Hello. This is the website of Yoav Bar-Anan’s lab at the school of psychological sciences, Tel-Aviv University.

Research Interests

Nonverbal behavior



We have recently shifted our lab’s main focus to nonverbal behavior: the relation between mental states and facial expressions, body posture, and speech. We examine when and how people express their attitudes and feelings toward other people and objects through their body, voice, and face.

Intentional facial responses. When asked to smile, people smile faster at things they like than at things they dislike. The reverse pattern emerges when people are asked to display a negative facial expression. We use such compatibility effects to measure attitudes and to investigate the mechanisms underlying facial expression.
Individual differences in body language. Why do friends read your nonverbal cues better than strangers? We study individuals’ personal nonverbal repertoires and context-dependent variation. For some people, body language changes more strongly depending on the interaction partner’s identity, current mood, or current goals.
Software for studying nonverbal behavior. We develop computational models and software tools to support online research on nonverbal behavior, as well as automated data processing and analysis.

Judgment and Evaluation

Do you recognize some of the people and objects in this photo? What do you feel about them? What do you think about them? Do you know what influences your judgment? Can those photos tell us what these people thoughts about, how they felt and whether they liked the person who photographed them?

Until recently, the main research topic in our lab used to be evaluative processes: processes that pertain to feelings toward objects and judgment whether an object is positive or negative. How do people develop feelings toward objects? how do people form their judgment of objects? How do these feelings and judgment influence behavior? These questions are relevant to attitudes and actions toward the self (do I like myself?), other people (Mom, the prime minister, Rory Gilmore, Arctic Monkeys), social groups (Arabs, redheads, geeks), objects (Avocado, my phone), and more abstract concepts (Socialism, Atheism).

Automatic judgment. How does unintentional, fast, effortless judgment influence deliberate judgment and other behaviors?
Evaluative learning. The relationship between different learning experiences and the attitudes that they form. The learning experiences include pairing of objects with affect (Evaluative Conditioning), processing verbal information about people, groups, and other objects, and more complex procedures such as noticing objects that help or harm the self or others.
Implicit measures. Implicit measures is the general name for measures that were developed to measure social cognition (attitudes, self-concept and stereotypes) indirectly. In our lab, we investigate what processes are captured by this measures. We test and improve the psychometric qualities of various implicit measures. We develop new measures of associations and affect.

Gender, Stereotypes, and Self-Knowledge

How do people learn about themselves? How do people develop positive or critical self-regard? What are the influences of mental associations between the self and concepts such as traits, social group, and roles? For instance, how do women form an association between ‘Self’ and ‘Caring’, and how does it influence their behavior? How do gender stereotypes influence women and men’s self-concept? How does people’s identification with social categories shape their attitudes? How do people from privileged groups react to messages about the injustice related to their privilege? What is implicit self-esteem, how can it be measured, and what does it influence?