Description:

The success of the human species depends on our ability to interact with and rely on each other. Social interactions, however, are some of the most uncertain situations we encounter. Other people’s intentions are hidden from us and are constantly changing, which makes figuring out who to trust or cooperate with a persistent challenge. My lab's research explores the mechanisms that guide adaptive social learning and decision-making—e.g., how do we predict another’s moral motives and leverage that information to trust the right people? We use a multi-discipline approach to identify the neural machinery underlying human social behavior, including applying theories from animal models, borrowing methods from computational neuroscience, and capitalizing on various state of the art neuroimaging techniques. By observing humans in both controlled laboratory settings and out in the wild, we are able to interrogate a spectrum of behaviors, from decisions made during dyadic interactions to the social tensions that play out across entire communities. This talk will give a glimpse into how humans are able to learn about their social worlds in order to make more adaptive decisions to trust and cooperate with the right people at the right time.

About Oriel FeldmanHall