Team

Principal Investigator (PI)

Beyza Tepe

Beyza Tepe completed her bachelor’s degree in psychology at Bahcesehir University in 2012. In 2015, she received her MA degree from Istanbul University. She completed her Ph.D. degree in social psychology at Istanbul University in 2019, in collaboration with Trinity College Dublin, where she carried out Ph.D. studies with the support of the TUBITAK fellowship. She worked as an Assistant Professor at Bahcesehir University from 2019 to 2022, then joined the psychology team of MEF University at the beginning of the academic period of 2022-2023. Her research interests center around moral psychology, which is in touch with, the cognitive psychology of decision-making, and evolutionary psychology of social behavior, cultural psychology, and the psychology of religion and politics. She was awarded as “SAGE Emerging Scholar” in 2022. Her research has been published in internationally prestigious journals such as the Journal of Personality and Psychology, Memory & Cognition, Emotion, and so on. She is also a member of the Editorial Board of Personality and Social Psychology Review (PSPR). She founded her research laboratory, Tepe Morality Lab, in 2022.

Research Assistant

Hatice Kübra Düz

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Hatice Kübra Düz is a Psychology graduate student at the Istanbul Medipol University, where she earned her Bachelor's degree in Psychology. She is a research assistant at Tepe Morality Lab. She is also a member of the Morality and Cooperation Research Group at Medipol University. Her main research interests include the psychology of morality, evolutionary psychology, and social cognition.

Members

Fatih Köseoğlu

Ph.D. Student at Istanbul University

Muhammet Coşkun

Ph.D. Candidate in METU

Arife Demirel

Psychology M.A. Student at Istanbul University

Ebru Batur

Psychology M.A. Student at Istanbul Medipol University

Hasan Yiğit Tunus

B.A. in Psychology from MEF University

İlksen Bostancı

Psychology M.A. Student at MEF University

Pınar Hayat Uzun

B.A. in Psychology from Bahçeşehir University

Fevziye Çiğdem Akgül

Psychology M.A. Student at MEF University

Collaborators

Diane Sunar

Prof. Dr. Diane Sunar received her PhD in social psychology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1973. She worked at METU (1972-79) and Boğaziçi University (1979-2002), and has been a faculty member at the Psychology Department of Istanbul Bilgi University since 2002. The subjects of her lectures were mainly social psychology, evolutionary psychology and psychology history. She conducts research on early childhood intervention programs, the effects of child-rearing methods, and moral psychology, and has published more than 50 articles and book chapters. Çiğdem Kağıtçıbaşı Lifetime Achievement Award was given to her at the 2nd National Social Psychology Congress in 2017, and she was awarded the title of "emeritus" at Istanbul Bilgi University in 2018.

Sevim Cesur

Prof. Dr. Sevim Cesur is working in the Department of Psychology at Istanbul University. Moral psychology is at the center of her work. She has a book called Social Psychology of Morality and studies within the framework of various moral theories and with different methods.

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Ruth Byrne

Ruth Byrne is the Professor of Cognitive Science at Trinity College Dublin, University of Dublin, in the School of Psychology and Institute of Neuroscience. Her research expertise is in the cognitive science of human thinking, reasoning, and imaginative thought. Her BA degree was awarded by University College Dublin in 1983 and she completed her PhD at Trinity College Dublin in 1986. She worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, and as a lecturer at the University of Wales in Cardiff, and in the computer science department at University College Dublin. She is a member of the Royal Irish Academy, a Senior Fellow of Trinity College Dublin, and a Fellow of the US Association for Psychological Science. She was awarded the 2021 Gold Medal for Social Sciences by the Royal Irish Academy.

Arzu Karakulak

Dr. Arzu Karakulak is an Assistant Professor at the Psychology Department of Bahcesehir University. In 2015, she obtained a joint PhD from Tilburg University and Koc University in Social, Industrial-Organizational, and Cross-Cultural Psychology. Prior to her PhD, she worked as a psychologist in Germany, where she also obtained her Master's degree in Psychology from the Eberhard-Karls University Tübingen. Her research interests are the cross-cultural comparative study of antecedents and outcomes of prosocial behavior including cooperation, acculturation, and multiculturalism. She is interested in studying the universal and cultural-specific precursors of moral decision-making and leadership emergence. In 2021, she received the Stiftung Mercator-Istanbul Policy Center (Sabanci University) research fellowship where she has studied the association between COVID-19 threat perceptions and prejudice towards refugees across 17 nations.

Nadira Faber

Nadira Faber is a Senior Researcher at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics and an incoming Full Professor in Social Psychology at the University of Bremen. Her research focuses on the situational and physiological factors that influence people’s behaviour alone and in groups. Nadira is interested in the psychology and philosophy of prosociality/altruism, group dynamics, and morality.

Zeynep Ecem Piyale

Zeynep Ecem Piyale is a PhD student in Social Psychology at Istanbul University. Her research interests are moral decision-making, relational models of morality, moral emotions, intergroup tolerance, and intergroup processes. Her research has appeared in academic journals such as Emotion, British Journal of Social Psychology, Personality, and Individual Differences.

Barış Sevi

Barış Sevi completed his bachelor’s degree in Psychology in 2015 at Bilkent University. Then, he completed his master's degree in Social/Organizational Psychology at Koç University in 2017 and Behavioral Neuroscience at West Virginia University in the USA in 2019. He completed his PhD in Social Psychology at the University of Connecticut, USA in 2022. His main areas of study are disease avoidance behaviors, individual differences, and close relationships.

Onurcan Yılmaz

Onurcan Yilmaz is an associate professor of psychology at Kadir Has University, and the director of the "MINT Lab" (Moral Intuitions Lab; www.moralintuitionslab.com), which uses a cognitive science perspective to study the cognitive and contextual origins of moral judgment and behavior. In 2021, Dr. Yilmaz has been awarded "The Best Young Scientists Award", and “Sakıp Sabancı International Research Awards”. He has published in leading academic journals such as Cognition, Evolution and Human Behavior, Current Opinion in Psychology, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, and Nature Human Behaviour. He is currently Consulting Editor for the journal of Judgment and Decision Making.

Berna Güler

Berna Güler graduated from the areas of Sociology and Psychology at Bahçeşehir University. Then, she continued her master’s degree there in the area of Cognitive Neuropsychology. During her master’s degree, she studied metacognitive judgments by using EEG and worked in the Brain and Cognition Research Laboratory. Also, she worked as a part-time psychologist at ÇAPA (Istanbul University Medicine Faculty). Currently, she continues her research in the Experimental Psychology Ph.D. program at Sabancı University. She is working at Gunseli Memory, Attention, and Cognitive Control Laboratory. Also, she is working as a part-time neuropsychologist at ÇAPA Multiple Sclerosis clinic. Her main research interests are event segmentation, episodic memory, WM-LTM interactions, and metacognitive judgments.

Alumni

Elif Dilsiz
Tuana Aleyna Küçük
Ayşe Betül İlgen
İrem Sakarya
Yağmur Şentürk
Ezgi Kara
Sıla Yurtseven
Amine Sakar
Gizem Atra Kapı
Rabia Balta

Büşra Gözde Köşe
Senanur Başkan
Serra Çelik
Dilara Beyza Kaya
Elif Sena Coşgun
Zehra Akıncı
Beril Timuçin
Emine Bekil
Güney Dündar