My primary interest lies in development of social cognition and morality.
Specifically, I want to explain how humans perceive rule violations, why they respond to rule violations, whether this changes with age, and how their interventions may serve evolutionary functions.
Specifically, I want to explain how humans perceive rule violations, why they respond to rule violations, whether this changes with age, and how their interventions may serve evolutionary functions.
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Here's a 3 minute video summary of my dissertation work on children's understanding of fairness that won the First Place Award and the People's Choice Award at the University of Virginia's Three Minute Thesis Competition. I have also received an American Psychological Association Dissertation Research Award to conduct these studies.
The manuscript from this study is currently under review (Yucel, Drell, Jaswal, & Vaish, under review). |
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Children & Adults
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Why do young children and adults care more about moral violations than conventional violations?
In this study, I investigated how children understand moral and conventional norms using multiple methods (behavioral, eye-tracking, and pupillometry). This work was presented at SRCD 2019 as a symposium talk and has been published in Frontiers in Psychology (Yucel, Hepach, & Vaish, 2020). This paper won the 2020 Psi Chi/APS Albert Bandura Graduate Research Award! Media mentions: UVA Today, NeuroscienceNews, MedicalXpress, Ozyegin University News, and Merdiven Alti Terapi (podcast)! |
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Childhood roots of 'being green':
In this study, we looked at 3- to 10-year-old children's and young adults' judgments of environmental actions. We found that moral intuitions about the environment strengthen with age, developing alongside moral intuitions about human social interactions (Stern, Yucel, Grossmann, & Vaish, under review). This poster received the Strategic Plan Poster Winner designation from the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD). |
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Why do young children enforce norms?
In this study, I looked at whether 3-year-old children enforce norms (by protesting or tattling) for selfish or cooperative reasons. My work has shown that children tattle for moral reasons, rather than selfish ones (Yucel & Vaish, 2018). Media mentions: Science Daily, Charlotte Observer, Fatherly, YahooSports, MedicalXpress, EurekAlert!, Savy Auntie and Watercooler Neuroscience (podcast)! |
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When, how, and why do we gossip?
I also look at young children's and adults' understanding of gossip. Using social network analysis we found that spread of both positive and negative gossip may influence and be influenced by friendship connections in a social network (Yucel, Sjobeck, Glass, & Rottman, accepted). Media mentions for our upcoming gossip project with children: Cornell Chronicle |
Great Apes
I also love drawing them!
Moreover, I have a side interest in evolutionary forms of social cognition in non-human primates, stemming from my internship at MPI in Leipzig, Germany where I had a chance to work with bonobos, chimps, orangutans, and gorillas.