We are currently exploring the following questions, and others like them:

• What types of people draw our attention? What makes certain people more memorable? What physical characteristics are most influential in processing a social experience
• How do important social goals (e.g., to protect oneself, to find romance) influence the ways in which we perceive and come to understand the individuals around us?
• What happens to social perception when people are motivated to seek revenge, or to try to help others?
• Does fertility affect social cognition?
• How do individual differences interact with people's social surroundings? Does a personal belief translate to projecting functional relevant emotions to other people? For example, does belief in a dangerous world promote seeing anger in other people when it isn't really there?
• Do some social stimuli always trump others? For example, do people always notice someone who may be dangerous? If not, when do typically important stimuli get missed?
• Are people with clinical disorders, such as obsessive compulsive disorder or anxiety disorder, compelled to look at, process, and remember social stimuli differently than other people? For example, perhaps sufferers of OCD are more acutely aware of another's dirty fingernails.

This research is currently funded by grants from

The National Institute for Mental Health
and
The Army Research Institute.