LAB MEMBERS
Lab Director
YAACOV TROPE
Professor Of Psychology
My research focuses on two sets of issues. The first concerns the cognitive, motivational, and social factors that enable people to transcend the "here and now." People often get immersed in their immediate egocentric concerns. My lab examines what enables people to go beyond those myopic concerns and see themselves in the future, through another person's eyes, in different societies and cultures, and in hypothetical and novel situations. There is marked variation in the breadth of people’s mental horizons, namely, in how distant in time, culture, and geography are the possibilities people envision, care about, and plan for. My research seeks to shed light on the psychological mechanisms that narrow or broaden people’s mental horizons. We also explore the real life consequences of narrow vs. broad mental horizons for the way people relate to their social and natural environment.
The second set of issues concerns self control. The question is when and how people fail to do what they want while possessing the knowledge, skill, and opportunity that are required to do what they want. How do we—individuals or groups—(sometimes) manage to act in line with our overriding goals when faced with tempting alternatives? This research investigates the conscious and unconscious mechanisms that serve to resolve conflicts between people's local, short-term concerns and their global, long-term concerns.
Postdoctoral Researchers
Rasha Kardosh
Rasha Kardosh is a Provost Postdoctoral Fellow in the Psychology Department. Rasha’s research centers on how the cognitive system represents the social diversity of our environments. Building on classical theories and paradigms from social psychology and cognitive science, she explores the different cognitive processes that underlie our (mis)perceptions of the diversity of social environments and our social views on diversity and equality.
Chen Pundak
User‐generated content (UGC) presents a vast and rich source of "digital traces" of individuals' experiences and mental accounts. My research focuses not only on what people share but when they are sharing it and how: on which frequencies since their previous online activity, how upcoming stressors affect their online sharing routine, and how they utilize personal information of themselves and others.
In another research line, I look at how individuals minimize uncertainty regarding innovative and creative new products and ideas and how it affects their adoption process. My research includes the context of online public shaming, digital social support during health treatments, and consumer recommendation systems. I’m combing between experimental methods and secondary structured and unstructured data.
Graduate Students
John Sciarappo
Generally speaking, I utilize construal level theory to understand social perception. More specifically, I am interested in how specific cognitive processes (e.g. abstraction) affect (1) the dimensions people use to understand other people and groups and (2) the weight people give to these dimensions when the attainment of desirable outcomes depends on others.
Maryam Bin Meshar
My research explores the psychological mechanisms that shape social projection and mental states inferences. I’m interested in how people perceive similarities with others across time, space, and social groups and how people expand their mental horizons when they learn new information, specially when their motivation is to inform others. I'm also interested in understanding the cognitive underpinnings of mental states inferences.
Kalman Victor
My research focuses on how we move beyond egocentric reference to experience altercentric social distance, including but not limited to perspective-taking processes. I’m particularly interested in how we may use these strategies to mentally/linguistically represent socially diverse pluralities in an integrative manner. Methodologically, I hope to develop the use of novel computational approaches in the measurement of abstraction in big and small language data.
MaXiao
MaXiao (Ma-sh-iao) is a second-year doctoral student in the Social Psychology program at NYU. He received his BA (2019) in Psychology and Statistics from Carleton College, MN. After graduation, he conducted clinical research as a post-graduate associate at Yale Psychiatry, OCD Research Clinic. His research interests focus on how construal levels affect self-control processes, and how this research can be applied to interpersonal settings to help facilitate growth and bridge performance gaps in minority students.
Lab Affiliates
Rui Du
Ph.D. Candidate, Marketing Department, Baruch CollegeMy research focuses on understanding how consumer interaction with technology influences their moral behavior. Morality has long been a topic in intellectual history. My research explores the theoretical as well as practical implications of moral decision making under the context of human-technology interaction. This area of research extends a preponderance of theoretical work in morality into a technology context and offers exciting findings to academics and marketing managers.
Lewend Mayiwar
Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Leadership and Organizational Behavior, BI Norwegian Business SchoolThe first line of my research examines how psychological distance regulates the influence of emotions like fear on decision making involving risk and uncertainty. The second examines the (bidirectional) relation between emotions, construal level, and mental scope. I am currently working on bringing these two lines of research together.
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Dartmouth UniversityUniversity of MissouriUniversity of California - Davis Tel Aviv UniversityOpen University of Israel Hampshire CollegeUniversity of TorontoAssistant Professor of MarketingUniversity of California - Los AngelesRuppin Academic CenterOpen University of Israel National University of SingaporeUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignThe University of Texas at AustinUniversity of California - Santa BarbaraMcGill UniversityWilliam Paterson UniversityNielsenStreitgutUniversity of California, San DiegoPrinceton UniversityUniversity of Southern CaliforniaUniversity of Southern CaliforniaThe University of TrierColumbia UniversityUniversity of Pennsylvania
Assistant Professor of Business AdministrationPost-Doctoral FellowAssistant Professor of PsychologyProfessor of PsychologySenior Lecturer in PsychologyVisiting Assistant ProfessorAssistant Professor of MarketingUniversity of MiamiPost-doctoral Research FellowSenior LecturerLecturer in PsychologyAssistant Professor in the Department of PsychologyProfessor of PsychologyProfessor of MarketingAssistant Professor of PsychologyAssistant Professor of MarketingAssistant Professor of PsychologySenior Manager, Analytic ConsultingConsultantAssistant Professor of Management and StrategyProfessor of PsychologyAssociate Professor of MarketingAssociate Professor of Management and OrganizationProfessor of Social PsychologyLecturer in the Discipline of PsychologyPostdoctoral Fellow