Dr. Sophie Bridgers

How do humans intuitively understand what other people want? How do we navigate the tension between our own and others' needs in social interactions? I use developmental experiments and computational models to characterize how humans grasp and respond to others' goals, and how one’s own utility can affect interpretation of others’ goals, at times leading to successful cooperation and at other times leading to misunderstandings, searching for loopholes, and rule-bending.