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Person and Context Laboratory
Director: Vivian Zayas, Ph.D.
Latest Research Findings

NPR’S Hidden Brain features Dr. Vivian Zayas

How does physical appearance shape our everyday interactions? Dr. Zayas speaks about the “halo effect” and the research in the lab showing how initial impressions can be “sticky,” influencing our own behaviors and what we elicit in others. Listen here!

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What's New?

• NPR’S Hidden Brain features Dr. Vivian Zayas to discuss how physical appearance can shape our everyday interactions. Link

• Curiosity features a 5-week interview series with Vivian Zayas on mentally representing relationships, implicit attitudes, factors that determine how others see you, the need to feel socially connected, and overcoming the power of exclusion.
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• Newsweek features an article written by Vivian Zayas and Yuichi Shoda titled, "Do you really love your Valentine? How to analyze unconscious negative feelings toward our partners".
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• Vivian Zayas discusses the science of love with Cornell University College of Arts and Sciences.
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About The Person and Context Laboratory

The overarching goal of Person and Context (PAC) Lab is to examine the processes - those that are affective and automatic as well as those that are cognitive and controlled - that shape people's experiences.

Given that many of these processes are occurring at an automatic and at times unconscious level, ongoing projects in the PAC Lab draw from research and theory from social and personality, cognitive, developmental, and most recently cognitive neuroscience.

Some of the topics currently being explored are:
• Mental Representations of Self and Others More Information
• The Social Regulation of Emotions More Information
• Delay of Gratification More Information
• First Impressions More Information
• Perceptions and Reactions to Ambiguous Exclusion More Information
• The Involuntary Excluder Effect Among Best Friends More Information
• Disentangling the Economic and Social Components of Status Perception More Information