Cognitive Social Science of Nonordinary Experiences

Catalog description

Across cultures people have experiences that seem out of the ordinary. They may find them meaningful and transformative, puzzling, or distressing. Student research teams will learn methods for investigating and comparing nonordinary experiences across cultures through the analysis of data collected from the US and India. Teams will have humanities specialists, who will use historical and ethnographic sources to investigate the cultural expectations that shape people's responses, and scientific specialists, who will analyze survey data and draw from psychological and neuroscientific research to explain the cognitive processes at work.