Areas of Research Interest and Links to Publications
Group-based emotions: Research on the emotions that people experience as a result of their group memberships (social identities), and the role of these emotions in prejudice and intergroup behavior. For example, people may perceive outgroups as threatening their own group (the ingroup) in different ways, and as a result experience different negative emotions (fear, anger, disgust, etc.). These emotions in turn motivate distinct types of intergroup behavior, such as avoidance or attack. Example research topics in past and ongoing work include: What are the typical emotions for different types of groups? Can people predict the group-based emotions of outgroup members? How do emotions toward the ingroup (not just the outgroup) drive intergroup behavior? How can changes in group-based emotions contribute to reducing prejudice?
Social influence by other people or groups: Research on the ways that other people who are important or salient to us, as well as meaningful ingroups, influence the individual’s own thoughts, feelings, and behavior. Example research topics in past and ongoing work include: How do people use gossip (information transmitted by others in conversation) as input to the process of forming impressions of people? Under what circumstances does knowledge of another person’s belief or attitude unintentionally influence the individual’s own responses? Could knowing or mentally simulating other people’s opinions about the self influence our own self-concept? Might simulating other people’s emotional reactions to events amplify our own emotions?
Other research topics: Our lab also conducts research on a variety of other topics, including prejudice against robots, basic processes in social cognition, multi-agent modeling, and embodied cognition.