Stephanie Anderson

7th year student
Office: Fraser 549
Phone: 864-9838
stephanie@ku.edu

Research Interests: I work with Glenn Adams. My research focuses primarily on the cultural grounding of personal relationship. I study how particular socio-cultural and historical circumstances influence psychological phenomena, such as the process of attraction.

Matt Baldwin

3rd year student
Office: Fraser 409
mwbaldwin@ku.edu
http://www.policingequity.org | Personal site

Research Interests: I work primarily with Monica Biernat and my research interests fall broadly within the area of social cognition as it relates to stereotyping and prejudice. Specifically, I am interested in the way we process social information and the consequences of such processing in various social situations. Mostly, I have been investigating the relationship between social categorization and recognition memory for faces of other racial and social groups. More recently, I have been exploring nostalgia. Some questions I aim to answer are: What is nostalgia? When and why do we feel nostalgic? What effect does nostalgia have on one's identity?

Mea Benson

2nd year student
Office: Fraser 549
m690b259@ku.edu

Research Interests: I work primarily with Nyla Branscombe. My interests center broadly around issues concerning the marginalization of disadvantaged groups (from the advantaged-group perspective), the history of institutionalized and systematic oppression, and the built-in, legitimized structures that hold the system constant (e.g., tokenism effect). The areas of research that I am specifically interested in are intergroup relations, individual vs. group-level emotions, and the flexibility of social identity and self-categorization, and how these concepts and their corresponding theories integrate and relate to prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination.

Laura Van Berkel

1st year student
Office: Fraser 549
vanberkel@ku.edu

Research Interests: My research interests focus broadly on the field of political psychology. Within this domain, I am interested in examining the cognitive processes underlying ideological reasoning, perceptions of politicians both as candidates and as authority figures, and the effects of social influence on our political decision-making and behaviors. I seek to answer questions such as: What is liberalism? What makes us liberal or conservative? How do we view our relationship to politicians? How does historical knowledge influence our current beliefs about government?

Ishwar Bridgelal

1st year student
Office: Fraser 549
ishwar.bridgelal@gmail.com

Research interests: I work primarily with Monica Biernat in an effort to better understand the antecedents, manifestations, and consequences of benevolent prejudice. I'm particularly interested in the affective, motivational, and cognitive processes that mediate the provision of paternalistic (dependency-oriented) aid. Other studies in the pipeline will examine the insidious effects of benevolent stereotypes by themselves and independent of helping behavior. Overall, I attempt to demonstrate that benevolent prejudice is not an oxymoron but a real, observable phenomenon that merits social psychological scrutiny.

Tara Collins

5th year student
Office: Fraser 550
Phone: 864-9838
tarac@ku.edu

Research Interests: My research generally encompasses two primary lines of research broadly exploring (1) close relationships and (2) sexuality. First, my work on close relationships focuses on the "dark side" of romantic relationships. I use the robust framework of attachment theory to understand aggressive and uncompassionate tendencies in relationships. Using experimental methods, I have found that the tendencies for insecure individuals to behave in less caring or selfish ways can be reduced by enhancing an individual's state attachment security. My second line of research examines both the motivational and social aspects of sexuality. Along with my advisor, Omri Gillath, I have explored the effects of subliminal sexual priming on affect and motivation, finding that unconscious exposure to a sexual stimuli leads to the experience of enjoyment and motivation to further engage in the task paired with the prime. More recently, I have begun to explore the social factors impacting an individual's sexual identity. Currently, I am exploring the impact of social support and inclusion on sexual orientation identification of non-heterosexual individuals. Suggesting that our sexual identities can be shaped by the social worlds we inhabit.

Owen Cox

6th year student
Office phone: 864-9838
Office: Fraser 549
owencox@ku.edu

Research Interests: I work with Chris Crandall. The main focus of my research has been in the field of political psychology. More specifically, in my research I attempt to understand the psychological processes under which leaders, governments, and their actions are perceived by the public as legitimate. Using various research methods, we have explored the way the government and its officials are motivated to maintain their legitimacy through their policy choices. These have included but are not limited to policies such as extraordinary rendition and covert military action. I am also interested in the process by which individuals and groups come view themselves as legitimate Americans while excluding others from this category and how this national identity might change with time. 

 

Marina Drus

1st year student
Office phone: 864-9838
Office: Fraser 550
mdrus@ku.edu

Research Interests: My interests primarily revolve around cognitive processes, affective processes, motivational factors, and personality aspects involved in political attitudes, prejudice, stereotyping, intergroup relations, preferences for social hierarchy and system justification. I also have a keen interest in exploring unconscious mechanisms that underlie political behavior and ideological predilection.

Claire Gravelin

2nd year student
Office: Fraser 409
cgravelin@ku.edu

Research Interests: My research interests broadly examine stereotyping and prejudice. More specifically, I am interested in examining the role of social power in the perception and treatment of marginalized individuals. My focus is primarily on the importance of examining both dichotomies of power (those possessing power and those in a state of powerlessness) and examining how these differences in the degree of social power influence subsequent behavior.

