David Rand, a researcher at Yale, discusses his work on the psychology of cooperation in this interview from Yale's Experts in Emotion series, hosted by June Gruber. Rand explains what drew him to studying emotion and walks through the central findings of his research, spending the bulk of the conversation on how intuitive, emotional responses versus deliberate reasoning shape whether people cooperate with strangers, a question he has tested using economic games and large-scale online experiments. He touches on how snap judgments and gut reactions can promote or undermine trust in social exchanges. Near the end he offers a short take on where the field is headed and closes with advice for students interested in studying emotion. The format is a structured interview rather than a classroom lecture, moving from personal background into research substance within about fifteen minutes.