas A&M University as an Assistant Research Scientist.

He later taught at Emory University from 1997 to 2000 before joining Georgia State University in Atlanta, where he served as a faculty member in the Department of Psychology from 2000 to 2007. In 2007, Vanman joined the University of Queensland (UQ), where he advanced from Senior Lecturer to Associate Professor and, in 2024, Professor of Psychology. He has also held several administrative and leadership roles at UQ, including Director of the Centre for Research in Social Psychology.

Research Vanman is known for his research on the psychophysiology of prejudice and intergroup emotions. His early work examined how subtle facial muscle activity—particularly the activation of muscles involved in frowning and smiling—is related to prejudiced and discriminatory behaviour, even in the absence of visible facial expressions. These studies provided some of the first evidence that unconscious bias could be detected through physiological measures, helping to establish a foundation for research on implicit attitudes.

More recently, Vanman's research has focused on the neural and emotional mechanisms of empathy using a social neuroscience approach. He has investigated why people often show reduced empathy toward those who are perceived as different or belong to out-groups, extending this work to include studies of human–robot interaction and the emotional responses people have toward social robots. His broader research also explores emotional crying and its social functions, the effects of online anonymity and moral emotions on online behaviour such as trolling, and the influence of political ideology and emotion on moral reasoning and social judgment.

Awards and recognition 2022 – Fellow, Society for Personality and Social Psychology 2021 – Teaching Excellence Award, Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences, University of Queensland 2019 – Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy 2018 – Teaching Excellence Award (Commendation), University of Queensland

Books Vanman, E. J., & Dawson, M. E. (2011). Social Psychophysiology for Social and Personality Psychology. Los Angeles: SAGE Publications.

Selected publications

Vanman, E. J., Paul, B. Y., Ito, T. A., & Miller, N. (1997). The modern face of prejudice and structural features that moderate the effect of cooperation on affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73, 941–959. Vanman, E. J., Saltz, J. L., Nathan, L. R., & Warren, J. A. (2004). Racial discrimination by low-prejudiced Whites: Facial movements as implicit measures of attitudes related to behaviour. Psychological Science, 15(11), 711–714. Rani, P., Liu, C., Sarkar, N., & Vanman, E. J. (2006). An empirical study of machine learning techniques for affect recognition in human–robot interaction. Pattern Analysis and Applications, 9(1), 58–69. Iyer, A., Hornsey, M. J., Vanman, E. J., Esposo, S., & Ale, S. (2015). Fight and flight: Evidence of aggressive capitulation in the face of fear messages from terrorists. Political Psychology, 36(6), 631–648. Vanman, E. J. (2016). The role of empathy in intergroup relations. Current Opinion in Psychology, 11, 59–63. Nitschke, F. T., McKimmie, B. M., & Vanman, E. J. (2019). A meta-analysis of the emotional victim effect for female adult rape complainants: Does complainant distress influence credibility? Psychological Bulletin, 145(10), 953–979. Vanman, E. J., & Kappas, A. (2019). "Danger, Will Robinson!" The challenges of social robots for intergroup relations. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 13(8), e12489. Zickfeld, J. H., et al. (2021). Tears evoke the intention to offer social support: A systematic investigation of the interpersonal effects of emotional crying across 41 countries. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 95, 104137. Nitschke, F., McKimmie, B. M., & Vanman, E. J. (2022). The effect of heuristic cues on jurors' systematic information processing in rape trials. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 46(4), 484–500. Gamble, R. S., Henry, J. D., Decety, J., & Vanman, E. J. (2024). The role of external factors in affect-sharing and their neural bases. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 105540.