Rami Gabriel Ph.D.

Rami Gabriel, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Psychology at Columbia College Chicago, where he is a founding Fellow of the Research Group in Mind, Science and Culture.

Dr. Gabriel is the author of Why I Buy: Self, Taste, and Consumer Society in America (Intellect Press, 2013), a book that explains how self-identity plays out in our historical context of consumer society.

His second book, co-authored with philosopher Dr. Stephen T. Asma, is published by Harvard University Press, its title is The Emotional Mind: The Affective Roots of Culture and Cognition (2019). From prehistoric cave art to the songs of Hank Williams, the authors explore how the evolution of the emotional mind stimulated our species’ cultural expression in all its rich variety. Bringing together insights and data from philosophy, biology, anthropology, neuroscience, and psychology, The Emotional Mind offers a new paradigm for understanding what it is that makes us both unique from and similar to other mammals.

His third book, A Suspicious Science: The Uses of Psychology, in which the various guises of psychology – in popular culture, drug use, therapy, self-help, and experimental psychology – are considered in terms of their roots in superstition and belief and respective visions of human nature, will be published by Oxford University Press.

Trained as a cognitive and perceptual scientist under Self expert Dr. Stan Klein (UCSB), he has published empirical studies on memory, self, emotion, prosopagnosia, consciousness, and the philosophy of cognitive science in the academic journals Cognition & Emotion, Social Cognition, and Journal of Consciousness studies. He writes popular press essays for British intellectual journal Aeon and has appeared (as a puppet) on Scientific American. Dr. Gabriel is part of a web series of video discussions called Minding Emotions on blogginghead.tv and meaning of life.tv.

He is a member of the Society for Social and Affective Neuroscience, Cognitive Science Society, Southern Society of Philosophy and Psychology, Society for Philosophy and Psychology, Association for Scientific Study of Consciousness, International Neuropsychoanalysis Society, American Psychological Association, American Culture Association, Popular Culture Association, Black Metropolis Research Consortium, and Association for the study of African American Life and History.

Lastly, Dr. Gabriel is a composer and musician, he performs and records on the oud, guitar, and buzuq.