Alex Koch
Assistant Professor of Behavioral Science
Biography
Alex Koch examines how people react to positive and negative information. For example, positive info is recognized faster and generalized more readily. Negative info, however, is more attention-grabbing, is remembered more accurately, and carries more weight in decisions and judging others. Alex explains these differences in terms of the higher similarity of positive (vs. negative) info. He endorses an efficient spatial arrangement method to measure similarity in which people drag and drop more similar words or pictures closer together on the screen. This method shows that people perceive a great variety of positive (vs. negative) others, things, and events as more similar to one another.
In a second line of research, Alex models the dimensions that people spontaneously use to stereotype all sorts of societal groups like rich people, immigrants, parents, the military, alcoholics etc. His evidence points to agency / socioeconomic success (A), conservative-progressive beliefs (B), and trustworthiness / communion (C), summarized as the ABC model of stereotype dimensions. People agree on groups’ agency and beliefs but not communion. In follow-up projects, Alex examines behavioral consequences. Perceived similarity in agency and beliefs between the self and a group increases perceived communion of that group, and thereby cooperative and even generous behavior towards its members. Recently, Alex teamed up with authors of other social evaluation models to reconcile their theoretical differences.
Alex’s research has been published in several impactful journals in (cognitive and social) psychology and beyond, including Psychological Science, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Perspectives on Psychological Science, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Alex completed undergraduate studies at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, and earned a Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Cologne in Germany. He also conducted research as a visiting undergraduate student at the University of New South Wales in Australia, as a visiting graduate student at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, and as a visiting postdoctoral scholar at Princeton University. Prior to joining Booth, Alex held a postdoctoral position at the University of Cologne.
Selected Publications
Koch, A., Bromley, A., Woitzel, J. & Alves, H. (2024). Differentiation in social perception: Why later-encountered individuals are described more negatively. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology.
*Abele, A., *Ellemers, N., *Fiske, S., *Koch, A., & *Yzerbyt, V. (2021). Navigating the social world: Shared horizontal and vertical evaluative dimensions. Psychological Review, 128, 290-314.
*Koch, A., & *Yzerbyt, V., *Abele, A., *Ellemers, N., *Fiske, S. (2021). Social evaluation: Comparing models across interpersonal, intragroup, intergroup, several-group, and many-group contexts. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 63, 1-68.
Koch, A., Dorrough, A., Glöckner, A., & Imhoff, R. (2020). The ABC of society: Similarity in agency and beliefs predicts cooperation across groups. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 90, 103996.
Koch, A., Imhoff, R., Unkelbach, C., Nicolas, G., Fiske, S., Terache, J., Carrier, A., & Yzerbyt, V. (2020). Groups’ warmth is a personal matter: Understanding consensus on stereotype dimensions reconciles adversarial models of social evaluation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 89, 103995.
Unkelbach, C., Alves, H., & Koch, A. (2020). Valence asymmetries: Explaining the differential processing of positive and negative information. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 62, 115-187.
Alves, H., Koch, A., & Unkelbach, C. (2018). A cognitive-ecological explanation of intergroup biases. Psychological Science, 29, 1126-1133.
*Alves, H., *Koch, A., & Unkelbach, C. (2017). Why good is more alike than bad: Processing implications. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 21, 72-82.
Koch, A., Alves, H., Krüger, T., & Unkelbach, C. (2016). A general valence asymmetry in similarity: Good is more alike than bad. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 42, 1171-1192.
*Koch, A., & *Imhoff, R., Dotsch, R., Alves, H., & Unkelbach, C. (2016). The ABC of stereotypes about groups: Agency / socio-economic success, conservative-progressive beliefs, and communion. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 110, 675-709.
2024 - 2025 Course Schedule
| Number | Course Title | Quarter |
|---|---|---|
| 38103 | Strategies and Processes of Negotiation | 2025 (Winter) |