The Genschow group mainly focuses on interaction patterns among humans with a strong focus on perception-action coupling, such as imitation, mimicry, and anticipated action. Other topics of investigation include consumer behavior, implicit attitude measures and approach-avoidance motivation.

Imitation & Mimicry

Humans tend to imitate each other in an unconscious and automatic fashion. Research has shown that such mimicking behavior fulfills a social purpose in the sense as it creates feelings of affiliation and, thus, bonds human more strongly together. The Genschow group studies the processes underlying such imitative behavior.

Anticipated Action

Current research suggests that the human brain is constantly anticipating what others might do in the near future. The Genschow group goes one step further and investigates whether individuals do not only anticipate future actions, but whether they actually engage in the anticipated action themselves.

Consumer Behavior

The society is faced with a steady increase in obesity, which is mainly due to unhealthy food consumption. In applied lines of research, the Genschow group investigates the influence of environmental and situational cues on such unhealthy food consumption. In addition, implicit reaction time based measures are used to predict consumers’ future food choices.