Our approach to research is GAme ThEoretical, SOcio-Cognitive, Computational, and Ecologically Relevant (GATESOCCER).
We aim to advance our understanding of how humans use their own minds while interacting with their environment and other intelligent agents.
The concept of interaction (whether interpersonal, human-machine, or human-environment) is critical to our approach.
We are particularly interested in discovering the environmental constraints and affordances as well as the cognitive mechanisms that explain how people develop or acquire strategies, how they persist in carrying out a successful strategy, and how they overcome either distraction or the impulsive appeal of short-term rewards in cooperative and competitive settings.
The methodology of our research program is two-pronged: empirical and computational. Empirical data guides theory building and computational modeling, which in turn generates predictions for new empirical data, and so on.