Staff profile

I study the ways in which stories motivate human behaviour. My theoretical focus is on value instantiations—the process through which Basic Human Values (such as security, benevolence, or power) find expressions in everyday behaviour. My research addresses the motivational power of ideas and ideals, the dynamic interplay between individual dispositions and social influence, and the expression of motivationally relevant content in text.I am a social psychologist by training, and most of my work employs experimental and observational methods from this discipline. I am enthusiastic about computational methods in social research and work with agent-based models, natural language processing, and machine learning techniques. My applied work includes research on terrorism, health behaviour, electoral politics, climate, and anti-war activism.I completed my Bachelor’s at McGill University in Canada, a Master’s at the Higher School of Economics in Russia and Tilburg University in the Netherlands, and a PhD through the BIGSSS graduate school at the University of Bremen and Jacobs University in Germany. Before joining Durham, I was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Bochum University in Germany.

Office: Rowan House (RH), LG014

• Human Values
• Attitude Formation
• Social Influence
• Computational Social Science

Journal Article

• Grigoryan, L., Ponizovskiy, V., Weißflog, M. I., Osin, E., & Lickel, B. (online). Guilt, shame, and antiwar action in an authoritarian country at war. Political Psychology, https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12985
• Vlasceanu, M., Doell, K. C., Bak-Coleman, J. B., Todorova, B., Berkebile-Weinberg, M. M., Grayson, S. J., Patel, Y., Goldwert, D., Pei, Y., Chakroff, A., Pronizius, E., van den Broek, K. L., Vlasceanu, D., Constantino, S., Morais, M. J., Schumann, P., Rathje, S., Fang, K., Aglioti, S. M., Alfano, M., …Van Bavel, J. J. (2024). Addressing climate change with behavioral science: A global intervention tournament in 63 countries. Science Advances, 10(6), https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adj5778
• Doell, K. C., Todorova, B., Vlasceanu, M., Bak Coleman, J. B., Pronizius, E., Schumann, P., Azevedo, F., Patel, Y., Berkebile-Wineberg, M. M., Brick, C., Lange, F., Grayson, S. J., Pei, Y., Chakroff, A., van den Broek, K. L., Lamm, C., Vlasceanu, D., Constantino, S. M., Rathje, S., Goldwert, D., …Van Bavel, J. J. (2024). The International Climate Psychology Collaboration: Climate change-related data collected from 63 countries. Scientific Data, 11(1), Article 1066. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-024-03865-1
• Grigoryan, L., Ponizovskiy, V., & Schwartz, S. (2023). Motivations for violent extremism: Evidence from lone offenders’ manifestos. Journal of Social Issues, 79(4), 1440-1455. https://doi.org/10.1111/josi.12593
• Ponizovskiy, V. (2022). On Sanders, Trump, and rhinoceroses: Quantifying subjective construals helps predict political attitudes. British Journal of Social Psychology, 61(3), 842-860. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12516
• Ponizovskiy, V., Grigoryan, L., Kühnen, U., & Boehnke, K. (2019). Social Construction of the Value–Behavior Relation. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00934