At the Impression Formation Social Neuroscience Lab, we study how people form impressions of others and how those impressions shape our thoughts, emotions, and decision-making. Using approaches from social cognition and social neuroscience, our research examines how people interpret and evaluate both humans (e.g., social groups) and non-human agents (e.g., AI).

We investigate how people interpret others based on various perceptual cues (e.g., social identity, perceived trustworthiness, human versus AI) and knowledge (e.g., social status, familiarity, behavior). We are also interested in how these processes are shaped by individual differences, social context, and environmental pressures.

Our work combines psychology, computational modeling, and neuroscience methods to better understand the mechanisms underlying social evaluation and interactions. We use a wide range of techniques, including behavioral experiments, economic games, reinforcement learning models, neural networks, large language models (LLMs), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), event-related potentials (ERP), and psychophysiological measures such as electrocardiography (ECG).

By integrating these approaches, our lab aims to advance understanding of how humans perceive, evaluate, and interact with both people and emerging intelligent systems.