Lasana Harris, Third-year Postdoctoral fellow, Department of Psychology

As a third-year post-doc in Elizabeth Phelps' lab, I use my background in social psychology, affective and cognitive neuroscience, and philosophy of mind to explore the role of affect in social and moral decision-making. I utilize primarily economic games, functional magnetic imaging (fMRI) and facial electromyography (EMG) to address these questions. My research interests broadly include person perception, prejudice, dehumanization, anthropomorphism, social learning and emotions, and punishment. As a graduate student at Princeton University, my research suggested that extreme outgroups (homeless people, drug addicts, poor people) are perceived as less than human. Furthermore, these targets disengage valuation neural regions typically active when perceiving inherently positive stimuli such as people. Therefore, my current research explores whether the neural systems underlying decision about these social targets are different, and how we may behave differently toward these people.

How do we decide right and wrong? My projects represent an intersection between economic and legal studies. Using traditional economic games, I design studies to investigate if perceived moral violators are punished differently, and if mental state inference processes moderate these effects. I measure punishment in the context of social interaction, and examine the neural correlates of this behavior. Thus far, my research suggests that the affect elicited by all social targets in an interaction modulates punishment decisions. My current research continues to explore the role of social emotions in moral decision making, looking at how helping behavior and mental state inferences are affected by these emotions as well as past experiences that may have taught participants to respond differently to entities in the social world.

I decided to come to NYU to continue my training because of the strong decision-making focus present at the Center for Neuroeconomics. Having graduated from a social psychology program, my experiences as a post-doctoral student in a cognitive neuroscience lab have proved invaluable in giving me additional tools and theory to explore these important questions. I will join the faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University beginning Fall 2010 where I will continue to explore questions of moral decision-making.