Research Interests
People often assume they think about and perceive the world as it really is, that their thoughts and perceptions reflect an objective reality. Rather, a growing body of research suggests that individual and contextual factors influence the way people think about and perceive the world around them.
My research broadly investigates the malleability of how people think about and perceive themselves, other individuals, and the environment. Moreover, I examine the downstream consequences of those biases for global social issues. I investigate these questions across several domains including in the domains of discrimination toward stigmatized groups, health, and pro-environmental behavior.
Throughout my research, I draw upon varied methods tailored to the questions at hand, including creative measures of visual processes (e.g., facial morphing, eye-tracking, micro-expression coding, avatar generation). In keeping with my teaching philosophy, I actively engage students in all stages of my research, and I aim to give them access to the skills and knowledge to pursue a research career.
STIGMATIZED GROUPS
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How does learning someone is transgender affect a person's perception, attention, behavior, cognition, and emotion toward that individual?
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Across my work, I document and investigate factors that predict differences in the way people think about, perceive, and attend to members of stigmatized populations. I also consider how stigmatized populations think about themselves. Throughout my work, I also demonstrate the consequences these biases have for members of minority groups. Much of my work utilizes novel lab-developed paradigms (e.g., avatar creation), clever well-established experimental techniques (e.g., aggression methods), and advanced technology (e.g., eyetracking) to ask whether biased perception and attention contribute to the deleterious outcomes LGBTQ+ individuals face.
HEALTH​
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Does acting in line with a health goal lead people to perceive their bodies as healthier? Do people who just quit smoking perceive the health consequences of smoking as more extreme than non-smokers?
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My work explores the contextual factors under which health-relevant perceptual and cognitive differences emerge and the consequences of these perceptions and cognitions. I examine the factors that predict how individuals perceive health-relevant stimuli in their environments and link perceptual biases to health related outcomes.
PRO-ENVIRONMENTAL BEHAVIOR​
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How does the the feeling of knowledge about climate change differ from actual knowledge? What is more important when it comes to pro-environmental action?
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I investigate how cognitive biases about climate change are related to pro-environmental behaviors. Much of this work was conducted through interdisciplinary collaborations with the departments of environmental sciences, human ecology, and communication.
OPEN SCIENCE PRACTICES​
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In all of my work, I subscribe to our field’s current standards for open research practices. I believe that transparent research practices strengthen the scientific integrity of psychological science and can ultimately enhance the replicability of research findings. I subscribe to pre-registration, transparency in materials and data, and include p-curve analyses in relevant manuscripts.
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To access materials and data from published work, please visit my page on Open Science Framework.
