Melissa Ferguson, PhD

Memories are the basis for people's judgments and feelings about stimuli in the world. But how do new kinds of learning and new experiences alter memory? This question is especially important for understanding implicit memories - those that are activated spontaneously and rapidly whenever people perceive the corresponding stimuli, and may shape and influence cognition and behavior. Although most research suggests that implicit memories can be hard to update, the Implicit Social Cognition Lab has been studying the ways in which people can effectively change their implicit memories of individuals and groups. Using learning theories and experimental studies with adult humans, the lab has identified some circumstances in which implicit memories can be changed in a lasting and robust way. Some of their work is about how people change their memories of other individuals, based on faces and behaviors. The lab also examines how people form and update implicit memories about many other kinds of stimuli such as groups, artwork, morality, goal pursuit, and robots. It is a social cognitive experimental lab that is interested in human evaluative processes and has ongoing collaborations with social and cognitive psychologists and social neuroscientists.

behavioral testing ;  reaction time  

cognition ;  decision-making ;  learning ;  motivation ;  social cognition  

Melissa Ferguson is an experimental social psychologist. She received her doctorate in social psychology from New York University in 2002, was a faculty member in the psychology department at Cornell University from 2002-2020, and then joined the psychology department at Yale University in 2020. Her research focuses on the implicit cognitive processes that enable evaluation, goal-pursuit, self-control, and social behavior.