USC Dornsife Mind and Society Center

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USC Dornsife Mind and Society Center

The Mind and Society Center is a research facility in the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

The USC Dornsife Mind & Society Center opened in August 2014 in the new Dr. Verna and Peter Dauterive Hall, an interdisciplinary social sciences building. Our research addresses the interface of individual and society by investigating how people think about societal issues and how societal context shapes individuals' thoughts and actions. Understanding this interface requires insight into the context sensitivity of basic cognitive and affective processes, which we study in laboratory experiments and social surveys, and their real-world implications, which we study through field experiments and controlled interventions.

09/08/2026

"Comedy is funnier when it is easier to process, largely because fluency helps incongruous material make sense."

Pleased to see this PsyPost.org write-up of research by Drew Gorenz and Norbert Schwarz, published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2026.

A new study in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology reveals that jokes, memes, and punchlines are significantly funnier when they are easy to process. This cognitive fluency helps our brains quickly make sense of unexpected humour.

02/04/2026

Congratulations to USC's new President, Beong-Soo Kim!

Visit USC on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/USC/ Learn more about the University of Southern California: https://www.usc.edu

12/18/2025

PSI CHI podcast with Daphna Oyserman, discussing difficulties of daily life from the perspective of identity-based-motivation theory.

Why do some challenges feel like opportunities while others seem impossible? In this episode, Dr. Daphna Oyserman explains identity-based motivation theory a...

Address

635 Downey Way, Verna And Peter Dauterive Hall
Los Angeles, CA
90089

Website

http://dornsife.usc.edu/mindandsociety/

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