Cultural Dynamics Lab
The Cultural Dynamics Laboratory is devoted to studying the interplay between psychological change and societal change. We hope to better understand and predict the psychological impact of new technologies, institutions, and environmental events, with a focus on cultural values and belief systems.
We also examine how these psychological changes might scale up to shape the technological, institutional, and environmental events of tomorrow. Our group is theoretically guided by models of social psychology and cultural evolution. We test predictions from these theories using a broad set of methodologies from the experimental and computational social sciences.
What defines the lab
We bridge models of psychology, such as constructionism and information processing, with models of cultural evolution, such as attraction, dual-inheritance theory, and niche construction.
Our lab’s work spans many processes. We study political and religious belief systems, moral, emotional, and personality concepts, and sociocultural values to draw out broader truths about psychological change.
We combine theoretical models and experimental data with archival datasets that reveal the real-world manifestations of the phenomena we study.