Research

    Why do people take risks? Why do certain people grab our attention? Why do some people desire power, and what are they willing to do to get it? Research in our lab addresses questions like these, exploring ways in which social motives and emotions influence a range of cognitive, perceptual, and biological processes such as attention, memory, person perception, decision-making, and hormonal responses. Our research bridges social cognitive and evolutionary approaches by examining the proximate, goal-driven features of adaptive social cognition. We use a variety of empirical tools such as eye-tracking, hormone assessment, and implicit measures of cognition. Our current work focuses on a range of topics including romantic attraction and close relationships, power and dominance, intergroup processes, affiliation-seeking, and anxiety. Below are some examples of our current research. For references, please see our Publications page.

Romantic Relationships:

People spend a tremendous amount of energy forming and maintaining long-term romantic relationships. Our work on romantic relationships focuses on two fundamental human motivations: 1) seeking out new romantic partners, and 2) protecting long-term relationships. Much of this work focuses on lower-order cognitive processes that are engaged when these motivations are activated. Our studies have shown, for example, that emotions such as sexual arousal, jealousy, or romantic love can influence how we attend to, remember, and implicitly evaluate specific individuals in our environment (e.g., potential relationship partners, romantic rivals, attractive relationship alternatives).

Power and Dominance:

Many people desire power. Our research attempts to understand how the desire for power and dominance interacts with situational factors to guide psychological and interpersonal processes. Current research focuses on questions such as: Are individuals in power more likely to use mental shortcuts (heuristics) to make decisions? When and why do leaders sacrifice the good of the group for the sake of their own power? How does power alter how we perceive and think about other people?

Self-Protective Responses to Threat:

Aversive experiences are an inevitable feature of human existence. People encounter many different types of threat: the threat of rejection, threats to the physical self, threats to one's level of social dominance, threats to self-esteem, and so on. We use a variety of social psychological and evolutionary theories to understand how people respond functionally - and sometimes dysfunctionally - to various forms of threat. Some of our current studies for example focus on when and in whom perceptions of threat lead to prosocial outcomes (e.g., affiliation-seeking, resilience), versus negative outcomes (e.g., distress, withdrawal, prejudice).