CCN Colloquium: "Adaptively navigating our uncertain social worlds"

The success of the human species depends on our ability to interact with and rely on each other. Social interactions, however, are some of the most uncertain situations we encounter. Other people's intentions are both hidden from us and are constantly changing, which makes figuring out who to trust or cooperate with a persistent challenge. Inferring the intentions of others becomes even more challenging when we consider that all social interactions play out on the backdrop of our dense, complex social networks, where a single misstep can ripple across the community. My lab explores the mechanisms that guide adaptive social learning and decision-making under uncertainty. We examine these mechanisms on multiple levels, from resolving uncertainty about another's moral motives in order to trust the right person, to understanding maladaptive coping strategies that can hinder large-scale cooperation, as seen in political polarization. We use a multi-discipline approach to identify the cognitive and neural machinery underlying human social behavior, including applying theories from animal models, borrowing methods from computational neuroscience, and leveraging various neuroimaging techniques. By observing humans in both controlled laboratory settings and out in the wild, we interrogate a spectrum of social behaviors. This talk will give a glimpse into how humans navigate their uncertain social worlds, testing the tools we use to resolve uncertainty in order to make the most adaptive social choices.