Jon Gruda

My research follows three main streams.

Firstly, I study leader-follower interactions as well as the perception of leadership from the follower perspective. I do so in various contexts, including online interactions. In terms of research methods, most of my work is experimental in nature (experimental psychology) as well as longitudinal. Together with colleagues I have also developed and applied machine learning algorithms to predict various personality traits, such as narcissism, in online interactions.

Secondly, I have been focusing on introducing data science methods, such as machine learning and AI and Big Data, into the leadership and management literature. Currently, there have only been initial attempts to introduce these methods into the applied psychology literature. For example, the interdisciplinary research work with colleagues, now allows us to accurately predict anxiety using social media data. In turn, our algorithm can now be used to track anxiety in specific samples or entire populations over time.

Finally, my third research stream focuses on the merger of my training in psychology and my academic background in affective neuroscience. To that effect, I have begun working with an interdisciplinary research team, in which we aim to identify and study the impact of both physiological and psycho-social phenotypes on leadership ability.