The PAC Lab studies attitudes, social cognition, emotion, social identity, and prejudice. We examine how people's political attitudes and beliefs are structured and how the expression of political attitudes is influenced by a variety of situational factors. Our approach to research is interdisciplinary, combining ideas and methods from political psychology, social psychology, and cognitive neuroscience.
Current Lab Projects
- How does emotion impact the expression of racial attitudes and support for race-related policy issues? Do perceived moral violations contribute to the expression of prejudice and discrimination?
- What leads to endorsement of conspiracy theories? Do situational factors like threat, power, trust, and status lead to increased endorsement of these ideas?
- How does uncertainty interact with threat to produce changes in social and political behavior (e.g., political tolerance, support for compromise)? How do changes in neural processing give rise to these effects?
- What are the neural underpinnings of political evaluation? How do people process evaluative information that is incongruent and/or uncertain? What is the impact of political identity and group membership on evaluative processing?
- Do people rely on political ideology and party identification when evaluating political policy issues? Are certain types of people more likely to show this connection between political or social identification and attitudes?
- How does causal attribution influence attitudes and tolerance toward political outgroups?
Information for Research Participants
Current Studies:
The PAC Lab will be recruiting participants for fMRI research for a study starting soon. Please email the lab at paclab@unl.edu if you'd like to be contacted about this when recruitment starts. If you're interested in being contacted about additional research opportunities in the center, consider also joining the CB3 Research Participant Volunteer Registry (see http://cb3.unl.edu/current-research-studies/).
Safety screening:
The MRI safety screening form is available here. You will be asked to fill this out when you come in for your appointment.
Preparing for your appointment:
See the MRI Lab website for more information: https://mri.unl.edu/mri-preparation
Directions:
The Center for Brain, Biology, and Behavior (CB3) is located in Memorial Stadium on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln City Campus. The entrance to CB3 is located at the southeast corner of the stadium between gates 22 and 23. Parking is available for East Stadium research participants directly east of the stadium (enter the parking lot at N 14th St and Vine St and follow the inner loop to the spots closest to the stadium). The easiest routes to access this parking lot are either coming from the East on Vine St. or from the North on 14th St. If you do park in one of these spots, you will need to sign in with your vehicle's information when you arrive at CB3.
More detailed driving directions are available here: https://mri.unl.edu/directions