His research focuses on improving educational settings through enhancing the social interactions of teachers and students. His recent research has focused on social perspective taking – how people discern the thoughts and feelings of others within the classroom and how identifying similarities between teachers and students might help improve their relationships. In addition to this substantive interest, he is also interested in helping social scientists to design effective questionnaires. He teaches classes in both of these areas. After graduating with a B.A. from Swarthmore College in psychology and education, Gehlbach taught high school social studies before completing an M.Ed. in school counseling from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and a Ph.D. in educational psychology from Stanford.