Cog Lunch: Alicia Chen

March 3, 2026
12pm
Location: 46-3189

Zoom: https://mit.zoom.us/j/91344193519

Speaker: Alicia Chen

Affiliation: Saxe Lab

Title: How sociological structure shapes action planning and interpretation

Abstract: Cognitive models of action planning and inverse planning are highly successful at explaining how people choose actions and infer others’ goals in structured physical environments. Yet these models typically leave sociological structure -- such as social relationships and social groups -- unspecified, effectively characterizing social interactions as occurring between interchangeable, anonymous agents. In this talk, I show how incorporating long-established sociological dimensions into planning and inverse-planning frameworks changes what actions are available, costly, or rewarding, in ways analogous to how physical structure constrains action. I present three projects, each isolating a distinct sociological dimension in an everyday domain where it is particularly relevant for behavior: intimacy in food sharing, hierarchy in prosocial action, and group membership in referential language use. Together, these studies situate cognitive models of action selection within everyday social interaction, and show how explicitly modeling sociological structure broadens their explanatory scope.