Principal Investigator

Jason Mitchell, Ph.D. [vita]
Jason employs functional neuroimaging (fMRI) and behavioral methods to study how we infer the thoughts, feelings, and opinions of others (i.e., how we mentalize) as well as how we reason about counterfactual experiences. He received his B.A. and M.S. degrees from Yale University in 1997 and his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2003. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University.

 

Postdoctoral Fellows Joe Moran [website]
Joe studies the behavioral and neural correlates of social cognition in young and elderly participants; this is an exciting topic area where no clear understanding or consensus has emerged on just how or if social cognition becomes selectively impaired as we advance in age. He received his Ph.D. from Dartmouth College, and completed previous post-doctoral training at MIT, where he studied social cognition in autism. He is currently a post-doctoral research associate at Harvard University. 

Jamil Zaki [website]
Jamil studies the relationships between social cognitive processes (such as mentalizing and affect sharing) and outcomes (such as interpersonal accuracy, conformity, and altruism) using behavioral and neuroscientific methods. He received his B.A. from Boston University and his Ph.D. from Columbia University. He is currently a post-doctoral research associate at Harvard University.

Susana Carmona [email]
Susana studies the psychological and neural mechanisms whereby people construct the self-concept. She received her Ph.D. from Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona (Spain) and is currently a post-doctoral research associate at Harvard University


Graduate Students

Diana Tamir [website]
Diana is interested in how brains think for and about humans. She studies egocentric biases and the cognitive and neural mechanisms for escaping subjective experiences of the here and now. She received her Sc.B in cognitive neuroscience from Brown University and is currently a graduate student in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University.

Juan Manuel Contreras [website]
Juan Manuel studies how we process information relevant to social groups. Currently, he studies the beliefs that we have about and attribute to groups as well as the categorization of faces on the basis of group membership. He received his A.B. from Princeton University in 2009 and his A.M. from Harvard University in 2011. He is currently a graduate student in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University.

Brandi Newell [email]
Brandi is interested in the neural bases of social and moral decision making. She studies how individuals' unconscious biases and propensities to put themselves in others' shoes, affect judgments and interactions. She recieved her B.A. from Wellesley College in 2008 and is currently a graduate student in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University.

Mark Thornton [email]
Mark is interested in how people make accurate social inferences and take effective social action. He studies the relations between cognitive processes such as working memory and social processes such as mentalizing. He received his A.B. from Princeton University in 2011 and is currently a graduate student in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University.


Lab Manager Eshin Jolly [email]
Eshin is interested in how we conceptualize what it means to be social. He received his B.A. from the University of Rochester in 2010 and is currently a lab manager and research assistant in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University.


Former Lab Members

Adam Waytz [website]
Adam is currently an assistant professor at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management. He studies how people think about minds. He received his B.A. from Columbia University, his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and was formerly a post-doctoral research associate at Harvard University.

Dan Ames [email]
Dan is currently a graduate student at Princeton University, where he employs both neuroimaging and behavioral methods to study impression formation and the effects of social power on our perceptions of others. He hopes to one day own a Ph.D. and/or a tweed jacket (with elbow patches). He received his B.A. in psychology from Dartmouth College where he studied the science of human understanding without the inconvenient presence of any actual human beings.

Dave Johnson [email]
Dave is currently a graduate student in the department of neuroscience at Weill Cornell Medical College. He is interested in using behavioral and neuroimaging methodologies to explore the neural, psychological and developmental mechanisms associated with emotion and cognitive control. He received his B.A. in psychology from New York University, where he worked in the lab of Elizabeth Phelps.

Jess Schirmer [email]