Yale Intergroup Relations Lab

John F. Dovidio [Website][CV]

My work centers around issues of social power and social relations, both between groups and between individuals. I explore both conscious (explicit) and unconscious (implicit) influences on how people think about, feel about, and behave toward others based on group membership. I continue to conduct research on aversive racism, a contemporary subtle form of prejudice, and on techniques for reducing conscious and unconscious biases.

Jillian Banfield [CV]

Jillian Banfield is a postdoctoral fellow working in Jack Dovidio's Yale Intergroup Relations lab. She received her PhD from the University of Waterloo, where she worked with Aaron Kay and Mike Ross. Her research interests include intergroup helping behavior, support for redressing historical injustices, political ideology, and food policy. Jillian is particularly interested in studying 1) the motivators and 2) the consequences of intergroup helping.

Paula Brochu [Website][CV]

Paula Brochu is a Postdoctoral Fellow working in the Yale Intergroup Relations Lab with Jack Dovidio. Her postdoctoral fellowship is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). She received her Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Western Ontario, under the supervision of Vicki Esses. Her primary research interests involve examining the processes underlying the expression of prejudice, particularly in how people justify the expression of prejudice. She is also interested in weight bias and weight stigma.

Corinne Moss-Racusin [Website][CV]

Corinne Moss-Racusin is a postdoctoral associate in the Yale Intergroup Relations lab as well as the Yale Center for Scientific Teaching (working with Jack Dovidio and Jo Handelsman). After completing her undergraduate work at New York University, she received her Ph.D in social psychology from Rutgers University. Her primary research interests include stereotyping processes and discrimination, gender roles, and implicit social cognition. More specifically, she is interested in the ways in which stereotypes shape behavior and self-regulation, and how these in turn impact intergroup relations and gender equity within institutions.

Sylvia Perry [Website]

Sylvia Perry is a Postdoctoral Associate working primarily with John Dovidio (in the Yale Intergroup Relations Lab) and Michelle van Ryn (in the University of Minnesota’s Department of Family Medicine and Community Health). She received her Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Illinois at Chicago in the Fall of 2010. Her research, broadly speaking, focuses on issues related to intergroup bias, bias reduction, and intergroup interactions. With her current work, Sylvia is exploring: (a) how people respond to accusations of bias, and the importance of people’s pre-existing awareness of their biases (or bias awareness) in these contexts; (b) bias awareness in children, and the development of bias awareness over time; and (c) the various situational and individual factors that contribute to healthcare disparities.

Allecia Reid

Allecia Reid is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS, where Jack Dovidio is her primary mentor. She received her doctorate in social psychology from Arizona State University. Broadly, Allecia’s research focuses on the application of social psychological constructs and findings to the promotion of health protective behaviors. Current research projects examine the application of normative information to behavior change, psychosocial mechanisms through which social norms influence behavior, and potential moderators of the influence of social norms on behavior.

Jojanneke van der Toorn [Website]

Jojanneke van der Toorn is a Postdoctoral Associate in the research labs of Jack Dovidio and Jaime Napier. She holds M.A. degrees in organizational psychology and cultural anthropology from the Free University of Amsterdam and a Ph.D. from New York University. Her research focuses on the social psychological mechanisms involved in how, why, and when people either resist, provide support for, or directly engage in social change. Current projects include the system-serving biases exhibited by those who are relatively powerless within the confines of the system; the effects of outcome dependence on the legitimation of authority; political protest and participation; cross-cultural differences in perceived justice; the relationship between threat, conservative beliefs, and national identification; and the self-regulatory function of stereotyping.

Kerra Bui

Kerra Bui Partney is a 5th year doctoral student. Kerra received her B.A. summa cum laude from UCLA. Broadly her interests lie in social cognition as well as cultural and political psychology. With Valerie Purdie-Vaughns and Marcia Johnson, she explores stereotypes about politicians and interpersonal reality monitoring. Kerra also has interdisciplinary research projects with the School of Management and the Institution of Social and Policy Studies where she examines cultural influences on identity, consumer preferences, and political behavior. In another line of research with Valerie Purdie-Vaughns, Kerra has explored multiple self-schemas among immigrants who belong to cultures that have experienced discrimination. In particular she examined the public/private self-schema distinction. Kerra’s graduate education is funded by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.

Sara Burke

Sara Burke is a first-year doctoral student. She received her BA in psychology, English, and statistics from the University of Michigan. Her research interests include exploring variations in the way prejudice operates when it targets different types of groups, and one of her central goals is expanding the body of information about intergroup bias to account better for dimensions of prejudice which have received less attention than race and gender, including intersecting stigmatized identities. Within this framework, she is particularly interested in identifying causal relationships among stereotypes, prejudice, discrimination, and experiences of stigma, as well as understanding the internet as a social environment in which bias (and reactions to bias) can operate.

