My research interests lie generally within the area of social psychology. In most of my research I adopt a “social cognition” approach, attempting to identify the specific cognitive processes underlying various social psychological phenomena. In other words, I seek to understand what’s going on in people’s minds as they arrive at judgements and decisions concerning themselves and others. I am particularly interested in people’s thoughts about themselves through time. Also, much of my research has focused on the sorts of judgements and activities that we are all engaged in throughout the course of daily life. Specific research topics include:


Self-relevant predictions:

  • prediction of task completion times; the “planning fallacy”
  • prediction of personal spending; the “budget fallacy”
  • prediction of affective reactions to upcoming events
  • relations among intentions, predictions, and behaviour
  • the role of visual perspective in prediction
  • the role of temporal distance in prediction
  • collaborative prediction
  • culture and prediction

Self-relevant memories: 

  • biases in autobiographical memory
  • motivated remembering
  • mood and memory
  • evaluation of conflicting memories
  • subjective distance of past events

Mood and social cognition

  • current moods and self-relevant predictions
  • current moods and self-relevant memories
  • mood-regulation processes

Social comparison

  • affective reactions to performance feedback
  • social comparison in relationships
  • collective identity and social comparison