Who are we? 

The Person and Context (PAC) Lab is a social psychology lab led by Dr. Vivian Zayas in the Department of Psychology at Cornell University.

The overarching goal of the PAC Lab is to examine the processes – those that are affective and automatic as well as those that are cognitive and controlled – that shape people’s experiences.

Given that many of these processes are occurring at an automatic and at times unconscious level, ongoing projects in the PAC Lab draw from research and theory from social and personality, cognitive, developmental, and most recently cognitive neuroscience.

Get to know more here.

What do we study?

We employ a mix of behavioral, cognitive, and neuroscience methods to study our key research areas and examine a broad array of phenomena. An in-depth description of our research interests can be found  here.

Some of the topics currently being explored are:

Perceptions and Reactions to Ambiguous Exclusion

The Involuntary Excluder Effect Among Best Friends

Disentangling the Economic and Social Components of Status Perception

Implicit Bivalence

Social closeness

Real-life interactions

Neural similarity 

How can you get involved?

For interested undergraduate students:

If you are interested in applying to become a research assistant for credit in the PAC Lab, then email us with your completed application and resume. More details can be found here.

For interested participants:

If you are interested in participating in any of our ongoing projects, please email us for more information.