I am a postdoctoral scholar in the Organizational Behavior area of the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. I earned a PhD in social and personality psychology in the Department of Psychology at UC Berkeley. I earned my PhD here in May 2008. I previously earned a BA in psychology from Rice University.
My program of research focuses broadly on lay theories (everyday beliefs) about social groups, including racial and ethnic groups, gender groups, national groups, and even fictional groups. I'm especially interested in beliefs that people don't know they hold, but can affect behavior regardless. I'm also interested in beliefs that seem positive ("women are nice," "Asians are smart"), because many people think of positive beliefs as socially acceptable and don't try to avoid expressing them. Yet such beliefs can still lead to biases in behavior.
Recently, I have begun exploring the role of social power - who is in control of whom? in what situations? - in perceptions of groups. For example, in one line of research I demonstrate that men's power is seen as transferring across situations more readily than women's.
Finally, I am interested in the role of cultural background in these phenomena. How does our culture of origin teach us to think about and classify other people? As an example, cultures with collectivistic traditions (such as many East Asian cultures) may have richer ways of thinking about groups of people as social units, compared to cultures with individualistic traditions (such as many North American cultures).
