Simone Schnall is the Director of the Cambridge Body, Mind and Behaviour Laboratory. By combining insights and methods from social psychology and cognitive science her research explores how thoughts and feelings interact. She aims to understand how people make judgments and decisions about other people, and about physical properties of the world. For example, Schnall's research has examined the role of bodily influences in the context of, first, moral judgments and behaviours, and second, perceptions of the spatial environment.
Funding for Schnall’s research has been provided by grants from the Economic and Social Research Council (UK), the National Science Foundation (USA), National Institute of Mental Health (USA), and private foundations. Schnall previously served as Associate Editor for Social Psychological and Personality Science and is a Consulting Editor for Perspectives on Psychological Science.
Current research topics include judgments and decisions in moral and legal contexts, perceptions of the physical environment, and risky behaviours in finance (e.g., risk management in banks). In general the work seeks to understand why people often think and behave in seemingly surprising ways, and how to capitalize on insights from behavioural science to encourage adaptive choices in everyday life.
