Christopher Thorstenson

Education
BS 2009, Psychology & Philosophy, Florida State University
MA 2012, Experimental Psychology, Appalachian State University
MS 2017, Color Science, Rochester Institute of Technology
PhD 2019, Social Psychology, University of Rochester

Research
Christopher is an Assistant Professor in the Program of Color Science & Munsell Color Science Laboratory at Rochester Institute of Technology, and head of the Faces, Avatars, & Robots Lab (FAR Lab).  His research explores how the human face and the visual system interact, forming a powerful tool to transmit the myriad information that regulates social interactions. He is particularly interested in the visual and social information that is conveyed through changes in facial color appearance. Some primary goals of this research are to understand how the visual system perceives even subtle variations in face and skin color (e.g., visual detection & discrimination), and how facial color can influence judgments about the person (e.g., preference, emotion). This research focuses not only on real human faces, but also includes artificial social agents (e.g., social robots, avatars, emojis), as well as perceiving faces in virtual and augmented reality environments.