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Assistant Professor of Psychology Liane Young has received the 2011 Early Career Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions to Social Neuroscience from the Society for Social Neuroscience.
Young, who holds a doctoral degree from Harvard University, joined the BC faculty this year from a position as a post-doctoral associate in brain and cognitive sciences at MIT, where she also was a visiting scholar of philosophy. Her research focuses on moral psychology and neuroscience, specifically the role of theory of the mind in moral judgment; moral judgments vs. moral behavior; motivated moral reasoning; conceptions of the self and free will, and cultural and individual differences in moral cognition.
She was the recipient of a National Science Foundation graduate student fellowship, among other awards, and was co-author of a study of moral judgments by autistic adults that was reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences earlier this year.
Young becomes the Psychology Department’s third early-career award winner in recent months, joining Associate Professor Elizabeth Kensinger — who won the American Psychological Foundation’s 2010-11 F.J. McGuigan Young Investigator Prize — and Assistant Professor Alexa Veenema, recipient of a Young Investigator Award from the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression in January.
"Liane Young, the newest faculty member to join the Psychology Department, is carrying out innovative and important work on the neural bases of moral reasoning," said department chairwoman Professor Ellen Winner. "We are extremely proud that she is our third faculty member to have been honored with a young investigator award."
The Society for Social Neuroscience is an international, interdisciplinary, scientific, nonprofit society established to advance and foster scientific research, training, and applications.
Young, who will receive the award at the organization’s annual meeting next month, said, "Social neuroscience is an exciting new field, and I'm honored to be a part of the movement. It has been a total delight to get to know my colleagues both in the department and across the University."