Our research is driven by an understanding that every person is embedded in an interactive system of social ecological dynamics at all times. These contexts may involve interactions among people, between people and place, and across systems of power and time.
(Tiv et al., 2022, JEP:G)
We use interdisciplinary methods, such as Network Analysis to measure some of these subtle social signals. We also leverage demographic data sources, like population data from the Census, to map out neighborhood characteristics.
Our outcomes of interest leverage a range of experimental neurocognitive and psychological methods.
Eyetracking and reading
Tiv et al., 2021; JNL
Computerized games and timed behavioral tasks
Tiv & Spence, 2024; GPIR
Interactive Dynamics
Research Themes
Language and Social Cognition
How do our social relationships shape our capacity to understand others? We examine how people make social cognitive inferences to predict others’ mental states, thoughts, perspectives, and beliefs (i.e., mentalizing). In one paper, we found that individuals with high bridging potential in their social network demonstrate stronger mentalizing capacity (Tiv et al., 2022, CJEP). We also examine how diverse social experiences, such as bilingualism, relate to how people interpret pragmatically ambiguous language, such as non-literal language.
Liminal Identities and Experiences
Some people go through life feeling like they are in an “in-between” state when it comes to identity or group membership. This feeling is common for people with liminal identities, who experience tension between their own bottom-up, internal understanding of self vs. top down, external perception by others. We examine identity formation among Middle Eastern and North African individuals in the U.S., one liminal community, who regularly negotiate their identity between top-down hegemonic practices and bottom-up political struggles.
Cognitive Adaptations to Diversity
What happens in our minds when we engage with contexts that are socially diverse? We examine cognitive adaptations, such as social category perception, to diversity at various levels of our lived social lives. These range from personal and interpersonal experiences juggling multiple languages, to neighborhood level exposure to racial or linguistic context diversity. Our findings on this topic indicate that people who live in socially diverse neighborhoods may have more flexible social category boundaries than those in homogenous contexts, which suggests that cognitive information processing may be affected by social signals in the environment.