Our Research
We study how media shapes minds and choices. Across projects, we integrate behavioral experiments, neuroimaging, and computational modeling to understand how people navigate, experience, and are influenced by media in everyday life.
Media Selection and Decision-Making
Why do we choose the media we do, and how do those choices unfold over time? We study media selection as a dynamic decision process shaped by goals, prior experience, and learned expectations of reward. Using behavioral experiments, brain imaging, and computational models of value and learning, we examine how people evaluate options, update preferences, and adapt to complex media environments. This work speaks to questions about attention, algorithms, and digital choice.
Media Enjoyment and Flow
Media are not just consumed, they are felt. We investigate why certain stories, games, and digital experiences become immersive, emotionally powerful, or deeply rewarding, and how states such as enjoyment and flow emerge from interactions between content features and individual differences. By combining psychophysiology, neuroimaging, and computational approaches to affect and value, we study how engagement unfolds moment by moment. This research helps explain why media can captivate attention, shape identity, and motivate continued use.
Media in Everyday Life
Media is woven into daily routines, relationships, and civic life. We examine how ongoing media use shapes beliefs, preferences, and wellbeing across time, not only in controlled experiments but within the rhythms of everyday experience. Integrating longitudinal designs, neural measures, behavioral data, and computational methods, we study how repeated exposure and reinforcement contribute to lasting patterns of thought and behavior.