Eugene Yu Ji, PhD

Research Interests and Methods

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My research lies at the intersection of computational cognitive science and the social sciences, organized around two interconnected strands. First, I develop integrative frameworks that combine cognitive and sociocultural perspectives to model communicative and pragmatic capacities in both humans and generative AI systems. Second, I construct dynamic, interactional models and conduct empirical work that connect language, behavior, and decision-making across key domains of social life, including political decision-making and identity, organizational behavior, educational policy, and digital governance. Substantively, I examine consequential and aspirational decision-making processes and actions under radical uncertainties, such as rare but high-impact political choices, organizational crisis management, drastic language changes in culture and politics, and human and AI-driven aspirational transformations among impoverished and displaced youth. Conceptually and methodologically, some of this work also partially builds on my earlier doctoral research on neural synchronization, oscillatory dynamics, and mammalian perception and decision-making. My research and collaborations span cognitive science, political science, anthropology, sociology, public policy, and the humanities.