Abigail Marsh, PhD

Abigail Marsh is a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Georgetown University and director of the Laboratory on Social and Affective Neuroscience. She received her BA from Dartmouth College and her PhD in Social Psychology from Harvard University in 2004 and conducted some of the first research aimed at understanding the neurodevelopment of psychopathy at the National Institute of Mental Health from 2004-2008. She focuses on the development of prosocial emotions like empathy, compassion, and remorse, with an emphasis on the neural structures and systems that support these phenomena. Her research in both adolescents and adults incorporates neuroimaging, cognitive and behavioral testing, and pharmacology techniques and has been covered by media outlets that include PBS, NPR, The Washington Post, The Economist, and The Wall Street Journal. She is the author of the award-winning book The Fear Factor and numerous scholarly publications in journals that include the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Psychological Science, the American Journal of Psychiatry, and JAMA Psychiatry.