Some information about myself.
About Me
Jonas R. Kunst is Professor of Communication at BI Norwegian Business School and Professor of Cultural and Community Psychology at the University of Oslo. His research examines misinformation and conspiracy theories, acculturation, violent extremism, and the psychological implications of artificial intelligence. He co-leads the Center for Democracy & Information Integrity (CDI) at BI Norwegian Business School. He is Editor-in-Chief of advances.in/psychology and Consulting Editor for the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. His work has been published in Science, Nature Communications, Nature Human Behaviour, PNAS, Psychological Science, and other leading journals. He has received the Janet Taylor Spence Award and Rising Star designation from the Association for Psychological Science, and is a Fellow of APS and SESP.
About me
As a Professor of Communication and Cultural and Community Psychology located in Oslo, Norway, my work is dedicated to understanding the social and psychological forces that shape how we live together in increasingly diverse and digital societies. My research adopts a broad lens, spanning from the dynamics of intercultural relations to the psychology of extremism and the impact of artificial intelligence on democracy.
Polarization, radicalization and violent extremism
How ordinary grievance hardens into support for political violence. Recent work separates offensive from defensive violence across 58 countries and traces the roles of perceived cultural threat, relative deprivation and identity fusion — including what AI changes about the pathway in.
Misinformation, conspiracy beliefs, and AI
Who is susceptible to false claims and why, where conspiracy belief comes from developmentally, and what changes when the machinery producing false claims stops being human. This includes work in Science on AI swarms that manufacture the appearance of consensus.
Acculturation and cultural change
How majority groups change through cultural contact, not only minorities — the forgotten half of the question. It also subjects the field's most repeated claim, that integration produces the best adaptation, to the meta-analytic evidence it has rarely been given.
Political psychology and intergroup relations
Where political attitudes come from, including their developmental and genetic origins; how groups come to see each other as less than fully human; and the conditions under which hostile groups can still imagine peace.
The psychology of meat consumption and human–animal relations
The psychological work that lets most people care about animals and eat them anyway — how dissociating meat from its animal origins reduces empathy and disgust, and what interrupting that does to consumption.
Academic mentorship
I am deeply committed to academic mentorship and the development of the next generation of researchers. To date, I have had the privilege of supervising 16 B.A. students, 39 M.A. students, 7 Ph.D. candidates, and 4 post-doctoral researchers. My work has been recognized by the Association for Psychological Science and the Society of Experimental Social Psychology, among others.
I co-lead the Center for Democracy & Information Integrity (CDI) at BI, whose purpose is keeping democracies and the information they depend on trustworthy. CDI brings together researchers across psychology, political science, communication, economics, law and data science, working on misinformation and belief formation, polarization and radicalization, trust in institutions, and AI in the information environment.
I am currently editor-in-chief of the journal advances.in/psychology, which pays reviewers for their work.
Career
2025
Professor
BI Norwegian Business School2025
Professor II (20% position)
University of Oslo2020
Professor
University of Oslo2019
Associate Professor
University of Oslo2018
Post-doc
Yale University2016
Post-doc
University of Oslo2015
PhD, Social Psychology
University of Oslo2014
Fulbright Visiting Scholar
Harvard University2011
M.Phil. Cultural, Community and Social Psychology
University of Oslo2009
B.A. General Psychology
University of Bergen
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
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Jonas R. Kunst is one of the leading researchers on acculturation psychology in the Nordic context. Based in Oslo, his work challenges traditional models by examining not only how immigrants adapt, but how majority populations are influenced by cultural diversity. His research covers prejudice, Islamophobia, and the social exclusion mechanisms that affect intercultural relations. He has received the Otto Klineberg Award from SPSSI and the Rae and Dan Landis Dissertation Award from the International Academy for Intercultural Research for this work.
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Jonas R. Kunst actively collaborates with researchers internationally. He is affiliated with both BI Norwegian Business School and the University of Oslo, and has worked with scholars at Harvard, Yale, Cambridge, Max Planck, Oxford, NYU, and many other institutions. His lab has supervised 7 PhD candidates and 4 postdoctoral researchers. He currently offers research internships for students through the Erasmus+ program. For collaboration inquiries, use the contact page.
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Jonas R. Kunst holds a PhD in social psychology from the University of Oslo (2015), following an M.Phil. in cultural, community and social psychology there and a B.A. in general psychology from the University of Bergen. He was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Harvard University in 2014 and a postdoctoral researcher at Yale University in 2018. He became Professor at the University of Oslo in 2020 and Professor of Communication at BI Norwegian Business School in 2025, where he also co-leads the Center for Democracy & Information Integrity. He continues to hold a Professor II position at the University of Oslo.
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He is an elected Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science (APS) and of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology (SESP). He received the Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions and a Rising Star designation from APS, the Otto Klineberg Intercultural and International Relations Award from SPSSI, and both the Early Career Award and the Rae and Dan Landis Dissertation Award from the International Academy for Intercultural Research. He was nominated for the King's Gold Medal and recruited to the UiO Research Leadership Programme and Norway's Young Research Leader Program.