Welcome! We're a research group at the University of South Carolina. Our work asks how social structures can shape the beliefs, preferences, and behaviors of individuals. Most modern sociology studying culture and behavior treats "social structures" as conditions that constrain or enable what behaviors can be enacted or what preferences can be expressed in a given social domain. Instead, we design studies that allow us to ask how preferences and behaviors themselves are affected (formed, revised, strengthened) by social structures (networks, organizations, and information environments)
Three key questions guide the work that we do:
- How do macro-level social environments, and changes to these environments, influence meanings people have about groups, objects, or behaviors they encounter in the world around them?
- When and how do social environments cause durable changes to "mental representations" about social identities, exchanges, and interactions (as opposed to merely constraining or enabling the actions / meanings a person can use)?
- Can systematic changes in person-level cultural meanings enable macro-level social change?
By exploring these topics, we build knowledge about the relationship between social structure and the beliefs of individuals within them. We use state-of-the-art scientific methods to study basic social processes that are often relevant to organizational and social policy.