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Student |
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Affiliations |
Bio |
Research question (one per lab) |
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Janet Ahn |
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Social |
Janet was born in Queens, New York and received her B.A. in Psychology (minored in Religion and Political Science) at Barnard College, Columbia University. Her interest in social psychology was piqued as she conducted research with former graduate student of Dr. Walter Mischel, Ethan Kross, on emotion regulation. With her mentors, Gabriele Oettingen and Peter Gollwitzer, her research focuses on nonconscious goal pursuit, more specifically putting emphasis on a phenomenon called goal projection, which is the naïve assumption that another shares one's personal goal. In her leisure time, she enjoys biking with her husband and training for a triathlon next summer! |
How does projecting one's goals (i.e. assuming another shares your person goal) facilitate (or hamper) interpersonal relations? |
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Suzette Caleo |
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Social |
Suzy received her B.A. in Psychology from Florida International University. Her work encompasses and integrates two research streams -- one that addresses the mechanisms underlying gender discrimination and another that examines the effects of organizational justice. |
How do gender norms lead to biased perceptions of justice? (with Madeline Heilman and Tom Tyler) How do remote work arrangements affect the stereotyping of coworkers? (with Madeline Heilman) |
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Shana Cole |
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Social |
Shana is a 3rd year student in the Social Psychology Doctoral Program at NYU. Before graduate school, she received her B.A. in Psychology from The College of New Jersey and worked as a Clinical Research Coordinator at the University of Pennsylvania. Shana’s research primarily focuses on the sources, functions, and consequences of biased visual perception. In particular, she studies how people’s perceptions are biased in accordance with their active goals and motivations in ways that ultimately may aid self-regulation. |
How do people perceive the world around them when they have strong psychological goals but lack the physical resources to act on them? Are perceptions biased in ways that assist in managing this conflict? (with Emily Balcetis) Is perception sensitive to the affective signals emitted by objects in the environment, particularly those signals that suggest action is needed? (with Emily Balcetis) Can visual biases reduce the motivational strength of temptations, helping to enable perceivers to stay on track to their long-term goals? (with Emily Balcetis and Yaacov Trope) |
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Irina Feygina |
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Social |
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How do experiences with different cultural and political contexts influence perceptions of procedural justice, the negotiation of multiple social identities, political engagement, and acculturation? (with Tom Tyler)
How do immigrants begin to justify the American social system and respond to associated stereotypes? (with John Jost) |
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Jennifer Brooke Flynn |
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I am obtaining my doctorate in social psychology at New York University, with a minor in statistics. With Dr. Tom Tyler, my research examines the impact of respect and procedural fairness upon organizational behavior. I am also examining how statistical models can be used to model complex behaviors over time. As a Consortium for Police Equity scholar, I am currently assisting in the evaluation of the Baltimore police department's diversity policies. |
How can respect ease tensions in intergroup situations? How do individuals react to different diversity messages? Using the framework of procedural justice theory, what is the role of respect and fairness in diversity management? (with Tom Tyler) How does one's motivation influence bias expression? (with Dave Amodio) How can statistical models can be used to model bias over time? (with Pat Shrout) |
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Ana Gantman |
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Social |
Ana received her B.A. in Philosophy from Harvard University in the Spring of 2010. She began her PhD at NYU in the Fall of the same year, working primarily with Peter Gollwitzer and Gabriele Oettingen. |
Given that one of the differences between conscious and nonconscious goal pursuit is awareness of the goal intention, what consequences does realizing that our actions are unexplainable by our explicit intentions have? What role does motivation play in the perception of moral events? |
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Yael Granot |
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Social |
Yael received her B.A. in psychology from Vassar College. She is currently a 2nd year doctoral student working primarily with Emily Balcetis. |
How do our group identifications influence our visual perceptions of the environment? What are the consequences of such visual biases on legal decision-making? (with Emily Balcetis). |
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Lindy Gullett |
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Social |
Lindy graduated from Pomona College in 2009 with a BA in Psychology and a minor in mathematics. She is a second year graduate student at NYU working primarily with Tessa West, and in her free time, Lindy likes to play volleyball in Central Park. |
