Dr. Jennifer Kubota is a social neuroscientist whose research examines how people form impressions of others based on characteristics such as social status, group membership, emotion, and increasingly, artificial intelligence. Her work investigates how these impressions shape perception, trust, cooperation, decision-making, and intergroup behavior, as well as how social biases can be reduced to improve social interactions/decision-making, teamwork, and human-AI collaboration. Grounded in social neuroscience, her research bridges psychology, neuroscience, computational modeling, political science, and decision science to better understand the mechanisms underlying social evaluation and behavior in real-world environments.
                                                                                                                        
Using a multilevel and interdisciplinary approach, Dr. Kubota studies physiological processes (e.g., cortisol and psychophysiology), neural activity (e.g., EEG, fMRI, simultaneous EEG/fMRI, and mobile EEG), computationally derived signals (e.g., prediction errors, reinforcement learning models, value computations, and trust dynamics), and behavioral outcomes such as cooperation, punishment, trust, and risk-taking. Her research spans both laboratory and real-world contexts, including organizational teams, financial decision-making, education, policing, health, social media, and human-AI systems. More recently, her work has expanded to investigate the transmission of bias in digital spaces and how humans perceive and collaborate with AI agents under dynamic and high-stakes conditions.
                                                            
Dr. Kubota is an Associate Professor and Senior Ford Fellow in the Departments of Psychological and Brain Sciences and Political Science and International Relations at the University of Delaware, where she also serves as Director of Professional Development for the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. She is additionally affiliated with the university’s AI Institute, Data Science Institute, Sociotechnical Systems Center, and Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Program. Prior to joining the University of Delaware, she was an Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago. She earned her PhD in Social Psychology and Neuroscience from the University of Colorado Boulder and completed postdoctoral training in social neuroscience at New York University with additional mentorship connected to Harvard University.

Her research has been published in leading journals, including Nature Neuroscience, Nature Human Behavior, Psychological Science, Psychological Review, NeuroImage, Perspectives on Psychological Science, Biological Psychology, and Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. Her work has contributed to scientific and public conversations surrounding intergroup relations, hierarchy, social trust, and the future of human-AI interaction.

Dr. Kubota currently serves as President of the Social and Affective Neuroscience Society and is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, and the Society for Experimental Social Psychology. She currently serves on the governing boards of both SANS and the SPARK Society. Her research has been supported by funding from the Army Research Institute, the Department of Defense MINERVA Research Initiative, the Ford Foundation, the National Institute on Aging, and the National Science Foundation.