Cristina Mendonça

Cristina Mendonça is a post-doctoral researcher at William James Center for Research. Her research focuses on social cognition, particularly in how judgment and decision making biases impact and are impacted by social or motivational factors. Regarding the first, she has studied topics such as how communication in society may amplify our cognitive biases, how we think about others’ biases, or how biases may influence belief in fake news, a salient social problem of our times. In terms of motivation, she has studied how motivational biases may enhance or diminish our reasoning abilities or lead us to disparage or commend the validity of psychological tests. Furthermore, she is engaged with in the development of interactive applications that educate the public about biases and basic concepts from statistics, with the aim of increasing the public’s reasoning abilities and reducing bias susceptibility. Cristina has a Masters in Social Cognition from the University of Lisbon and a PhD in Social Psychology from the inter-university doctoral program LiSP – Lisbon PhD in Social Psychology.