My broad area of interest is social and moral behavior and cognition. I conduct research using a variety of methodologies (e.g., live behavioral studies, online surveys, content analysis) with individuals from a wide range of groups (e.g., young children to adults) to test questions regarding: 1) the role of emotion in social and moral behavior, and 2) how individuals represent and/or evaluate others' social and moral behavior. Together, these lines of work provide insight into the nature and origin of mechanisms that support human cooperation and social functioning.
Emotion in Social & Moral Behavior
- Children’s Experience of Happiness from Giving Resources to Others
- Happiness as a Mechanism for Biased Giving
- Happiness as a Mechanism for Children’s Adherence to Conventional Norms
Social & Moral Evaluation
- Children’s Evaluation of Moral and Conventional Behaviors in Pretend Play
- Adults’ Lay Intuitions and Evaluations of Intellectual Property Rights
- I was the lead graduate research assistant on an NSF-funded project examining adults' judgements about using others' intellectual property as well as their intuitions about why we have intellectual property protection.
- Perceptions of Gender Identity
- As a graduate research assistant, I conducted work within the TransYouth Project (TYP), directed by Dr. Kristina Olson. TYP is a national longitudinal study of transgender, gender non-conforming, and gender variant youth. My work on TYP focused on understanding the basic gender development of preschool-age transgender children, particularly their perceptions of the stability of gender and gender stereotypes.