Will Gervais | University of Kentucky College of Arts & Sciences

Will Gervais

Associate Professor

Social

HEADS UP: I'm accepting applications for a new grad student to start in Fall 2018

I grew up in a small Colorado mountain town just a few minutes away from South Park county. I received my B. S. from the University of Denver before heading to Canada for grad school. I received both an M. A. and a Ph. D. from the University of British Columbia, where my dissertation work explored perceptions of atheists.

I like camping, hiking, soccer, biking, and most other outdoor activities. I'm a pretty good cook, and (thanks to some friends from grad school) an aspiring oenophile.

Unlike British comedian Ricky Gervais - no relation, as far as I know - I don't pronounce the "s" in Gervais. So phonetically, it's jer-vay.

Contact Information

will.gervais@uky.edu

104 Kastle Hall

859-257-6842

Education

B. S., University of Denver, 2005
M. A., University of British Columbia, 2008
Ph. D., University of British Columbia, 2012

Research Interests

Supernatural beliefs
Religion
Atheism

Affiliations

Psychology
Social Psychology
Developmental, Social, and Health Psychology

Curriculum Vitae (CV)
willgervais.com/blog
Will Gervais, University of Kentucky

Research

I'm a hybrid evolutionary and cultural psychologist who is interested in why people believe what they believe about the world. Specifically, I'm interested in supernatural beliefs. Why does our species have religion? Why do most folks believe in some sort of a god? Why do other folks (almost a billion, by some estimates) not believe in any gods? What are the consequences of this (dis)belief in supernatural agents?

Graduate Training

I pursued my graduate studies in rainy Vancouver, BC, Canada.

Publications

Here are links to my publications. They're in (roughly) reverse chronological order.

The articles and chapters below can be downloaded for personal academic use only; they are not intended for sale or widespread dissemination.

Gervais, W. M. (in press). Perceiving minds and gods: How mind perception enables, constrains, and is triggered by belief in gods. Perspectives on Psychological Science.

Norenzayan, A. & Gervais, W. M. (2013). The origins of religious disbelief. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 17, 20-25.

Gervais, W. M. & Norenzayan, A. (2012). Analytic thinking promotes religious disbelief. Science, 336, 493-496.

Norenzayan, A., Gervais, W., & Trzesniewski, K. (2012). Mentalizing deficits constrain belief in a personal God. PLoS ONE, 7, e36880.

Gervais, W. M. & Norenzayan, A. (2012). Reminders of secular authority reduce believers' distrust of atheists. Psychological Science, 23, 483-491.

Gervais, W. M. (forthcoming). Religious cognitions. Chapter to appear in V. Saroglou (Ed.), Religion, personality, and social behavior. Psychology Press.

Gervais, W. M. & Norenzayan, A. (in press). Religion and the origins of anti-atheist prejudice. Chapter to appear in S. Clarke, R. Powell, & J. Savulescu (Eds.), Intolerance and Conflict: A Scientific and Conceptual Investigation. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Gervais, W. M. & Norenzayan, A. (2012). Like a camera in the sky? Thinking about God increases public self-awareness and socially desirable responding. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48, 298-302.

Norenzayan, A., & Gervais, W. M. (2012). The cultural evolution of religion. In E. Slingerland & M.Collard (Eds.) Creating Consilience: Integrating science and the humanities. (pp. 243-265). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Gervais, W. M., Shariff, A. F., & Norenzayan, A. (2011). Do you believe in atheists? Distrust is central to anti-atheist prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101, 1189-1206.

Gervais, W. M., Willard, A., Norenzayan, A., & Henrich, J. (2011). The cultural transmission of faith: Why natural intuitions and memory biases are necessary, but insufficient, to explain religious belief. Religion, 41, 389-410.

Gervais, W. M. (2011). Finding the faithless: Perceived atheist prevalence reduces anti-atheist prejudice. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 37, 543-556.

Gervais, W. M. & Henrich, J. (2010). The Zeus problem: Why representational content biases cannot explain faith in gods. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 10, 383-389.

Schaller, M., Miller, G. E., Gervais, W. M., Yager, S., & Chen, E. (2010). Mere visual perception of other peroples' disease symptoms facilitates a more aggressive immune response. Psychological Science, 21, 649-652.

Gervais, W. M., Reed, C. L., Beall, P. M., and Roberts, R. J. (2010). Implied body action directs spatial attention. Attention, Perception, and Psychophysics, 72, 1437-1443.

Norenzayan, A., Shariff, A. F., & Gervais, W. M. (2010). The Evolution of Religious Misbelief. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 32, 531-532.

Selected Publications

Selected Publications:

Gervais, W. M. & Norenzayan, A. (2012). Analytic thinking promotes resligious disbelief. Science, 336, 493-496.

Gervais, W. M. & Norenzayan, A. (2012). Reminders of secular authority reduce believers' distrust of atheists. Psychological Science, 23, 483-491.

Gervais, W. M., Shariff, A. F., & Norenzayan, A. (2011). Do you believe in atheists? Distrust is central to anti-atheist prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101, 1189-1206.