Thanks for your interest in my research! Below I've described a few of the areas my collaborators and I have explored. If you clicked the "Research" link because you would like to participate in psychology research, you may do so here, here, or here.
Agency and Time
This research looks at how agency shapes the perception of time. When the mind infers that one's action has caused an event, it creates a perceptual illusion in which action and event seem closer in time than they really are. We have found that the presence of certain agency cues - such as consistency between one's action and the subsequent event - enhances this illusion.
The Problem with Free Will
This research looks at the potential downsides of believing in free will, such as a tendency to underestimate the extent to which situations affect one's behavior.
Moral Hypocrisy
This research proposes that engaging in "immoral" behavior can spur one to preach against that same behavior, and that preaching against a behavior can, ironically, make it more tempting - resulting in a kind of self-fulfilling hypocrisy.
Priming and Measurement
This research asks whether the psychological effects of an event depend on how we measure those effects. In some cases, it appears that the same event can have completely opposite effects in two different measurement contexts, effects that persist beyond the act of measurement.
Implicit Social Cognition and Prejudice
People carry extensive knowledge about the attitudes of others. Our research has looked at what happens when one is subtly reminded of other people - does one then, without even knowing it, see the world more like they do?
In a separate line of research using a fear conditioning procedure, we found evidence that people are predisposed to learn to fear members of other racial groups - a tendency that is significantly weaker among those with a history of interracial contact.
In other research, we found that men who have the most positive automatic associations with women also have the most sexist beliefs - suggesting that implicit positivity can sometimes stem from inegalitarian beliefs.
Self-Control and Aggression
Our research has found that heightened arousal (from, say, exercise) focuses attention onto whatever is most salient in a situation - leading to increased aggression when the situation calls for aggression, but decreased aggression when the situation calls for peace.
| CV | Research | |