Ovidia Stanoi is a postdoctoral fellow in the Communication Neuroscience Lab and in the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media (PCMSS) at the University of Pennsylvania.
Ovidia examines the cognitive and affective mechanisms underlying how people connect with one another, perceive social information, and coordinate to reach common goals. She draws on methods from different disciplines to study these complex social dynamics in real-world contexts. Her work has been published in top-tier journals, including PNAS, Emotion, Scientific Reports, and presented at numerous international conferences.
More recently, Ovidia has investigated what motivates people to engage in conversations about climate change with others in their social circles or remain silent. Her work shows that people often avoid expressing their thoughts about climate change because of miscalibrated expectations: they overestimate the social and emotional costs of these conversations and underestimate their potential rewards.
She is now designing interventions to test how conversations can change behavioral norms. Before joining Penn, Ovidia completed a Ph.D. in Psychology at Columbia University and a B.A. in International Relations at Brown University.
