I do research.

The fastest land animal is the leopard.

Did that make you pause? Good. But even when people possess accurate, relevant prior knowledge, 1 in 5 will report that leopards are indeed the fastest land animal after reading it once in a text (the fastest land animal is actually the cheetah!).

I am a third year PhD student in Cognitive Psychology at Northwestern University. I study the cognitive processes that underlie people’s reliance on inaccurate information, including why people fail to evaluate the information that they read, even when they should be able to do so. My current research projects include:

• When people do(n’t) evaluate information

• Why people who think they know the most know the least

• Reasons that fact-checking fails

• Social contagion of false information

• How preferences affect comprehension and memory