Haberman LabResearch
We investigate the shortcuts that allow vision to transform overwhelming sensory input into coherent, useful representations.
Rather than represent every object individually, the visual system can encode summary statistics across a set. We study how people perceive averages, variability, and numerosity in crowds, faces, and scenes. Individual differences in these abilities help reveal how ensemble representations are organized.
How does the way we see something shape its aesthetic appeal? We investigate how motion changes our impressions of faces, bodies, and objects, and how mirror reversal influences our perception of faces. This work explores why a moving person and a frozen photograph can leave such different impressions.
Our applied work asks how visual perception supports social judgments—including perceived status, emotion, self-representation, aesthetics, and body-related biases.