Research
Social and cultural psychology studies how people interact and how they think and feel about one another and about the world, both as individuals and as groups. It starts from the premise that all behavior is contextualized, and conversely, that individuals' and groups' behaviors constitute the social and cultural landscape. Our research spans a wide range of different methods and contexts, varying from controlled laboratory experiments that provide insight into the effects of specific contexts on psychological functioning , to real-life research in schools, organisations, and the society as a whole.
The Acculturation and Culture Collaborative is co-directed by Batja Mesquita, Karen Phalet, and Norbert Vanbeselaere. In this collaborative, we examine how specific social and cultural worlds afford and constitute such psychological processes as identity, emotion, and motivation. A special emphasis in our research lies on the interpersonal and intrapersonal consequences of immigration and multiculturalism.
The Social Cognition lab is directed by Vera Hoorens and Eddy Van Avermaet. Social cognition is viewed as a process through which information about relationships and interactions between individuals and groups results in a variety of inferences and judgments about self and others. The concrete topics are: biases in social cognition, self-enhancement and self-superiority beliefs, and inferences from verbal communication.
