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Kristina Olson  Assistant Professor (PhD. 2008, Harvard University) Social Cognitive Development Lab My research largely focuses on what makes us social beings and how this changes across development. As social beings we have a sense of what's right and what's wrong, we have opinions about who or what is good or appropriate and who or what is disgusting or harmful. We work to understand where or how we acquire this information and understand how it affects who we are and what we do. My main research fits loosely into four intersecting categories. Social Attitudes. How do people decide who to like or dislike? What information do people use vs. what information do they exclude as irrelevant in evaluating another person? How do children learn or know what to use and when? In what ways does our culture or do our experiences influence our social attitudes and the social categories we use in dividing up the social world? Social Inequality. What makes people notice (or fail to notice) social inequality? How do people respond to social inequality? How do people explain social inequality? What influences (if any) do development and environment have on our understanding and response to social inequality? Morality. Who do we share with and how do we decide? Do the rules change as we mature? How do we decide what is fair? Does fairness change depending on the culture we find ourselves in? When do we find differences between people's moral reasoning and people's moral behavior and what explains the discrepancy? Intellectual Property. What does it mean to own an idea? How is it the same or different from owning a physical thing? How do children come to understand this difference? Do children and adults' lay intuitions align with those of legal scholars and policy makers? Sample Publications Olson, K. R., & Spelke, E. S. (2008). Foundations of cooperation in preschool children. Cognition, 108, 222-231. Olson, K. R. & Dweck, C. S. (2008). A blueprint for social cognitive development. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3, 193-202. Olson, K. R., Dunham, Y., Dweck, C.S., Spelke, E. S., & Banaji, M. R. (2008). Judgments of the lucky across development and culture. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94, 757-776. Olson, K.R., Banaji, M. R., Dweck, C. S., & Spelke, E. S. (2006). Children's bias against lucky vs. unlucky people and their social groups. Psychological Science, 17, 845-846. Olson, K.R., Lambert, A. J., & Zacks, J. M. (2004). Graded structure and the speed of category verification: On the moderating effects of anticipatory control for social vs. nonsocial categories. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40, 239-246. |
