CURRENT RESEARCH

The UNC Social Cognitive Neuroscience Lab is devoted to examining research questions of theoretical importance to social and cognitive psychology using a combination of psychological, behavioral, and physiological measures. An overview of the measures and research methods typically used in our research can be found here. Currently, the lab is primarily devoted to the study of electrophysiological activity related to person perception (i.e., stereotypes, prejudice, impression-formation, expectancies), aggression, media violence, and alcohol effects on cognition. Click on the links below to learn more about specific ongoing projects:
 

Expectancy Violations, Cognition, and Affect
 

Alcohol Effects on Stereotype Activation and Use
 

Social Categorization and Information Processing
 

Media Violence and Desensitization
 

Environmental Cues to Aggression
 

Alcohol Effects on Cognition and Stereotype Activation and Use. Although alcohol is known to impair cognitive functioning and disrupt normal behavioral processes, very little is currently known about how alcohol influences our perceptions of other people, and how those perceptions guide our behavior toward them. This project aims to understand how alcohol influences our perceptions of and judgments about people who are similar to us (i.e., our “ingroup”) and people who are different from us (i.e., “outgroups”) on important social dimensions such as race and gender. We measure ERPs and behavioral responses (response time and response accuracy) in order to provide a comprehensive look at alcohol's effects at the level of the brain and motor responses resulting in stereotype-relevant behavior.
 
 

Overview of Research Methods and Measures in the UNC-SCNL
 

In general, we are primarily interested in how various stimuli related to social perception are processed in the brain, and how this processing translates into outcomes such as behavior, judgments, and memory. To do this, we use a multi-method approach involving measurement of psychophysiological activity, response times, behavioral decisions, and various self-reported ratings. Our primary psychophysiological measure is the event-related brain potential (ERP). ERPs are an aspect of the ongoing electroencephalogram (EEG) that are time-locked to discrete stimuli, or events. In general terms, ERPs are an index of information processing activity that can be linked to specific psychological processes. A major advantage of measuring ERPs in research on social-cognitive processes is their temporal specificity. That is, ERPs allow us to examine the time course of processing that some information or stimulus receives, on a millisecond level. Some current applications of ERPs in our lab include the assessment of stereotype activation upon exposure to members of stereotyped groups, the link between processing of expected and unexpected social information and later memory of that information, and potential changes in the categorization of stimuli over time.
 

Another measure of interest to us is the electromyogram (EMG), or the electrical activity associated with muscle movement. Much of our work involves measurement of EMG activity from specific facial locations related to the expression of emotion. By measuring facial EMG, we are able to track emotional reactions to specific stimuli, and because EMG is a very sensitive measure, we can assess emotional reactions that would otherwise be too small to notice.