Maya Rossignac-Milon

Maya Rossignac-Milon is a sixth-year doctoral student in social psychology at Columbia University. Her research investigates the experience of being mentally in sync with others. Specifically, she adopts a social psychological lens to examine the role of shared reality—the perceived commonality of inner states with others—in interpersonal relationships. She explores how the process of creating a shared reality enhances interpersonal closeness, whether between new acquaintances or close partners. Further, she investigates the role of shared reality in cognitive synchrony and the phenomenological experience of having “merged minds”. Currently, she is extending this work to explore the ways in which shared reality enhances sensory perceptions of realness. More broadly, she is interested in the ways that humans turn to each other to make sense of the world and to co-construct the “truth”.