The greatest challenges we currently face—climate change, political polarization, financial meltdowns, the opioid epidemic, disruptive technologies—all involve enormously complex physical and social systems. While specialists rely on technical theories and models to make sense of these issues, most of us lack the expertise to follow suit. And yet it’s our collective action that will determine global outcomes in these domains. This raises an important set of psychological questions that our research aims to address: How do people think and reason about complex social and political issues? What factors shape this decision-making process? And how can we leverage these insights to improve people’s lives? Read on for more information about some of the projects we have been working on that help answer these questions.

METAPHOR in LANGUAGE and THOUGHT
One way to gain insight into how people think about complex subjects is to look at how they talk about them. When people communicate about abstract concepts like the economy or complex issues like climate change they often do so metaphorically. Our work examines how such metaphors might reflect and shape how we think about the world. We have found that framing a discussion of a complex topic with metaphor can influence how people reason about everything from the federal budget, to law enforcement, to climate change, and metaphors are effective whether you read them for yourself or listen to someone else. Our work also shows that metaphors that arise in natural language reflect in part how people represent abstract domains like emotional valence (as in, “she’s down in the dumps, give her a lift!”). For an overview of our ideas about metaphor, check out THIS recent paper or THIS recent talk. 

LAY THEORIES of THE SOCIAL WORLD
While scientists use formal models to make sense of complex systems and behaviors, most people rely on more informal lay theories: relatively simple conceptual schemas for how the world works that guide behavior and organize how we make sense of, respond to, and learn from our environments. Our work examines the nature and consequences of holding particular lay theories, as well as the factors that shape these beliefs. For example, we have looked at how narratives and personal stories affect lay theories of obesity and subsequent support for policy interventions, and how labels and metaphors influence lay theories of mental illnesses like depression and addiction. Our latest projects explore how lay theories of the economy shape how people respond to social information, as well as the lay theories students hold about the nature of teaching. 

ACTION in COGNITION
According to an embodied cognition perspective, complex mental abilities are grounded in more basic sensorimotor systems in the brain and emerge from the dynamic interplay between brain, body, and world. This framework has helped us generate and test novel predictions about how people process faces, how physical motor experiences affect how we perceive and imagine everyday objects, and how metaphorical concepts are learned and emerge across cultures. We are now exploring how our actions and use of technology can extend and constrain our cognitive powers in different ways. For example, we have looked at the effects of storing and destroying notes on verbal memory, and we are starting to investigate possible consequences of smartphone use on memory and emotional wellbeing for college students.