Dr. Shir Genzer was awarded a Fulbright fellowship to pursue her research project titled "The Trajectory of Empathy in Emerging Friendships: A Longitudinal, Multi-Method Dyadic Study". In her research, Shir investigates how empathy shapes the development of friendships over time, combining behavioral and neural tools to uncover the mechanisms underlying social connection. While most studies examine empathy at a single time point among strangers or romantic couples, her project takes a longitudinal approach, tracking how the function of empathy and its neural underpinnings shift throughout a developing relationship in ways that foster closeness. As loneliness becomes an increasingly pressing global concern, this work illuminates how meaningful social bonds are formed and sustained.

During her PhD at the Hebrew University, under the supervision of Professor Anat Perry, Shir investigated empathy from a dyadic perspective, exploring how different elements of an interaction shape the experience of both partners. Her work combined naturalistic behavioral methods with physiological measures such as EEG, heart rate, skin conductance, and eye tracking, capturing empathy as it unfolds in real time between people.

Genzer, S., & Perry, A. (in press). Empathy as a dyadic process. Nature Reviews Psychology.

Genzer, S., Rum, Y., Krämer, U. M., & Perry, A. (in press). Seeing to Connect: How Visual and Auditory Channels Shape Empathic Interactions in Digital Communication. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

Genzer, S., Rubin, R., Sened, H., Rafaeli, E., Ochsner, K., Cohen, N., & Perry, A. (2025). Directional bias in interpersonal emotion perception. Nature Communications. 17(1), 167. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-66879-2