I am a postdoctoral scholar in the Organizational Behavior area of the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University.
I previously earned a PhD in social and personality psychology in the Department of Psychology at UC Berkeley, and a BA in psychology from Rice University. I grew up near Phoenix, Arizona.
My program of research focuses broadly on lay theories (everyday beliefs) about social groups. These include racial and ethnic groups, gender groups, national groups, and even fictional groups. Overall, I'm seeking to understand how cultures around the world account for inequality - how they explain why people in some groups have more resources than others. Culturally guided lay theories are one method that individuals use to make sense of the inequalities they perceive. My work uses a wide variety of social psychological research methods and populations to try to answer this question.
Some of the current research questions I'm asking include:
- How does the ideology of the American Dream affect support for redistributive social policies and tolerance of inequality? (with Brian Lowery)
- Does social power lead men to view an available woman more favorably? And an unavailable woman with more hostility? (with Deb Gruenfeld and Lucia Guillory)
- Can the decision-making power that women traditionally wield in the home generalize to the public sphere? (with Serena Chen)
- How does performance quality (such as an A grade versus a C grade) influence how people of mixed race are perceived and categorized? (with Frank Flynn)
- How do cultural differences in social cognition alter both the experience of stigma and the processes of stereotyping? (with Julie Spencer-Rodgers)
