Social Psychology Program

Office: Fraser 549
Phone: 864-9838
 

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.

stephanie@ku.edu | Social Program

Matt Baldwin
1st year student

Office: Fraser 549
E-mail: mwbaldwin@ku.edu

Research Interests: I work mostly with Monica Biernat and my research interests fall broadly within the area of social cognition as it relates to sterotyping and prejudice. Specifically, I am interested in the way we process social information and the consequences of such processing in various social situations. Recently, I have been investigating the relationship between social categorization and recognition memory for faces of other racial and social groups. I am also working with Ludwin Molina examining the relationship between categorization and the use of "social others" to establish group identity.

mwbaldwin@ku.edu  | Social Program

Office: Fraser 460
Phone: 864-9838

Research Interests: I work with Omri Gillath, studying close relationships primarily from an attachment theoretical perspective. Broadly, I am interested in how and why we (as humans) initiate and maintain romantic relationships. Currently, I am pursuing research exploring the relationship between adult attachment style and one's ability to control thoughts and regulate emotions (when confronted with attachment related stimuli), with a focus on cognitive strategies and neurological mechanisms.
 

mnc@ku.edu | Social Program

Office: Fraser 550
Phone: 864-9838

Research Interests: I work with Omri Gillath broadly exploring romantic relationships. More specifically, I am interested in the
personality and behavioral factors that attract us to our romantic partners. I am looking to see if certain characteristics that are traditionally viewed as negative traits, are actually seen as attractive to some individuals when evaluating potential mates. I am also interested why people stay with "bad" or abusive partners and how past relationship experiences (primarily negative) affect later relationships. My other research interests include sexuality, aggression and abuse in relationships and parental relationships as models for children's relationships.

tarac@ku.edu | Social Program

Office phone: 4-9838
Office: Fraser 549

Research Interests: I work with Chris Crandall. My research interests are political psychology and the psychology of legitimacy. Specifically, I am interested the perceived legitimacy of leaders. Last year I did my honors thesis over the perceptions of unit relationships between Bush and Cheney and how negative or positive views of one may effect the perception of the other. 

oface@ku.edu  | Social Program

Office phone: 4-9838
Office: Fraser 550

Research Interests: I work primarily with Nyla Branscombe. In short, I’m interested in how people cope with and respond to discrimination.  For example, my Master’s thesis was based on a test of an extended version of Branscombe’s (1999) rejection-identification model with a longitudinal data set collected at UCLA. I explored whether or not Mexican-American students who experience discrimination on campus use ingroup identification as a psychological buffer to the negative effects of discrimination. I tested whether or not this pattern differs across time and whether or not activism in response to discrimination can serve as a similar protective buffer to the experience of discrimination. Currently, I’m working on research that tests how the construction of meaning of a discrimination event (and subsequent behavioral responses) can be shaped by perceptions of shared experience of that event with ingroup others.

tcronin@ku.edu | Social Program

Office phone: 4-9838
Office: Fraser 550

Research Interests: My work has primarily been with Monica Biernat, focusing on how stereotypes influence and are used by people.  Specifically, I'm interested in how people use stereotypes for personal benefit. I also work with Nyla Branscombe on the effects of organizational discrimination on organizational identification and perceptions of meritocracy.

kellyad5@yahoo.com | Social Program

Office phone: 4-9835
Office: Fraser 549

Research Interests: I work with Monica Biernat and Glenn Adams. My research interests lie in gender stereotyping, discrimination. Recently I have been doing research that mainly look at how various group characteristics (e.g., gender, social class, parental status) effect perceivers' evaluations of and emotions toward the target and how target's own performance expectations, future aspirations are affected by perceivers' evaluations in different contexts.

sggungor@ku.edu  | Social Program | Culture and Psychology Research Group

Lucas Keefer
1st Year Student

Office:
Phone:
 

Research Interests: I work primarily with Mark Landau. My research emphasizes the role of object possession and commodification in coping with existential concerns. Specifically I am in the process of exploring the role of objects in fulfilling security needs, the extent to which social factors influence object value, and the relationship between authenticity and object production. My other related research interests include embodiment, heuristic processes in value judgments, the existential role of sexual fetishization, aesthetic judgment, and phenomenological psychology.