How can simple interpersonal manipulations (e.g. expectations of similarity, trust, and reciprocity) improve same-race and cross-race interactions? (with Tessa West) Under what conditions do we apply female stereotypes to males? (with Tessa West and Madeline Heilman) What underlies the positive effects of sharing a common identity? (with Jay Van Bavel and Tessa West) |
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Leor Hackel |
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Social |
Leor received his BS in Neuroscience & Behavior from Columbia University and began his PhD in Social Psychology at NYU in 2011. Leor is interested in how social identity, context, and motivation impact social perception, at cognitive and neural levels of analysis. |
How do motivation and social identity impact how we attribute minds to others (with Jay Van Bavel)? |
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May Ling Halim |
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Social |
May Ling received her B.A. in Psychology from Stanford University. She is currently a 6th-year doctoral student with a developmental focus. Her advisors include Dr. Diane Ruble and Dr. David Amodio. |
Why do a good number of girls become tomboys in middle childhood, while the same change is not true for boys? (with Diane Ruble)
Does high gender identification in early childhood persist over time? How does intense gender identification in early childhood affect adjustment years later? (with Diane Ruble)
How does ethnic identity moderate the relation between perceived discrimination and health? (with David Amodio) |
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Erin Hennes |
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Social |
Prior to arriving in New York, Erin majored in Music, Psychology, and Liberal Arts & Management at Indiana University. She is currently a 5th-year doctoral student working primarily with John Jost. |
How does the motivation to justify existing socioeconomic arrangements influence how we perceive, process, and respond to information (with John Jost)? Does stare decisis serve system justifying goals within the American legal system (with Tom Tyler and John Jost)? How does the perceived reciprocity of self-disclosure influence intimacy in close relationships (with Pat Shrout)? |
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Sylviane Houssais |
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Social |
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How do people set realistic goals and pursue them successfully? (with Gabriele Oettingen and Peter Gollwitzer) |
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David Kalkstein |
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Social |
David received his BA in sociology and psychology from Cornell University in 2011. He is a first year graduate student at NYU working primarily with Yaacov Trope. |
Why do people behave in ways that are inconsistent
with their own overarching goals and interests? (with Yaacov Trope and John Jost) How do mindsets and target of focus impact perception? (with Yaacov Trope and Emily Balcetis) |
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Margarita Krochik |
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Social |
Margarita Krochik is a Ph. D. student in social and personality psychology at New York University. She received her B.A. in interdisciplinary social sciences at the University of Virginia. Her research investigates the dynamics of attitudes and belief systems within individuals, relationships, and cultures/societies. She is particularly interested in understanding the interplay of cognitive and relational factors in political behavior, ideological conviction, attitude structure, and response to social influence. |
What basic processes of motivated cognition are involved in the adoption of an ideology, and how do such individual tendencies interact with
interpersonal contexts to shape ideological outcomes? What are the
interpersonal, intergroup, and societal consequences of ideological conflict (and consensus)? (with John Jost) Do perceptions of conflict or bias in the decision-making processes employed in various government bodies (e.g. Congress, the Supreme Court) shape how effective, important, and legitimate the public perceives these bodies to be? (with Tom Tyler) What role does psychological distance play in how political ideology is mentally represented, structured, and translated into decisions and behavior in political and non-political contexts? (with Yaacov Trope) |
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Amy Krosch |
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Social |
Amy uses behavioral and physiological measures to examine how situational and motivational factors exacerbate racial inequality and how they shift the perceptual criterion used to determine group membership. Her long-term goal is to inform interventions aimed at reducing racial disparities in socio-economic outcomes. Before beginning graduate school, she received her BS in Psychology from the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Later she researched behavioral decision making at Columbia University with Professors Elke U. Weber and Eric J. Johnson and Dr. Bernd Figner, specifically investigating the neural underpinnings of intertemporal choice. |
How does threat influence intergroup decision making and perception of group boundaries (with David Amodio and Tom Tyler)? How does ideological motivation influence race categorization (with Jay Van Bavel, John Jost and David Amodio)? Do stereotypes influence the low-level visual processing of the object of those stereotypes (with David Amodio)? |
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Sean Lane |
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Social |
