About Me
About Me
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I am a social psychologist interested in how humans navigate complex societal challenges. Much of my work has focused on uncovering the cognitive and cultural mechanisms underlying decision-making on issues of environmental sustainability.
The methods I most often use are behavioural experiments, cross-cultural surveys, and natural language processing.
At present, I am a postdoc in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Irvine. I received my PhD in Social and Personality Psychology at the University of British Columbia, Canada supervised by Ara Norenzayan and Mark Schaller.
Research Topics
Research Topics
Ecological Cognition
How do evolving conceptualizations of nature dictate how individuals and societies confront environmental issues?
Social Cognition
How does motivation and emotion govern our perception, judgment, and connection with others?
Selected Publications
Selected Publications
Introduction to ecospirituality, moralization of nature, and environmental decision-making.
Billet, M. I., Baimel, A., Schaller, M., & Norenzayan, A. (2025) Ecospirituality. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 34(2), 97-104. https://doi.org/10.1177/09637214241304326 [pdf]
Functional social cognition perspective on the perception of children.
Billet, M. I., Hohm, I., Dunn, R. M., Hofer, M. K., Sidloski, B., & Schaller, M. (2026). What do people want to know about another person? The answer differs depending on whether that person is an adult or a child. PLOS One, 21(2), e0342425. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0342425 [pdf]
Apocalyptic thinking and support for political action on global issues.
Billet, M. I., White, C. J. M., Shariff, A., & Norenzayan, A. (in press). End of world beliefs are common, diverse, and predict how people perceive and respond to global risks. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000519 [pdf]
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