Xi Shen, Ph.D

Education

Ph.D., Cornell University, Social Psychology

M.A., New York University, General Psychology

B.S., East China Normal University, Applied Psychology

Previous Academic Appointments

Postdoctoral Fellow and Research Associate, Annenberg School for Communication & Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania

Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Psychology, Yale University and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Research Interests

I study person perception, attitudes, and behaviors with a social cognitive approach. I ask questions such as:

• How do people form and change evaluations of others, both explicitly and implicitly?
• Whether, when, and how can people’s minds be changed?
• What are the behavioral consequences of implicit and explicit social evaluations?

Selected Publications

Shen, X., Anderson, R. A., & Pizarro, D. A. (2025). People judge third-party anger as a signal of moral character. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 120, 104765.

 

Shen, X., Earl, A., V., & Albarracin, D. (2025). Enhancing others through information selection: Establishing the phenomenon and its preconditions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 129(3), 509–528. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000439

 

Surdel, N., Bigman, Y., Shen, X., Lee, W., Jung, M. F., Ferguson, M. J. (2024). Judging robot ability: How people form implicit and explicit impressions of robot competence. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 153(5), 1309–1335. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001548.

 

Shen, X., Malolatesi, AJ., Mann, T. C., & Ferguson, M.J. (2023) The relationship between implicit impressions of trustworthiness and behaviors in the trust game. Social Psychological and Personality Science. 19485506221141661.

 

Katz, J., Mann, T. C., Ferguson, M.J., Goncalo. J., & Shen, X. (2022). Implicit impressions of creative people: Creativity evaluation in a stigmatized domain. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.169, 104116.

Shen, X., & Ferguson, M.J. (2021). How resistant are implicit impressions of facial trustworthiness? When new evidence leads to durable updating. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 97,104219.

 

Shen, X., Mann, T. C., & Ferguson, M.J. (2020). Beware a dishonest face? Updating face-based implicit impressions using diagnostic information. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 86, 103888.

 

Melnikoff, E. D., Mann, T. C., Stillman, P., Shen, X., & Ferguson, M. J. (2020). Tracking prejudice: A mouse-tracking measure of evaluative conflict predicts discriminatory behavior. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 12(2),266-272.

 

Stillman, P., Shen, X., & Ferguson, M. J. (2018). How mouse-tracking can advance social cognitive theory. Trends in cognitive sciences. 22(6), 531-543.