Sean received a B.S. in mathematics from Carnegie Mellon University and an M.A. in quantitative methods from Columbia University before beginning his Ph.D. at NYU in 2007. He is currently in his fifth year in the Social Psychology Program and is broadly interested in quantitative models of emotional experience and communication. |
How do intimate couples come to co-regulate their moods over time, and what determines which partner has more influence in these coupled regulatory systems? (with Pat Shrout) How does being distant from our significant others, in time, space, or social status, affect our evaluations of them? (with Yaacov Trope) How do people's ideological beliefs influence their perceptions of risk through concurrent and reconstructed emotional experience? (with John Jost)" |
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Sam Maglio |
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Social |
Sam is in his fifth year in the Social Psychology Doctoral Program at NYU. He was a psychology & English major at Stanford, where he worked with Laura Carstensen on research related to aging, emotion, and decision making. After college, he worked for the same research group as a project coordinator for one year. He spent the following year at Cornell as a lab manager for Joseph Mikels, continuing to conduct research on emotion and decision making, before starting at NYU in the fall of 2007. |
How do emotional experiences color the goals people set and the strategies they devise to attain those goals? (with Peter Gollwitzer & Gabriele Oettingen) Do different strategies of making decisions lead to differences in how people act on them and feel about them afterward? (with Peter Gollwitzer) Can the different dimensions of psychological distance be conceptualized and combined as an interchangeable sort of common currency? (with Yaacov Trope) |
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Anesu Mandisodza |
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Social |
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How do people perceive, interpret and respond to threatening and/or changing social systems? |
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Avital Mentovich |
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Social |
Tali received BAs in Psychology, Philosophy and Law, and practiced law for several years as a criminal and constitutional lawyer. As a social psychologist she remained focused on issues pertaining to social justice, legitimacy, and rule-following. Her research looks at how people’s perceptions of what is fair affect their perceptions of and reactions to social, legal, political, and public policy issues. In particular she studies how procedural fairness affects individuals’ perception of power and justification of inequality. |
Can procedural fairness be used to justify intergroup outcome inequalities? What is the relation between fair treatment and perception of power? What are the psychological, political, and public policy implications of violating procedural justice principles and the privilege of voice? How justice concerns are involved in citizens’ reaction to policy initiatives? |
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Hannah Nam |
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Hannah received her B.A. in Psychology from Wesleyan University in 2008. She began her PhD in 2010, working primarily with John Jost. |
What are the psychological mechanisms and motivations that underlie both resistance to and support for change, especially under circumstances in which the existing social, economic, and political arrangements are characterized by inequality and intergroup conflict (with John Jost)? What are the neuro-cognitive correlates of political ideology, attitudes, and behaviors (with John Jost and Jay Van Bavel)? |
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Polina Potanina |
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Social |
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How do the automatic components of racial and gender bias interact with consciously-held beliefs about such biases? (with David Amodio)
How do such biases help perpetuate the hierarchical structure of society? (with John Jost) |
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Elizabeth Przybylinski |
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Social |
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How are everyday interpersonal relations influenced by past and
present relationships with significant others? (Susan Andersen) |
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Lindsay Rankin |
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Social |
Lindsay received her BA in Psychology from Northwestern University where she worked with Alice Eagly. At NYU she has worked with Tom Tyler and is currently working with John Jost. |
Do people both low in explicit or outward endorsement of system justification still have similar motivations - do they show reactions to system threat; do they use different methods to respond to or cope with such threats (with John Jost)? |
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Kyle Ratner |
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Social |
Kyle is a 6th year graduate student in the NYU Social Psychology Ph.D. Program. Prior to graduate school, he earned a B.A. in psychology at Cornell and worked for two years as the lab manager of Diego Pizzagalli’s Affective Neuroscience Lab at Harvard. |
How do social identities bias face processing? (with David Amodio and Jay Van Bavel). How do perceptions of stigmatization and ingroup pride relate to endocrine and immune markers of health risk and resilience? (with David Amodio). |
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Jennifer Ray |
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Social |
