Dr. Johnson earned his BA in psychology from NYU and PhD in neuroscience from Weill Cornell Medical College. He directs the Cognition Emotion Lab at CSI, where he and his research team study emotional learning and memory in humans, with a particular focus on classical fear conditioning and regulation as core processes. A primary goal of the research is to identify factors that mediate emotional learning processes and contribute to the development of fear-related disorders, such as PTSD and phobias, in order to inform improved diagnostic approaches and more effective treatments.
The Cog Emo Lab also contributes to the effort to build a more robust and replicable corpus of knowledge in the psychological sciences, working on several team-science projects with the Psychological Science Accelerator, a globally distributed network of psychological scientists who pool intellectual and material resources to address big questions rooted in theory and/or real-world problems.
Dr. Johnson also has an interest in research focused on pedagogy. One recently published study explored students’ attitudes and beliefs about what constitutes effective teaching.
Degrees
PhD, Weill Cornell Medicine
BA, New York University
Heyman, T., Pronizius, E., Lewis, S. C., Johnson, Dave. C, et al. (2025). Crowdsourcing multiverse analyses to explore the impact of different data-processing and analysis decisions: A tutorial. Psychological Methods. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/met0000770
Bruntsch, M., Cooper, S. E., Abend, R., Boor, M., Chalkia, A., Ehlers, M. R., Johnson, D., … Lonsdorf, T. B. (2024, April 26). Associations between anxiety-related traits and fear acquisition and extinction - an item-based content and meta-analysis. OSF. Stage 1 Registered Report. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/unx7w
Buchanan, E.M., Cuccolo, K., Heyman, T., … Johnson, D.C., et al. (2025). Measuring the semantic priming effect across many languages. Nat Hum Behav. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-025-02254-x
Johnson, D.C., Coulter-Kern, M. (2024). Listening to students: Attitudes and beliefs about active learning and effective lecture-style college courses. Active Learning in Higher Education, 26(2), p 381-396. https://doi.org/10.1177/14697874241254465
Yang, X., Schulz, J., Schmidt, K., …. Johnson, D.C. …Dunham, Y. (2024). Large-scale cross-societal examination of real and minimal-group biases. Nature Human Behavior. Stage 1 Registered Report https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/5gpr4
Johnson, D., Wingman, H., Uddin, B., Tetteh-Quarshie, S., & Morriss, J. (2023). Evidence for Different Roles of Inhibitory and Prospective Intolerance of Uncertainty During Threat Discrimination Learning. Collabra: Psychology, 3 January 2023; 9 (1): 74822. https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.74822
Forscher, P. S., Taylor, V. J., Cavagnaro, D., Lewis Jr, N., Buchanan, E. M., Moshontz, H., … Johnson, D.C. ... & Chartier, C. R. (2019). Stereotype Threat in Black College Students Across Many Operationalizations. Nature Human Behaviour. Stage 1 Registered Report. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/6hju9
Schiller, D., Monfils, MH., Raio, C.M., Johnson, D.C. et al. (2018). Addendum: Preventing the return of fear in humans using reconsolidation update mechanisms. Nature 562, E21
Divencha, I., Drysdale, A. Hartley, C.A., Johnson, D.C., Glatt, C., Lee, F.S., & Casey, B.J. (2015). FAAH genetic variation enhances fronto-amygdala function in mouse and human. Nature Communications 6.
Johnson, D.C. & Casey, B.J. (2015). Extinction during memory reconsolidation blocks recovery of fear in adolescents. Scientific Reports 5, 8863.
Johnson, D.C. & Casey, B.J. (2015). Easy to remember, difficult to forget: the development of fear regulation. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience 11, 42-55.
Pattwell, S., Duhoux, S., Hartley, C., Johnson, D.C., Jing, D., Elliott, M., Ruberry, E., Powers, A., Mehta, N., Yang, R., Soliman, F., Glatt, C., Casey, B.J., Ninan, I., & Lee, F.S. (2012). Altered fear learning across development in both mouse and human. Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences USA 109, 16318–16323.
Schiller, D., Monfils, M.H., Raio, C.M., Johnson, D.C., LeDoux, J.E., & Phelps, E.A. (2010). Preventing the return of fear in humans using reconsolidation update mechanisms. Nature 463 (7277), 49-53.
