Researchers in the social cognition lab perform experiments in a variety of different social cognition areas. For example, some of our attribution research deals with the interplay of affective and cognitive factors in influencing attributions, the effects of extreme behaviors on attributions, and on how different attribution processes are relevant for making attributions about different kinds of traits.

Related research concerns impression formation and memories about the behaviors that others have performed. Other research is being conducted to gain a more complete understanding of the causes of behavior. We often find that putative causes of behaviors (e.g., attitudes, perceived behavioral control, and others), when investigated closely, are really amalgamations of more specific causes and these amalgamations are experimentally separable. There are also individual differences in the extent to which different people's behaviors are controlled by different causes.

Yet other research is informed by evolutionary and cross-cultural factors, both of which suggest some surprising problems with standard theorizing in social psychology. Finally, we have devoted recent research efforts to developing better methodological and statistical procedures for investigating social cognition phenomena. For more information about the Social Cognition Lab, please contact Dr.Trafimow.