His areas of research interest focus on culture and cognition, issues of cultural variability and universality, cultural evolution, religious cognition, and the psychology of widespread beliefs. He received his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Michigan in 1999, where he did interdisciplinary graduate work in the Culture and Cognition Program of the Anthropology and Psychology Departments. Prior to his appointment at UBC, Dr. Norenzayan was a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre de Recherche en Epistemologie Appliquee (CREA), Ecole Polytechnique, Paris, after which he served on the faculty of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. In 2002, he became Faculty Associate of the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies in Vancouver, Canada. He is Associate Professor of Psychology at UBC since 2007.