Research
The body in social interaction. Movement and orienting are critical to social interaction. Gaze, interpersonal space, and gesture convey a wealth of meaning and affect in both face-to-face and technologically mediated exchanges. I’m interested both in the cognitive mechanisms that automatically produce these responses and in their implicit effects on perceivers.
On the one hand, an individual’s proxemic behavior in an interaction reveals a great deal about that person. Along these lines, my collaborators and I have demonstrated that avoidant nonverbal behavior predicts more overtly hostile behavior and that approach nonverbal behavior predicts compassionate responses to needy others.
Patterns in nonverbal behavior, in turn, affect perceivers’ responses. In studies in classroom settings, my collaborators and I have demonstrated that the direct gaze and close proximity of a lecturer can improve persuasion and learning and that an audience’s orienting behaviors during a lecture can affect the learning and attention of individuals within that audience. Outside of the classroom, we have also demonstrated that the presence of a watchful romantic partner improves performance and reduces anxiety during a stressful task.
At a different level of analysis, I’ve begun investigating the neural underpinnings of approach and avoidance behavior. This research looks specifically at the effects of positive or negative evaluations on different levels of action planning in the brain. 
Methodology. Most of my research uses virtual reality. On the one hand, VR is a great platform for studying the body in social interaction because it allows you to both manipulate the virtual bodies of an environment’s inhabitants and to precisely measure the movement and orientation of a participant through the environment. On the other hand, by studying interactions in VR, we can also learn more about the ways in which people automatically accomodate for context and the expressive tools available to them. As such, this technology helps us better understand both face-to-face and computer mediated communication.
More recently, I’ve begun to use desktop virtual environments within fMRI for brain-imaging studies. This combination is a boon to experimental manipulation because it allows a vast array of complex and interactive content within the traditionally constrained environment of the scanner. 