My research investigates how psychological phenomena, such as interpersonal gratitude might affect perceptions of threat, and openness to relationships or coalitions with different groups in society to work towards addressing societal inequality. My primary aim that extends across along all of my research is understanding what conditions reduce or increase threat among different social groups, to understand when individuals and groups become more or less tolerant of societal inequality. My goal is understanding how the incorporation of different psychological phenomena, such as interpersonal gratitude, as institutional values affect political, racial, and other attitudes and policy support aimed at addressing different types of societal inequality. In the future, I would like to investigate how different racial minority groups, as well as whites, get incorporated into leftist and other political movements in the United States.

My current research projects attempt to understand the following questions:

Politics and Race Projects:

How do leftists and liberals differ in the United States?

In collaboration with numerous members of the Gantman Lab and Dr. Ana Gantman, we have resubmitted our Revise and Resubmit at The Journal of Social and Political Psychology.

How does the political diversity of others’ friends affect potential interactions, perceptions of others, and friendship interest? 

In collaboration with Dr. Daryl Wout and Grace Flores-Robles, we attempt to extend research on racial diversity in friendship networks (Wout et al., 2010; Wout et al., 2014; Green et al., 2020) to political diversity. We have completed 3 studies replicating the racial diversity effects of increasing positive perceptions and meta-perceptions, learning goals, and friendship interest with multiple racial groups in the United States. We have submitted the manuscript to Social Psychological and Personality Science.

How does the racial identity of a potential interaction partner affect potential interactions, perceptions of others, and friendship interest? 

Dr. Daryl Wout and I will also conduct similar research to the political domain, but in the racial domain. Across three studies, we will investigate how different racial minority groups (Asian Americans, Hispanics, African Americans) experience intraminority safety when faced with the prospect of interacting with another racial minority group or Whites. We have collected data for a study with Asian American participants, and are in the process of cleaning and analyzing that data. We will follow up with studies that have solely African American participants, or solely Hispanic participants.

Disability/Other Marginalized Groups Projects:

How do articles published in major psychological journals include or discuss disability?

In the near future, I will be coding the use of disability-related language within major social-psychological journals with other members of the Disability Advocacy and Research Network (DARN), investigating how disability is either discussed or mentioned in articles published in major psychological journals.

Other Projects

With Dr. Kara Ayers and Dr. Lakeya McGill, I am also in the early stages of working on a review article on the intersection of disability and race in the healthcare system. Specifically, the review will focus on how healthcare providers perceive pain among White disabled people, with a focus on how interpersonal, group-level, and institutional factors contribute to providers misperceiving or undertreating disabled patients’ pain. We will also discuss how White disabled patients’ pain might be perceived similarly or differently to different racial or ethnic minorities who don’t have disabilities.

I also have support roles on two other research projects:

One involves understanding how gender and sexual minorities might face epistemic exclusion, which can lead to increased stress in STEM and might have greater intentions to leave STEM, consistent with the experiences of other marginalized groups. This manuscript is under review at Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy.

Additionally, I will help with data analysis once data collection is complete on how individuals with disabilities might face different forms of discrimination in academia and STEM, similar to the previously mentioned project.