Francisco Cruz

Francisco Cruz’s research examines the cognitive and socio-motivational underpinnings of social judgments, focusing on different targets and social phenomena. In one stream, he explores what cues about different aspects of science (e.g., scientific information, scientists, research fields, data provenance) people consider when deciding whether to trust it. In another, his work has focused on the role of experience, motivation and metacognitive judgments on curtailing the pervasive tendency for poorer recognition of faces from individuals belonging to other ethnic groups. Other research interests include lay attributions of expertise, philosophical intuitions, human-machine interaction, and mental representations of mental disorders. To explore this vast scope of topics in social cognition, Francisco mobilizes experimental and data-driven research methods.