Research Groups

Center for Deliberative Democracy (CDD)

The Center for Deliberative Democracy is devoted to research about democracy and public opinion obtained through Deliberative Polling®.

Communication between Humans and Interactive Media (CHIMe) Lab

The Communication between Humans and Interactive Media (CHIMe) Lab is led by Professor Clifford Nass and a team of Ph.D. students.  The vision of the laboratory is: To rapidly advance theory, assessment, and design of how people behave toward, feel about, and think about interactive media, research must be general, psychologically informed, quantitatively grounded, complimentary to partners, and near-term informed. The dominant method of the laboratory is experimental research, but we also use other methods as appropriate. The four inter-connected project groups are CARSITE (Communication with Automobiles: Research on Safety, Information Technology, and Enjoyment), EmAgIn (Embodied Agent Intelligence), LiSTeNS (Listening and Speaking Technologies: Natural and Synthetic), and SPACE (Social and Psychological Aspects of Computing Environments). Current research areas of the CHIMe lab include psychological and social aspects of pervasive/ubiquitous computing; voice and multi-modal interfaces; natural language understanding and production; context-awareness and adaptation; and robot, car, and embodied interfaces.

Political Communication Lab (PCL)

The Political Communication Lab conducts research on political communication, public opinion and voting.

Virtual Human Interaction Lab (VHIL)

The mission of the Virtual Human Interaction Lab is to understand the dynamics and implications of interactions among people in immersive virtual reality simulations (VR). Researchers in the lab are most concerned with understanding the social interaction that occurs within the confines of VR, and the majority of our work is centered on using empirical, behavioral science methodologies to explore people as they interact in these digital worlds.