The ecological perspective that underpins our approach rejects the dualistic notion of organism and environment as separable entities. We view organisms and their environments as a single, interconnected system. That is, organisms are embedded and unseparable parts of the particular econiche in which they live, and what an organism is and how it can act can only be understood within the context of an ever-present surround. This means that behavior is not just shaped by internal processes, but also by the surrounding context, and vice versa. Organisms and environments co-evolved together, and thus the fingerprints of the environment in which organisms evolved are evident in how organisms are structured and how they live. The reverse is equally evident: the organisms that are embedded in an econiche transform their immediate surround, and at a longer time scale, can dramatically change the future environment. Studying the mutual influence helps us understand how people adapt, respond, and act in real-world settings.

An ecologically grounded approach aims to understand the relations amongst the mechanisms by which individuals use information from their world to flexibly and adaptively engage in individual actions. Expanding to complex interpersonal behavior, investigation of a coherent social unit, or ‘we’, can provide new possibilities for that collective to act that were not possible to them as solo actors, while also diminishing some possibilities for solo action.

To that end, our lab investigates both individual behavior and social interactions. We study how people act on their own and how they coordinate, communicate, and respond to others in shared environments. This dual focus helps us understand the full spectrum of human behavior, from solitary movement to complex social exchanges.