Research interests

How and why do people discriminate against others, particularly gender and sexual minorities?

I take two broad approaches to addressing my main research question. In one line of work, I examine psychological processes involved in resisting change and reinforcing inequality. In the other line of work, I focus on understanding how discriminatory experiences and social biases affect important social outcomes. Specifically, I examine how perceptions of and attitudes toward people who disrupt the link between sex and gender (e.g., transgender people) are shaped by belief systems that help maintain existing social structures and inequalities, as well as propose and test mechanisms for why gender relations are difficult to change.

In my research, I adopt a multi-method approach using large representative pre-existing datasets and correlational, experimental, and meta-analytic methods. I utilize advanced statistical procedures (e.g., structural equation modeling in Mplus, multi-level and generalized linear mixed modeling in R) to integrate theoretical approaches from diverse areas of psychology (e.g., intergroup relations, social perception, political psychology). Overall, these approaches highlight how psychological science can be used as a tool for understanding the impact of gender discrimination in everyday life.

As a postdoctoral researcher in the Social Roles and Beliefs Lab at New York University Abu Dhabi, I am primarily interested in:

1. Group perceptions and whether they partly explain why people with strong gender essentialist thinking report more negative TGNB attitudes;

2. Strong masculinity workplace norms and the extent to which they influence the perceived status of various social identities and how these perceptions relate to personal sense of status and organizational attraction for members of socially disadvantaged groups (e.g., women, men of color, gay men);

3. Gender differences in psychological variables relevant to STEM engagement in the MENA region.