Current Projects
Social Emotions as Mediators of Social & Economic Capital
What makes us be fair? Be honest? Be communally-oriented as opposed to selfish? Help others at cost to ourselves? For a long time, the view has been that such seemingly “selfless” decisions or actions stem from self-control and adherence to “higher” principles that tamp down our craven emotions. While this may be true at times, we believe that humans also possess moral emotional responses that push us toward self-sacrifice in the moment in favor of longer-terms gains in social and economic capital. Gratitude, pride, compassion – each of these emotions mediate prosocial actions that have a long-term benefit. As such, they help us solve problems of intertemporal choice.
In a series of experiments funded by the National Science Foundation, we continue to examine the impact of moral emotions like gratitude on phenomena ranging from reciprocity to self-interested vs. communally-oriented economic decision-making to social bonding. We are also examining the dynamics of compassion with an eye toward understanding how it is moderated by the similarity between observers and those in need, how it can lead to forgiveness of moral transgressions, and how it can directly influence third party punishment for transgressions.
The Dynamics of Trust in Novel Partnerships
How do I know whether I should trust you? If I’ve never met you before, can I accurately assess your trustworthiness? These questions hold great import for initial negotiations, as the decision to cooperate with or trust another holds the potential for great benefit and great asymmetric loss. With Bob Frank, Cynthia Breazeal, and David Pizarro, we are working on a multi-site project funded by the NSF Human Social Dynamics Initiative to find answers.
We believe that “the cue” for trustworthiness has not yet been found because a single cue doesn’t exist. It’s more like a dance. Our initial findings reveal that people can ascertain the trustworthiness of others within the context of economic games, but only if they’re exposed to them in real-time (i.e., accuracy is much lower if only verbal information is exchanged via internet chats, etc.). But what predicts accuracy isn’t just single specific cues emitted by others. For accuracy to occur, one must be exposed to sets of cues that, in a probabilistic fashion, dynamically provide insight into the motivational stances of others. We’re currently following up on these initial findings using Cynthia Breazeal’s social robot Nexi, which provides unprecedented abilities to control the types of cues emitted. The results are being written up as you read this, so for now, let’s just say that we think we’d bet that we can make you trust or distrust a robot . . . .
Emotion Guided Prejudice and Threat Detection
Why can the hate or disgust we feel toward different groups fluctuate moment to moment? Why can implicit prejudice emerge seemingly out of thin air? In previous work with Nilanjana Dasgupta, we’ve demonstrated that incidental negative emotional states can (a) create implicit prejudices toward novel groups and (b) increase prejudices toward known groups if the perceived threat associated with the known group matches that associated with the evoked emotion. For example, disgust will increase bias toward any novel outgroup but only increase bias toward known groups that are culturally-associated with purity violations (e.g., homosexuals).
In collaboration with Nilanjana Dasgupta, we are working on a series of projects funded by NSF to illuminate the mechanisms and sequelae associated with this emotion-induced bias. At the micro-level, we’re examining how emotions may influence attention to and the cognitive representation of threat-relevant features associated with specific outgroups. At the macro-level, we’re investigating how these emotion-induced biases influence not only implicit attitudes, but also the potentially discriminatory behaviors that follow from them (e.g., trusting behaviors, reductions in helping, increases in aggressive actions), as well as how emotions influence the “reading” of the intentions and emotional states of others.
We’re also looking at how specific emotional states affect perception. For example, we’re examining whether anger or other negative states can make you see threats that aren’t actually there.