Social Cognitive Science Seminar

The Social Brown Bag (SCSBB) is a Friday talk series featuring ongoing research related to social psychology. Some speakers are students and faculty members in CLPS department, others are guest speakers who are visiting from other departments, schools, or countries. Neither speakers nor audience have to identify themselves as social psychologists, and the atmosphere is always friendly and casual.

SCSBB takes place in Metcalf Research Building, Room 305 (Dome room).

Open to members of the Brown community. To learn of upcoming events, please refer to the live calendar to the right of this page, or subscribe to our event announcements email list.

2023-2024 Speakers


  • Feb. 2 - Samuel Murray, Providence College

  • Feb. 9 - Emily Finn, Dartmouth

  • Feb. 23 - Stefan Anzellotti, Boston College

  • Mar. 1 - Hannah Snyder, Brandeis University

  • Mar. 15 - Konrad Kording, University of Pennsylvania

  • Apr. 5 - Jae-Young Son, Brown University

  • Apr. 19 - Vivienne Chi, Brown University

  • Apr. 26 - Linda Zou, University of Maryland

2022-2023 Speakers


  • Nov. 18 - Liang Qi, East China Normal University: Unfolding social interaction perception over time in the human brain

  • Dec. 9 - Amrita Lamba, CLPS: The (in)flexible social brain: how context and individual differences shape learning under uncertainty

  • Mar. 10 - Meghan Meyer, Columbia: How the human brain makes sense of the social world

2021-2022 Speakers


  • Sept. 17 - 1st Year Students, Brown University

  • Oct. 1 - Jae-Young Son, Brown University: Cognitive maps of social features enable flexible inference in social networks

  • Oct. 15 - Emma Templeton, Dartmouth: A naturalistic approach to studying conversation

  • Oct. 29 - David Melnikoff, Northeastern: How Goals Change Minds

  • Nov. 12- Johanna Vollhardt, Clark University: How do People Make Sense of Collective Violence and Oppression against their Group? Conceptualizing Collective Victim Beliefs

  • Feb. 4 - Drew Jacoby-Senghor, UC Berkeley: Majority Members Misperceive Even 'Win-Win' Diversity Policies as Unbeneficial to Them

  • Feb. 18 - Julia Minson, Harvard University: Conversational Receptiveness: Improving Engagement with Opposing Views 

  • Mar. 11 - Hema Preya Selvanathan, University of Queensland, Australia: The development and diversity of cumulative culture learning

  • Mar. 18 - Cristine Legare, University of Texas at Austin: The development and diversity of cumulative culture learning

  • April 22 - Rasha Abdel Rahman, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin: Face processing and social judgments in the context of emotional (mis)information: A neurocognitive perspective

2020-2021 Speakers


  • Sept. 22 - Joel Martinez, Princeton University: Mapping and shaping cognitive representations of immigrants

  • Oct. 2 - Danny Ullman, Brown University: Human-Robot Trust: A Multi-Dimensional Approach

  • Oct. 16 - Sarah Gaither, Duke University: Multiple Identities = Multiple Sources of Threat & Belonging 

  • Oct. 30 - Noah Goodman, Stanford University: How we come to know

  • Nov. 10- Liane Young, Boston College: Social context shapes social cognition

  • Nov. 13 - Sa-kiera Hudson, Yale University: The connection between hierarchy preferences and (counter-) empathic responding

  • Dec. 4 - Sylvia Perry, Northwestern University: The implications of recognizing and discussing racial bias  

  • Dec. 15 - Joey Heffner, Brown University: Reverse engineering emotions during social interactions

  • Feb. 5 - Natalia Vélez, Harvard University: Cognitive foundations of collaboration

  • Feb. 23 - Neil Lewis Jr, Cornell University: Looking Back to Move Forward: Long-term Effects of Segregation on Perception, Action, and Cognition

  • March. 5, Kimberly Chiew, University of Denver: How Affect and Motivation Guide Adaptive Cognition

  • March. 19, Felipe De Brigard, Duke University: Moral memories and the self

  • April. 30, Cydney Dupree, Yale University: Crossing Status Divides: Stereotypes, Strategies, and Solutions

2018-2019 Speakers


  • Oct. 12 - Mark Thornton, Princeton University

  • Nov. 2 - David DeSteno, Northeastern University:

  • Nov. 16 - Emily Bruneau, UPenn

  • Nov. 30 - Jean-Francois Bonnefon, Toulouse School of Economics

  • Dec. 7 - Boyoung Kim, Brown University
    To be rescheduled

  • Mar. 8 - Mascha van't Wout, Brown University

  • Mar. 15 - Ashley Jordan,

  • Apr. 12 - Jon Freeman,

  • Apr. 26 - Elinor Amit, Brown University

  • May 3 - David Sobel, Brown University

Past Speakers


2015-2016

  • David Sobel, Brown University:
    Coding Choices Affect Interpretations of Theory of Mind Measures (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Unexpected Contents Task)​

  • Fiery Cushman, Harvard University:
    Habitual Action in Social Settings

  • Boyoung Kim, Brown University: 
    The Influence of Social Media Use on Moral Judgments of Microaggressions

  • Xuan Zhao, Brown University: 
    Spontaneous visual perspective taking: When do we see through others' eyes?

  • Patrick Heck, Brown University:
    Prosociality and Egocentrism in the Volunteer’s Dilemma: Behavior, Perception, and Expectation/Outcome Effects

  • Malte Jung, Cornell University: 
    Robots and the Dynamics of Emotions in Teams

  • Katherine McAuliffe, Boston College:
    Children’s Enforcement of Fairness Norms

  • Nir Halevy, Stanford Graduate School of Business:
    The Calculus of Peacemaking

  • Michael Schober, The New School for Social Research:
    Communication Technology Alters Pragmatic and Cognitive Processes

  • Kiley Hamlin, University of British Columbia:
    The origins of human morality: Complex Socio-Moral Evaluation and Action in the First Two Years of Life ​

  • Joanna Korman, Brown University:
    Mindreading Mechanisms in High-functioning Autism

  • Mina Cikara, Harvard University: 
    Their Pain, Our Pleasure

2014-2015

  • Andrew Monroe, Florida State University:
    Not so motivated after all? Taking a closer look at the process of blame

  • Nadia Chernyak, Brown University & Harvard Graduate School of Education:
    Learning through doing: Children's learning about morality through choice

  • Rose McDermott, Brown University:
    Revenge and Deterrence in International Relations

  • Chris Baker, MIT Computational Cognitive Science Group:
    Bayesian Theory of Mind: Modeling Attribution of Beliefs, Desires, Percepts, and Emotions

  • Jennifer Prewitt-Freilino, RISD: 
    Conveying and Reproducing Gender Hierarchies through Language

  • Nina Mazar, University of Toronto:
    Pain of Paying — A Metaphor Gone Literal: Evidence from Neurobiology and Behavioral Decision Making

  • Joachim Krueger, Brown University:
    Let me help you help me: Trust between profit and prosociality

  • Dan Kahan, J.D., Yale Law School:
    How does identity-protective cognition interact with effortful (System 2) information processing? And how about with professional judgment?

  • Justin Martin, Harvard University:
    The function of punishment: Insights from underlying processes and contextual influences