People

Elif Ikizer is a postdoctoral research associate. Elif’s research is on the link between stigma and culture and the unintended consequences of simple psychological interventions. Elif received her Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut. She investigated the stereotypes towards nonnative accented speakers in her dissertation. Elif received her M.A. from Koc University and her B.Sc. from Bogazici University, both in Istanbul, Turkey.

Ava Casados is a fifth-year clinical psychology student. Her research is aimed at addressing disparities in mental health service use among adolescents and ethnic minority individuals. She is particularly interested in mental illness stigma and the relationship between culture and mental health conceptualizations. Prior to coming to Yale, she received her B.A. in Psychology and Fine Arts from the University of Southern California.

Katie Oltman is a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate interested in work that applies social psychology to public policy. For example, her dissertation research explores which factors of a social environment predict group-cohesion (“entitativity”) and how minority groups can manipulate perceptions of their group’s cohesion to induce positive attitudes. She is also involved in projects to improve inclusion in graduate education and to evaluate bias in undergraduate admissions, among others. Before coming to Yale, Katie received B.A.s in Psychology and English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Fabian is a doctoral candidate working with Jack Dovidio. His interest focuses around the psychological processes that impede or facilitate action for social change, which he studies in a variety of cultural and intergroup contexts. His primary research examines why and when inclusive identities and positive relations with high-status groups undermine efforts for social change, and under what conditions members of advantaged groups develop solidarity with the disadvantaged. Outside of academia, Fabian is interested in applied behavioral science, consulting, and socially useful data science. Prior to coming to Yale, Fabian received a M.Sc. from the University of Oxford, and a B.Sc. from the University of Groningen.

April H. Bailey is a fourth-year doctoral student. Her work broadly investigates how people rely on another’s gender to make decisions about them. With a social cognitive focus, she studies the integration of gender and nonverbal behavior related to power during person perception. In this research she has used a variety of methods including: reaction time tasks, electroencephalogram, and recorded nonverbal behaviors. In another line of work, she investigates a subtle yet consequential form of gender bias called androcentrism whereby people think of men as representative of demographic-neutral categories. April collaborates primarily with professors Dr. Marianne LaFrance and Dr. Jack Dovidio. Alongside a PhD is Psychology she is pursuing a Certificate in Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies. She received her BA from Colgate University, majoring in both Psychology and Women’s Studies.

Natalie is a second year graduate student at Yale. She graduated in 2014 from Miami University with a B.A. in Psychology and a B.A. in Individualized Studies with a focus in Social Justice Issues: Power and Privilege in Society. More recently she received a M.A. in Psychology at Northwestern, before moving to Yale with her primary advisor, Jennifer Richeson. Her research interests include stereotyping, prejudice, intersectionality, and intergroup relations. Particularly, Natalie is interested in exploring ways in which attributing discrimination to implicit compared to explicit bias influences how people make sense of the discrimination, with specific regard to accountability and support for punishment and reform.

Silvia Abad-Merino is an associate professor of organizational psychology at UTEL University, Mexico. She received her Ph.D. in applied psychology from the University of Cordoba, Spain. She has received several national awards for academic excellence, and prestigious scholarships that allowed her to join research teams at the University of Oxford and at Ulster University, among others. Her working and research experience have been very broad, and she has had the benefit of working with interdisciplinary teams in Europe, the U.S., and Latin America. Her research has been primarily focused on the following areas: the study of how subtle forms of bias maintain structural disadvantage; the analysis of reported experiences of discrimination in healthcare settings; and the evaluation of inequitable outcomes of different vulnerable populations in educational settings.

Susana Lavado is a fourth year doctoral student at the Institute of Social Sciences at the University of Lisbon, Portugal. She has worked at Yale University as a visiting scholar twice during her graduate career. Her research focuses on attitudes and behaviors that maintain intergroup prejudice and inequality. Specifically, she studies non-targets’ confrontation (and non-confrontation) of prejudice. Prior to enrolling in the Ph.D program, she earned a Masters degree in Educational Psychology and worked as a junior researcher in the European Social Survey (ESS) Portuguese team.