Chris Goode

2nd year student
Office: Fraser 549
sgtgoode@gmail.com

Research Interests: I work primarily with Ludwin Molina. My research interests fall within Political Psychology and Inter-group relations. More specifically I am interested in how ideolgoical messages from dominant groups affect the attitudes/opinions/and beliefs for subordinate group members. I am also currently exploring concepts attributed to the "American Dream" such as meritocracy, individual mobility, equality of opportunity, and National Identity. I am interested how the delivery and persistence of these messages may affect individuals sense of identity to their in-group, out-group, and superordinate identities as well as how we are induced/persuaded/or forced to construct a superordinate National Identity and what this identity affords us. A secondary line of research I am currently working with is how individuals in the workplace derive meaning, autonomy, security and fulfillment from the occupational titles they are given by their superiors. Using action identification theory I seek to understand how higher level meaning is transferred from the occupational title to the experience of the worker and if these higher meanings can undermine a sense of exploitation in the worker.

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Lucas Keefer

3rd Year Student
lkeefer1@ku.edu

Research Interests: I work primarily with Mark Landau. My research focuses on the role of existential psychology in consumer behavior. My recent research draws on attachment theory to explore the role of objects in fulfilling security needs. My other related research interests include Conceptual Metaphor Theory, embodiment, and phenomenological psychology.

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Tugce Kurtis

5th year student
tugcekurtis@gmail.com

Research Interests: I work primarily with Glenn Adams. My research focuses on the sociocultural and gendered constructions of self and identity (particularly through self and cultural narratives), self-disclosure and self-silencing as well as the implications of these processes for health and social policy. Recently, I began exploring processes of collective remembering and forgetting, different constructions of past traumatic events and their role on collective identity.

Juwon Lee

2nd year student
Office: Fraser 460
lee@ku.edu

Research interests: My research interests are focused on close relationships, and I work primarily with Omri Gillath . Some of the topics I’m interested in are the factors that influence interpersonal attraction, how sexual arousal affects the psyche, and how relational concepts such as closeness and love are culturally constructed.

Sahana Mukherjee

3rd year student
Office phone: 864-9838
Office: Fraser 550
sahana@ku.edu

Research Interests: I work primarily with Ludwin Molina and Glenn Adams. My research interests fall broadly within Political and Cultural Psychology. I am in the process of exploring the role of the 'other' in defining one's group identity. That is, by distinguishing who the other group is helps us define our own group. I am also interested in the relation between gender and helping behavior, especially how helping relations are essentially unequal social relations. My other research interests include cultural constructions of identity, construction of a national identity and the study of racism and oppression.

Kate Pickett

5th year student
Office phone: 864-9838
Office: Fraser 549
kpickett@ku.edu
Culture and Psychology Research Group | Personal site

Research Interests:I work primarily with Glenn Adams. I take a sociocultural approach to racism and oppression that locates the roots of these phenomena within the social world rather than individual minds. Incorporated within this approach my current research interests include racism and oppression absent of differential treatment, perceptions of racism and sexism, and the effects of representations of racism in social psychology courses.

Jackie Ratliff

6th year student
Office phone: 864-9824
Office: Fraser 421
jratliff@ku.edu

Research Interests: I work primarily with Dr. Pat Hawley. I am interested in investigating the influence of a perceived sexist climate in professional academic contexts on personal experiences and coping within that climate. I am also interested in integrating developmental models of aggression with social psychological paradigms of stereotyping.

Zach Rothschild

4th year student
Office phone: 864-9836
Office: Fraser 444
psygradz@ku.edu

Research Interests: I work primarily with Mark Landau in the domain of existential social psychology. I am generally interested in the why questions of human motivation and how underlying needs for value, meaning, control and certainty drive a wide array of human behavior. I am also interested in how these motivational forces shape construction of the self and the world-at-large including implications for intergroup relations.

Alex Schoemann

Post Doctoral Scholar (CRMDA)
Office phone: 864-9838
Office: Fraser 549
schoam4@ku.edu

Research Interests: I work with Nyla Branscombe. In general I am interested in how Social Identity Theory and Self-Categorization Theory can be utilized to provide explanations of inter- and intra-group behavior.

Danielle Snider

2nd year grad student
loco_runner2@sbcglobal.net

Research interests: I will be working primarily with Glenn Adams. My research interests focus in the field cultural psychology particularly in relation to the Middle East and North Africa. Within this context I am interested in imagination of self(and one's community) in relation to socio-cultural influences and also how individual's constructs meaning for cultural artefacts, symbols, and values.

Daniel Sullivan

4th year student
Office Phone: 4-9836
Office: Fraser 444

dsully@ku.edu

Research Interests: I work with Mark Landau on issues within the scope of experimental existential psychology. I am specifically interested in how individuals create meaning and morality, and the implications of these processes for society and, on the individual level, for the moral emotions. For instance: why are we driven to seek the guilty party behind an evil event? What is guilt? Why do some individuals experience guilt and not others?