Ruth Ditlmann

Ruth Ditlmann is a 4th year doctoral student. Ruth received her Diploma in Psychology from the University of Constance, Germany in 2007. Her research focuses on the role of identity in minority exclusion, particularly across cultures and subcultures. In her main line of research she investigates how national identity shapes people's reaction to immigrants in the United States and in Germany. In a project with Richard Eibach and Valerie Purdie-Vaughns, she investigates patterns of discrimination against targets with either one or several marginalized identities. She has also conducted research on how perceptions of multicultural policies differ depending on the ethnic background of the perceiver with Valerie Purdie-Vaughns, and on how contextual cues shape expectations towards minority and majority members. To investigate her questions of interest she adopts a multi-method approach, consisting of surveys, laboratory studies, content analysis and most recently field experimentation.

Jamie Luguri

Jamie Luguri is a 1st year doctoral student. She received her BS in psychology and political science from Union College. Broadly, she is interested in researching political psychology, religion, and gender. Her current research is examining the impact of construal level on religious orientation and prejudice towards different out-groups. In other research, she examines the palliative role religion can play when people are faced with injustice.

Anna Newheiser [Website]

Anna Newheiser is a 5th year doctoral student. Anna received her B.A. and M.Sc. from Oxford University. In her primary research (with John Dovidio), she examines prejudice and group perception as predictors of negative intergroup behaviors such as aggression and retribution. In other research, she studies the interpersonal consequences of treating others as sex objects (with Marianne LaFrance and John Dovidio) and the role of religiosity as a buffer against the negative impact of existential threat (with Miles Hewstone and Alberto Voci). Anna's graduate education is funded by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.

Erin L. Thomas

Erin L. Thomas is currently a fourth-year PhD candidate in the Social Psychology program at Yale. Her research interests lie in the application of the field in educational and workplace environments. Her current projects include her dissertation research, which examines the positive and negative consequences of Black women's social non-prototypicality, and an examination of the perceptions of counter-stereotypical business leaders (with Tori Brescoll of Yale's School of Management).

Katie Wang

Katie Wang is a third-year graduate student in social psychology. She received her BAs in psychology and statistics from Rice University. Katie's primary interests focus on the experience of disadvantaged group members as stigmatized targets and how different factors influence the ways they respond to such experiences. Her current line of research with John dovidio investigates the ways women respond to gender discrimination in a job application scenario and how individual differences in stigma consciousness shape their responses.

Takuya Sawaoka

Takuya Sawaoka is a senior in Yale College. In his primary research (with John Dovidio and Anna Newheiser), he explores how moral judgments serve to maintain and legitimize prejudice. In his other research (with Jaime Napier), he examines the processes by which disadvantaged groups come to justify their own delegitimization.

Silvia Abad-Merino

Silvia Abad-Merino is a visiting doctoral student at Yale and a third-year doctoral student at the University of Cordoba, with a concentration in Social Psychology. She received her Bachelor of Science in Education and a Masters of Education in Educational Psychology, with a prestigious honors award from the University of Cordoba.  She also received the Second Spanish National Award from The Ministry of Education of Spain. She has been a visiting researcher at the University of Stockholm, the University of Oxford, and the University of Ulster. Silvia’s current research interests lie in examining how bias towards different ethnic groups in heterogeneous societies affects the development of prosocial behavior. Specifically, she looks at the intersections of psychological, social, and the cultural factors that impact decision making based on various aspects of identity, including, race, culture and gender.

Yoona Kang

Yoona is a 5th-year graduate student in cognitive psychology and affiliated Yale Intergroup Relations Lab graduate student (primarily advised by Jeremy Gray). She is interested in the science of health, well-being, and social connectedness. Her research focuses on the ways to reduce detrimental forms of automatic emotional reactivity through mindfulness, thereby improving health and quality of close relationships. She also explores the neural basis of such processes using fMRI. Yoona completed her undergraduate education at UCLA, and is originally from Seoul, Korea. She is also the proud mother of a very cute dog Nana.

Lisa Paymer Dodge

Lisa Paymer Dodge is a research assistant working with Dr. Dovidio. Graduating with High Honors in Psychology, she received her BA (cum laude) from Colgate University. She then did graduate work in the field of Organizational Behavior at CUNY at Baruch in New York City. With Dr. Dovidio, her present line of research concentrates on the possible effects of Social Identity Complexity and Self Identity Complexity on an individual's ability to successfully navigate intergroup interactions in both academic and business settings.

Fabian Schellhaas

Fabian is a visiting student from the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. He is interested in the social psychology of intergroup inequality, collective action towards social change, as well as morality and justice. In his research with Jack, Fabian explores (1) when and why members of privileged groups struggle for social equality, and (2) how intergroup justice perceptions vary across social categorizations.

Hyeyoung Shin

Hyeyoung Shin has been working with John Dovidio at Yale as a visiting student since Sept. 2009. She received a B.A. magna cum laude in psychology from the University of Maryland College Park and a M.A. in psychology from New York University (with James Uleman). She has also worked at Child & Family Research, NIH as a data analyst (with Marc Bornstein). Currently, she is a graduate student at the University of Maryland College Park (with Charles Stangor). Her primary research interest is prejudice. Her recent work (with John Dovidio and Jaime Napier) examined cultural differences in prejudice between individual- and group- oriented cultures.