Janet J. Boseovski

I study social judgments and decision making in early to late childhood (i.e., 3- to 12-year-old children). My main interests converge on three central questions: (a) How do children decide whether other people are nice, mean, smart, and/or capable? (b) How do children harness the characteristics of other people (e.g., their knowledge, personality traits, and cultural privilege) to learn new information about the world?; (c) How do biases impact children’s social judgments and behavior? My research is published regularly in the major peer-reviewed outlets in my field and I have received federal funding for my research from the National Institutes of Health.

Recently, I have become interested in body image development in early to late childhood, with an emphasis on how mother-daughter transactions influence body image awareness and perceptions. I also enjoy writing about health and wellness, which are topics that I have covered in two decades of teaching about human development across the lifespan at the university level.