Hebel-Sela, S., Nir, N., Gruenwald, A., Hameiri, B., & Halperin, E. One size might not fit all: A Tailored Approach to Psychological Intergroup Interventions. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
doi.org/10.1177/01461672261434701
About
I am an incoming postdoctoral fellow at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, where I will work with Prof. Emily Falk and Prof. Yphtach Lelkes as part of the Penn-Kalaniyot Fellowship. I completed my PhD at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, supervised by Eran Halperin (Hebrew University) and Boaz Hameiri (Tel Aviv University).
My research centers on the role of group processes and media environments in misinformation and conspiracy belief. I study why group identity and intergroup conflict make people more susceptible to false narratives and conspiracy theories — and how media exposure interacts with these group-level dynamics to amplify or attenuate belief in misinformation. Crucially, I am equally invested in the other side of that question: how those same group-level processes can be deliberately targeted to reduce false beliefs and intergroup hostility. I have developed and tested a wide range of interventions — including virtual contact, self-affirmation campaigns, paradoxical thinking, tailored and personalized messaging, and AI-delivered approaches — across large-scale field experiments and intervention tournaments conducted in real conflict contexts.
My research has appeared in journals including Communications Psychology, Political Psychology, Current Opinion in Psychology, and Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, and is featured in edited volumes published by Routledge. I have been recognized with the Penn-Kalaniyot Postdoctoral Fellowship, the Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellowship (awarded; declined), the Halbert Postdoctoral Fellowship (awarded; declined), and the President's Scholarship for Outstanding PhD Students at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.