Social Judgment:

How do people form impressions of others?  What information do they use when forming those impressions?  These are some of the basic research questions in the field of social cognition.  I examine the information processing strategies people use when making social, legal, and political judgments; the processes underlying impression change; the cognitive and motivational underpinnings of causal explanations; cognitive and motivational processes underlying the use of stereotypes.

Social Memory:

The information we attend to in our social environment, the information we store in memory, and the information we retrieve from memory ultimately shape our judgments and decisions.  Hence, I am interested in understanding the factors that influence what types of social information are attended to, how that information about people and groups is encoded and organized in memory, and how the accessibility of that information from memory ultimately influences social judgment.

Psychology of Pedagogy:

Social and cognitive factors influence students’ learning and retention.  I am particularly interested in metacognitive and heuristic processes involved in self-assessments of learning and academic performance.  I am also interested in how the social stereotypes of academic abilities of various groups affect students’ performances, self-appraisals, and interactions with teachers and fellow students.