Flora Zhang

Hi! I am a Psychology Ph.D. candidate working with Julia Leonard at Yale University. Beyond the Leonard Learning Lab, I have also primarily collaborated with Julian Jara-Ettinger, Joshua Knobe, and Deborah Small.

I am particularly interested in how people think about their ability to acquire new objects (through ownership) and new skills (through learning), and how these interact with each other (e.g., how ownership could promote learning). Taking an interdisciplinary approach from cognitive science, social psychology, and philosophy, I use a combination of behavioral experiments and computational modeling to pursue these questions with adults and children. 

Before Yale, I studied Philosophy and History of Mathematics and Science at St. John's College.  I also received a masters degree in Computational Social Science at The University of Chicago.