Social Cognition

How do you decide who to date? What do you do when faced with a moral dilemma? When and why will you give to charity? How do you make health decisions? These are all questions that we study in our laboratory.

Below are some of the topics that we study:

Moral Judgment

Any time we are faced with a decision involving issues of “right” and “wrong,” we are making a moral judgment. For example, would you sacrifice five people to save one? What if the one person was your mother? In our lab, we study how people make moral judgments in a variety of situations.

Dating

What is your ideal mate? How do you decide who you are willing to go out on a first date with? What about a second date? In our lab, we study how people make dating decisions.

Health Decisions

When you are feeling sick, what influences your decision to go to the doctor? Is it your symptoms? The cost of the doctor? The time? All three and more? In the lab, we study how people make health-related decisions.

Charitable Giving

We all know that it is good to give to those in need, but we don’t always give – even when we have some extra cash. We are happy, however, to give to our friends even when they don’t really need it. In the lab, we study how people make charitable giving decisions.

Is there a social decision that you are interested in?