Social Cognition

Intimacy and Isolation among Homosexuals and Heterosexuals

How is the Eriksonian psychosocial stage of intimacy and isolation different for straight (heterosexual) and gay men/women (homosexual)? What themes surround their life developments? Is there a gender difference in the way they construct this idea of intimacy and isolation?

How do we rate pain for self and others (Theory of Mind ability) and does it depend on our perceived closeness towards them?

How do we process pain for ourselves and for others? Is it dependent on our social relations to them? Or is it dependent on our perceived closeness to them? In addition, does shared understanding of pain tap into our intentions to help others?

Social Cognition, Social Neuroscience

Master’s thesis/project (under progress)

Effect of labels on face preference and trust in theory of mind attributions

Social Cognition

How is the theory of mind ability affected in terms of trust when faces are presented with certain labels (qualities that define their personalities)? Is there a general preference for faces that are considered empathetic? Does empathy provide a route for a belief in the ToM attributions made by the agents?

How do people make moral choices related to other human lives and is this magnitude dependent? (An exploration of the classic trolley problem)

Moral Cognition

The classic sacrificial dilemmas such as the trolley problem have presented the case of moral value related to saving lives for decades. We aim to test out the simple question of magnitude dependency of utilitarian choices (saving more lives) people make in such dilemmas. This involves collecting data from a diverse population. Read more about the field experiences here.