Marika Landau-Wells | Research UC Berkeley

Research Expertise and Interest

conflict, national security, political psychology

Research Description

Marika Landau-Wells' research is broadly concerned with the effects of cognitive processes - including perception, attention, concept formation, and memory - on political behavior writ large. Her primary research project investigates the ways in which the psychological and neurological underpinnings of threat perception influence policy preferences, with a particular focus on national security decision-making.

In the News

a woman with her face covered against fumes is supported by an ash-covered man near the site of the World Trade Center collapse

Shock, insecurity and endless war: How 9/11 changed America and the world

For tens of millions of Americans alive on Sept. 11, 2001, the images are indelible: Flames exploding from a tower of the World Trade Center against a brilliant blue sky. In the shock that followed those terror attacks, it was common to imagine that the world had changed forever. Just how, exactly, no one could know. Twenty years later, after so many other turns of history, the ragged withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan is a reminder of how the nation has struggled to answer the attacks.

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