My research focuses on the causes and consequences of violence, moral judgment and decision-making, and how social and behavioral boundaries are constituted and change. These interests are reflected in my current book project as well as my published papers and ongoing research. First, I study wartime defection, or how people shift stances from support for state violence to resistance and saving behaviors within the same violent episode. Second, I investigate the relationship between social boundaries and political behaviors, with a specific interest in how racial, ethnic, and religious cleavages inform and are transformed by extreme violence such as genocide. Third, I analyze the relationship between cultural cognition and social perception at the micro-level of decision-making on violence. Here, I focus on dehumanization and how timing influences cognitive and emotional adaptation to violence.

To view my publications, please click here.