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Lab Director | Brendan Bo O'Connor (nee Gaesser)

Imagination Informs Our Capacity for Empathy, Social Decision making, and Moral behavior

The Imagination & Moral Cognition Lab investigates the social impact of—and cognitive mechanisms underlying—imagination and future thinking. We are particularly interested in exploring how imagination can facilitate empathy, perspective taking, moral judgment, and collective behavior directed at benefiting the welfare of distant others using a variety of methods, including online crowdsourcing, lab-based behavioral testing, and neurostimulation. In doing so, an aim of our lab is to translate this work for a general audience and apply this knowledge towards fostering a more resilient, cooperative, and future-minded society.

We are located in the Department of Psychology at SUNY Albany in the Upper Hudson Valley of Upstate New York. If you are interested in joining the lab as a graduate student or postdoc, click the Join link above for details.

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