Our lab investigates how social cognition and social behavior change across the lifespan, with a particular focus on aging. We integrate behavioral experiments and neuroimaging methods to understand how people think about others and make decisions in social contexts.
1. Theory of Mind across the lifespan
Theory of Mind (ToM) refers to our ability to understand others’ mental states, such as their beliefs, intentions, perspectives, and emotions. A long-standing assumption is that ToM declines with age. However, accumulating evidence—including our own work (Cho & Cohen, 2019)—suggests that older adults may retain core ToM competence, with age-related differences arising from changes in supporting cognitive processes (e.g., executive functioning) rather than a fundamental loss of mentalizing ability.
Our research examines:
Whether and how ToM genuinely changes with age
Which cognitive or contextual factors explain mixed findings in the literature
How ToM operates under uncertainty and in real-world social situations
Through this work, we aim to refine theoretical models of social cognition in adulthood and aging.
2. Social decision-making
Social life requires making decisions that affect others—such as sharing resources, evaluating fairness, and making moral judgments. These processes depend on how individuals integrate information about others’ intentions, outcomes, and social norms. Because cognitive and emotional processing change with age, social decision-making may also follow distinct developmental trajectories.
Our lab studies:
Age-related differences in fairness, prosocial behavior, and moral judgment
How intention-based versus outcome-based reasoning shifts across adulthood
The cognitive and emotional mechanisms underlying these age-related patterns
This line of research helps explain why older adults sometimes show different—but not necessarily worse—social behaviors compared to younger adults.
3. Individual differences in social cognition and aging and its contexts
Older adulthood is highly heterogeneous. Not all individuals age in the same way, and understanding this variability is essential for a complete account of cognitive and social aging. Rather than focusing solely on average age differences, our lab emphasizes individual-difference factors that shape social cognition and behavior.
We examine how factors such as:
Executive functioning
Cultural background
Social experience
Social contexts
contribute to variability in social cognition and decision-making among older adults. This approach allows us to identify conditions under which social cognitive functioning is maintained or altered in later life.