Michael Schober studies how people coordinate their actions and the mental processes underlying that coordination. In one line of research he studies conversational language use, both human-human and human-computer. He also studies music cognition and coordinated musical performance. His academic background is in psychology (Ph.D., Stanford University, 1990) and cognitive science (Sc.B., Brown University, 1986). He is currently Dean of the New School for Social Research and a Professor in the Psychology Department. He is the editor of the journal Discourse Processes, and a member of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology and the Psychonomic Society.

He has received support for his research from the National Science Foundation, the American Statistical Association, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Apple Computer, and the New School for Social Research. His most recent funding is through the Methodology, Measurement and Statistics program at NSF, where he and collaborator Fred Conrad have examined "Animated agents in self administered survey interviews."

His research examines a set of basic psychological questions: How do we infer others' intentions in interaction? To what extent are meanings negotiable? What mental processes underlie conversational language use and collaborative music-making? How do people with different points of view (different physical vantage points, different agendas, different starting assumptions) understand each other? How fundamentally egocentric are we? To what extent do people exposed to the same standardized language interpret it the same way? These questions are examined both in human-human and human-computer interaction.