lkeefer1@ku.edu | Social Program

Office phone:
Office:

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.

tugcekurtis@gmail.com | Social Program

Office phone: 864-9838
Office: Fraser 550

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.

sahana@ku.edu | Social Program

Office phone: 4-4254
Office: Fraser 442
Alternate location: Fraser 549

Research Interests: I work primarily with Chris Crandall. My research focuses on prejudice, perceptions of threat, and reactions to social
change. I am particularly interested in how high status groups react when low status groups are making advances. My current program of
research is guided by the question: Does threat operate as a cause or a consequence of prejudice? This work incorporates ideas from integrated threat theory (Stephan & Stephan, 2000), social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1986), and the justification-suppression model of prejudice (Crandall & Eshleman, 2003). One study looked at donations to anti-gay, pro-gay and neutral organizations when gays were perceived to be either gaining status or remaining low in status. We found that less money was donated to anti-gay causes when gays posed little threat. Another study found that groups advancing in politics were seen as more threatening and less warm than groups advancing in economics. Future studies will test the hypothesis that prejudice causes heightened perceptions of threat by experimentally conditioning negative affect and measuring perceptions of threat.

anierman@ku.edu | Social Program

Office phone: 4-9838
Office: Fraser 549

Research Interests:I am currently working with Chris Crandall doing prejudice research. Specifically, I am examining social change (including people's attitudes toward social change) and the role that this plays in the manifestation of prejudice. I am interested both traditional targets of prejudice as well as non-traditional targets, such as groups that support the status quo. I am looking to see if there is a connection between the extent to which a group is a proponent for change and the extent that prejudice is expressed towards that group. 

nia@ku.edu | Social Program

Office phone: 4-9838
Office: Fraser 549

 

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.

kpickett@ku.edu | Social Program | Culture and Psychology Research Group | Personal Website

Office phone: 4-9824
Office: Fraser 421

Research Interests: I work primarily with Dr. Pat Hawley and my research integrates developmental models of aggression and peer relationships with social psychological paradigms. Specifically, I am interested in the role gender stereotypes play in perceptions of overtly and relationally aggressive adults as well as associated peer regard outcomes (i.e., friendship, popularity, leadership).  Likewise, I am interested in the measurement of relational aggression.

jratliff@ku.edu | Social Program

Office phone: 4-9836
Office: Fraser 444

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.

psygradz@ku.edu | Social Program

Office phone: 4-1797
Office: Fraser 612C

Research Interests: I work primarily with Glenn Adams. I am interested in the cultural constructions of memory and identity. My research interests include cultural representations of the historical past (e.g., ‘Black History Month' displays, museums), the psychological consequences of such representations (i.e., group differences in perceptions of racism, identity), and the relationship between collective memory and identity in West African and Diasporic settings.

psalter@ku.edu | Social Program | Culture and Psychology Research Group | Personal Website

Office phone: 4-9838
Office: Fraser 549

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.

schoam4@ku.edu | Social Program

Office phone: 864-9812
Office: Fraser 409

Research Interests: I primarily work with Monica Biernat. My research interests include race and gender prototypes, effects of membership in multiple-subordinate group categories on social judgment, invisibility as a form of discrimination, and evidentiary standards for perceiving racism.

aksesko@ku.edu | Social Program

Office Phone: 4-9836
Office: Fraser 444

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?

dsully@ku.edu | Social Program

Office phone: 4-9838
Office: Fraser 550

Research Interests: I work with Monica Biernat. My research interests are in self-stereotyping and Inter-group relations. I did my Masters on self-stereotyping in response to personal identity threats, specifically under what circumstances individuals will self- stereotype or take on the characteristics associated with a specific salient group membership. I am now researching if participants threatened with negative feedback on an IQ exam and primed with gender increase the amount of self-stereotyping and collective self-esteem. I also examine self-stereotyping behaviorally and through trait measures, specifically, do conformity and backlash matter? The project looks at backlash and no backlash (sanctions or punishments for behavior) in normative and non-normative (conforming to a gender norm or not) situations. I believe that when a participant sees someone in a vignette receive punishment for their behavior (whether it is normative or non-normative) that this will make participants like the person less and make participants not choose that same type of behavior as this person in the future.

taylorlk@ku.edu | Social Program