My research broadly examines the utility of socioemotional processes such as empathy and compassion for building interpersonal and intergroup connection. I study how mental effort perceptions, neural damage, and neurodegeneration impact people’s propensity and capacity to share in and understand the perspectives of other people as well as foster concern for their well-being. Further, I examine how these same processes wax and wane across challenging interpersonal and intergroup contexts, such as in the context of political rivals, in caregivers of people diagnosed with neurodegenerative disease, and in forging allyship to address social injustices.
