We aim to empirically answer relevant questions about personality and cognition. Conducting studies at high statistical power and with epistemic integrity is an overriding focus. Institutionally, the lab is situated at the intersection between Data Science, Psychology and Neuroscience, reflecting the inter-disciplinary nature of our research interests.Importantly, we also aim to communicate our findings in a clear and accessible fashion – be it in presentations, publications as well as public outreach.

This philosophy is encapsulated in our lab motto –

“Truth, presented well ”.

Why “Fox lab”?

Isaiah Berlin distinguishes 2 kinds of people - “hedgehogs”, who focus on one thing and see the world through one overriding lens and “foxes”, who aim to integrate many different perspectives. One is not necessarily better than the other, but they describe different and complementary cognitive styles.

Most of academia is geared towards the hedgehog style, by virtue of cohesive literatures, methodological expertise, social circles (given the notoriously cliquish nature of science), and funding mechanisms. This is perhaps just as well, as this cognitive mode lends itself to an academic existence, drilling deeply into one issue, and hedgehogs are also likely far more numerous to begin with. That said, there is a role for “Foxes” in academia, namely in connecting the lines of inquiry between different fields. A good example of this is our investigation into the black/blue vs. white/gold “dress”: Answering the question as to why different people see this dress differently requires knowledge about color constancy, the role of Bayesian priors in perception and sleep/chronotypes as well as the ability to tie these together in one coherent investigation. In other words, this is a job for a Fox.

Our lab is generally working in this kind of mode, e.g. by looking at the way music cognition can shed light on Psychopathy, or how music appraisal is impacted by depression.

This approach meshes well with our belief that most effects involving the mental life and behavior of people is differential - there are few true main effects. In other words, many factors will interact to bring about the experience and behavior of a given individual, and it takes both a broad perspective of these factors and an investigation at high power (with many participants) to tease them apart.

If you want to know more about the Fox/Hedgehog dichotomy, click here.