Jenny received her BA in psychology and political science from Williams College and began her PhD in Social Psychology at NYU in 2009. She is broadly interested in studying the psychology of morality, punishment, and legal decision-making. In her research, Jenny tries to understand the antecedents and consequences of moral outrage. |
How does the inducement of moral (versus non-moral) evaluative modes impact reactions to taboo-tradeoffs and punitive judgments? (with Jay Van Bavel) How do role assignments and framing enhance or attenuate affective reactions in the context of legal decision-making? (with Jay Van Bavel & Dominic Packer) How do descriptive and prescriptive gender stereotypes impact perceptions of guilt and assigned punishment? (with Madeline Heilman) What triggers the ascription of evilness in perpetrators of harms and what are the consequences of its ascription to retributive and procedural justice concerns? (with Tom Tyler) |
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Katherine Reilly |
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Social |
Kate earned her B.A. in Psychology from Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, in 2010. Upon graduation, she joined the Emotion, Health and Psychophysiology Lab, directed by Wendy Berry Mendes, where she worked for a year as the lab manager. She entered the doctoral program at NYU in the fall of 2011. |
How do emotions and stress influence self-regulation? What are the physiological mechanisms underlying goal setting and striving? (Gollwitzer and Oettingen) |
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Chadly Stern |
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Social |
Graduated with BA in Psychology from NYU in 2011. |
How does the topic of an intergroup discussion between power discrepant groups influence (a) the allocation of resources and (b) expectations of how those resources will be allocated (with Tessa West)? |
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Alexandra Wesnousky |
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Social |
Alex received her B.A. in Psychology and Classical studies from Colby College in 2010. She began her PhD at NYU in the fall of 2010, where she works primarily with Gabriele Oettingen and Peter Gollwitzer. |
How do our self-concepts influence self-regulatory thought and behavior? Can a maladaptive or undesirable self-concept result in positive behavioral and affective outcomes (with Gollwitzer and Oettinge)? |
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Jenny Xiao |
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Social |
Jenny received her BA in psychology and biology from Bard College and began her PhD in Social Psychology at NYU in 2010, working with Professor Jay Van Bavel and Professor Yaacov Trope. Jenny is broadly interested in studying social categorization, social identity, stereotyping and prejudice. In her research, Jenny tries to understand intergroup relations and interactions by exploring how high-level social psychological constructs such as social identity can alter low-level cognitive and perceptual processes. Jenny’s primary line of research with Jay Van Bavel seeks to understand how our social identity and intergroup threat work in concert to shape our perceptual and representational experience of physical reality—particularly physical distance—which could in turn lead to detrimental consequences in intergroup relations and interactions. |
How does high-level social psychological constructs such as social identity alter low-level cognitive and perceptual processes? How flexible is our perceptual and representational systems and to what degree are they sensitive to top-town influences? What are the psychological mechanisms through which intergroup threats lead to intergroup consequences such as discrimination? How are different dimensions of distance (e.g, social distance) represented in the human brain? |
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Joy Xu |
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Social |
Joy received her B.S. in Psychology and Biology from Carnegie Mellon University where she worked in Dr. Brooke Feeney’s Relationships lab. Now at NYU she primarily works with Patrick Shrout in the Couples lab. Her interests are in the processes involved in maintaining close relationships. Her current projects include studying fluctuations and change in attachment anxiety over time, as well as investigating how attachment and perceived support are associated with an individual’s engagement in exploration. Joy also works with Professor Susan Andersen, examining the occurrence of transference in ongoing romantic relationships. |
How do attachment orientation and perceived availability of support predict personal exploration? (Pat Shrout) Can Transference occur in the context of an on-going relationship and if so, with what consequences? (Susan Andersen) |
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Daniel Yudkin |
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Social |
Daniel is a first-year in the Social Psychology program; his primary advisor is Yaacov Trope but he also works with John Jost and Jay Van Bavel. He graduated from Williams College in 2008 and spent the next two years playing semi-professional jazz piano in Paris. He then spent half a year working as an Academic Coordinator at a middle school on the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua. At Williams, his work in psychology centered on the effects of poverty on present orientation and time discounting. He lives in Brooklyn and enjoys soccer, chess, and music. |
How do people compare themselves to dissimilar others? How does group membership affect people's moral judgments? How can empirical research in psychology teach us about What It's Like to be a person? |
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