The Social and Behavioral Science Initiative
Co-Directors
Coren Apicella
Associate Professor of Psychology
Interests: Hunter-gatherers, cross-cultural psychology,
evolution of social behaviors – cooperation,
competition and mate choice.
Personal Website
Geoffrey Goodwin
Associate Professor of Psychology
Interests: Social cognition, moral psychology,
and reasoning.
Personal Website
SBSI Postdoctoral Fellows
Kristopher Smith
SBSI Postdoctoral Fellow
Interests: Cooperation, morality, person perception,
folk psychology, evolution, and culture.
Personal Website
Daniel Yudkin
SBSI Postdoctoral Fellow
Interests: Moral judgment, moral transformation, punishment,
political ideology, social comparison, and authenticity.
Personal Website
Lab Coordinators
Tuti Gomoka
Lab Coordinator
Senior in the Wharton School concentrating in Behavioral Economics and Statistics. Enjoys research related to psychology, especially pertaining to individual creativity.
Kassidy Houston
Lab Coordinator
Senior in the College of Arts & Sciences majoring in Psychology with a broader interest in Cognitive Science. Currently works in psycholinguistics research.
SBSI Affiliates
The faculty listed here have agreed to be involved in the initiative but the list is open to all SAS faculty who express interest
Jonathan Baron
Professor of Psychology
Interests: Judgment and decision-making, morality and public policy.
Sudeep Bhatia
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Interests: Judgment and decision-making and computational and mathematical modeling of cognition.
Cristina Bicchieri
Harvie Professor of Social Thought and Comparative Ethics
Interests: Social norms and prosocial behavior.
Damon Centola
Associate Professor of Communication
Interests: Social networks and influence, collective problem solving, political consensus and polarization.
Emily Falk
Associate Professor of Communication
Interests: Social influence, behavior change, social neuroscience and media effects.
Daniel Hopkins
Associate Professor of Political Science
Interests: Racial and ethnic politics, local politics, political behavior and research methods.
Anna Jenkins
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Interests: Cognitive and neural mechanisms of social and economic thought and behavior. Personal Website
Joe Kable
Baird Term Associate Professor of Psychology
Interests: Psychological and neural mechanisms of choice behavior.
Matthew Levendusky
Professor of Political Science
Interests: Political polarization, political psychology, and media effects.
Annie Liang
Assistant Professor of Economics
Interests: Economic theory (in particular, learning and information), and the application of machine learning methods for theory building and evaluation.
Barb Mellers
I. George Heyman University Professor
Interests: Behavioral decision theory, emotions, fairness, preference measurement, geopolitical forecasting and public policy.
Diana Mutz
Samuel A. Stouffer Professor of Political Science and Communication
Interests: Political psychology, media and politics, public opinion, political communication.
Aurelie Ouss
Assistant Professor of Criminology
Interests: Prison experience and recidivism, behavioral and economic determinants of sentencing and “big data” and public policy.
Anna Papafragou
Professor of Linguistics
Interests: Language and social cognition, theory of mind in children and adults, pragmatics and communication across language communities
Michael Platt
James S. Riepe University Professor
Interests: Animal learning and behavior, control of action, individual differences and behavior gene.
Gareth Roberts
Assistant Professor of Linguistics
Interests: Language evolution, language change, language variation, cultural evolution, experimental semiotics, social interaction. Personal Website
Paul Rozin
Professor of Psychology
Interests: Cultural psychology, the role of food in human life, positive psychology, the meaning of “natural” and positive and negative memories.
Martin Seligman
Zellerback Family Professor of Psychology
Interests: Positive psychology, resilience, optimism, learned helplessness, creativity. Personal Website
Meredith Tamminga
Assistant Professor of Linguistics
Interests: Intersection of sociolinguistics, experimental
psycholinguistics, and theoretical linguistics
Phil Tetlock
Leonore Annenberg University Professor
Interests: De-biasing judgment and choice, designing
accountability systems and forecasting.