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The Social-Cognitive Science Lab is hiring!

I am recruiting a Lab Manager and Research Specialist to begin Summer/Fall 2025! See details on how to apply.
I am reviewing graduate student applications for the 2024-2025 application cycle! Read more for tips on how to apply.

Stunning views, when the sun's not on sabbatical.

	Director
	Sally Y. Xie, Ph.D (she/they) will join the Psychology Department at Simon Fraser University as an Assistant Professor in January 2025. Currently, she is a Postdoctoral Scholar at Princeton University advised by Prof. Molly Crockett, and earned her PhD in Experimental Psychology as a SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier Doctoral Fellow at McGill University, advised by Prof. Eric Hehman. Professor Xie is fascinated by the flexibility of human thinking, reasoning, and feeling as we experience our dynamic social world. She uses methods such as in situ experience-sampling, “big data” archival analysis, narrative analysis, and computational modeling to study how people form mental models of others and themselves. Driven by the belief that understanding where our ideas come from can help us shape how they’re formed, her work aims to address collective problems and bridge ideological divides. Outside of the lab, she enjoys interactive narratives, racquet sports, games with (and versus) loved ones, piano, and trail running.

Director

Sally Y. Xie, Ph.D (she/they) will join the Psychology Department at Simon Fraser University as an Assistant Professor in January 2025. Currently, she is a Postdoctoral Scholar at Princeton University advised by Prof. Molly Crockett, and earned her PhD in Experimental Psychology as a SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier Doctoral Fellow at McGill University, advised by Prof. Eric Hehman.

Professor Xie is fascinated by the flexibility of human thinking, reasoning, and feeling as we experience our dynamic social world. She uses methods such as in situ experience-sampling, “big data” archival analysis, narrative analysis, and computational modeling to study how people form mental models of others and themselves. Driven by the belief that understanding where our ideas come from can help us shape how they’re formed, her work aims to address collective problems and bridge ideological divides. Outside of the lab, she enjoys interactive narratives, racquet sports, games with (and versus) loved ones, piano, and trail running.

	Lab Manager
	I am hiring a lab manager and research specialist to relieve the imaginary owl running my lab, hoo would rather be our mascot.

	Graduate Students
	I’m looking to give a seal of approval to a graduate student interested in joining the lab in Fall 2025. Read more for tips on how to apply.
	This axolotl effortlessly detaches from negative emotions after experiencing failure or rejection, and can regenerate their enthusiasm for research in perpetuity. They support real people by relieving them of this responsibility.

	Undergraduate Research Assistants & Thesis Students
	Undergraduate students eager to leap into research are encouraged to fill out this application. I hope you apply if you’re passionate about the big ideas that drive our lab, and have questions of your own that require multidisciplinary methods and theories to answer.

	Alumni & Mentees from Other Institutions
Grace Porter 2024—Present Princeton University	Grace Porter is my senior thesis student. Her research explores how qualitative methods enrich research on individual experiences of mental health challenges. Using narrative analysis of life stories, her thesis examines how “meaning-making” changes the mental health impact of negative and disruptive life events, while evaluating the value of narrative analysis as a complement to quantitative measures typically used in psychology research.
Emmett Willford 2022—2024 Princeton University (now a Researcher at the Bridging Divides Institute)	Emmett Willford, a former student whose senior thesis and junior research I supervised, used representational similarity analysis to study how self-representations and societal representations of binary gender categories (men, women) relate in gender-diverse adults. While self-representations in this group generally did not align with binary norms, individuals with higher alignment tended to have better mental health over time. Emmett’s findings suggest that misalignment with normative gender ideals correlates with worse mental health, even for those identifying outside the binary. Their research is in prep for publication.
Julia Cabri 2022—2024 Princeton University (now a Business Development Representative at Workato)	Julia Cabri, a former student whose senior thesis and junior research I supervised, explored gendered self-concepts (e.g., agency, communion) in personal narratives. She found that women spontaneously described themselves less agentically than men, in line with gender stereotypes. However, this gap was reduced for women who engaged in deeper reflection on societal gender norms: they described themselves as both agentic and communal, even when controlling for narrative length. Julia’s research suggests that narrative reflection can help challenge gender-stereotypical self-concepts.
Jeannine Alana C. Bertin 2018—2020 McGill University (now a graduate student at NYU)	Alana Bertin is a former student whose honours senior thesis I supervised. Her thesis empirically tested predictions about cognitive processes of stereotyping using computational analyses of mouse-trajectories to examine, in real-time, the effect of stereotypes on impression formation. She found that the trajectories of participants’ unconscious mouse movements gravitated toward impressions congruent with their stereotype knowledge. This work empirically demonstrated the effect of stereotypes on real-time categorization processes that drive evaluations, and has since been published. Alana is now pursuing a doctoral degree at New York University, advised by Prof. John Jost.

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