Anabela Cantiani

My research aims to understand how people make sense of others’ minds and how this shapes cooperation and social decision-making. I approach this through two main lines of work.

The first focuses on the role of perspective-taking (how people process others’ thoughts, emotions, and perceptions) in social contexts involving cooperation, conflict, and negotiation. For example, my dissertation investigates whether, when, and how perspective-taking promotes cooperation and conflict resolution in coalition formation. More broadly, I study how people process social cues such as power asymmetries, group membership, and norms to guide social decisions, including whether to include someone in a coalition, trust a partner, or punish a norm violator.

The second line of research explores the underlying mechanisms of perspective-taking and individual differences. For instance, I examine how different forms of perspective-taking (affective, cognitive, and visuo-spatial) are related, and whether they rely on shared embodied (experiential) and disembodied (noetic) processing routes.

I use experimental designs, including real-time behavioral games and cognitive tasks that track response times and accuracy, to study how people understand others’ minds and make social decisions.