Hardin Social Cognition Lab
Adam Johnson
~Adam's CV (pdf file)
~ Email: adamj@brooklyn.cuny.edu
I am a second-year Psychology Ph.D student in CUNY's Cognition, Brain, Behavior sub-program housed at Brooklyn College. Broadly, I am interested in studying the relational and epistemic motivations of social beliefs, especially political and ideological beliefs. More specifically, I am interested in understanding how and why individuals suspend attitude certainty and avoid cognitive closure in the face of belief ambiguity (think of religious agnostics). If the needs to manage uncertainty and ambiguity-related threats are such powerful social psychological motivators, then why do certain circumstances motivate individuals to exhibit a contrary preference -- a preference for contingent, ambivalent and even logically inconsistent cognitions? Further, how might we functionally explain this preference?
In my current research, we experimentally manipulate interpersonal uncertanties in order to determine whether expressions of attitudinal ambivalence might serve as a tactic for managing and validating competing interpersonal demands. Situations invoking competing interpersonal demands may be one set of conditions under which individuals are motivated to avoid cognitive closure, seek cognitive complexity, and embrace ambivalence in their beliefs and attitudes.
More speculatively, my research aims to investigate the following logic: "If we can determine conditions under which certainty and closure are threatening -- and ambivalence is preferred -- might such circumstances also increase the appeal of liberal ideologies (in the same way that uncertainty and ambiguity-related threats have been evidenced to increase the appeal of conservative ideologies; see Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski & Sulloway, 2003).
This interest in understanding and explaining the functions and appeals of various social ideologies is the linchpin connecting my past and current academic interests. As an undergrad at the University of Richmond studying postmodern social theory, and then as a Masters student at NYU and an RA in John Jost's lab, I have been fascinated by various personality-based, social-cognitive, and sociological explanations of ideological appeal. My research in the Hardin Social Cognition lab is a continuation of this fascination.