Intergroup Relations Lab

People

Director
	John F. Dovidio, Ph.D. Kirtland 307B john.dovidio@yale.edu Website		John F. Dovidio, Ph.D. is the Carl Iver Hovland Professor of Psychology and Public Health at Yale University, and the director of the Intergroup Relations Lab. His work centers around issues of social power and social relations, both between groups and between individuals. He explores both conscious (explicit) and unconscious (implicit) influences on how people think about, feel about, and behave toward others based on group membership. He continues to conduct research on aversive racism, a contemporary subtle form of prejudice, and on techniques for reducing conscious and unconscious biases. His research further explores how the bias of health care providers and perceptions by members of traditionally disadvantaged groups of being stigmatized affects medical interactions, decisions, and outcomes.

Postdocs
	Elif Ikizer, Ph.D. elif.ikizer@yale.edu Website		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.
	Jonas Kunst, Ph.D. Dunham 322D jonas.kunst@yale.edu Website		Jonas R. Kunst is a postdoc with a primary interest in acculturation, political and social psychology. His research investigates processes and power dynamics underpinning intercultural attitudes and behavior between majority- and minority-group members living within diverse societies. Jonas earned his Ph.D. at the University of Oslo and spent parts of his graduate studies at Jim Sidanius’ lab where he remains an associated fellow.

Graduate Students
	Andrea Celeste Vial Vazquez Dunham 328C andrea.vial@yale.edu Website	CV	Andrea Vial is a doctoral candidate in social psychology working with Jack Dovidio and Victoria Brescoll (Yale School of Management). Andrea’s research focuses on the impact of gender identity, stereotyping, and bias on organizational behavior. She takes an interdisciplinary approach that combines basic experimental methods and classic social psychological theory with more applied organizational approaches to understand the many ways that gender can impact workplace relations and behaviors and career outcomes. For example, Andrea’s empirical and theoretical work has focused on (1) the experiences of women in high-power authority roles; (2) the overlap between gender stereotypes and leader role expectations; (3) gender in-group favoritism in leader-follower relations; and (4) the accommodation of gender-based third-party prejudice in hiring selections. Before Yale, Andrea received her BA in psychology with a minor in sociology from Hunter College (CUNY).
	Ava Casados Kirtland B03 ava.casados@yale.edu		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 Duchscherer Dunham 328A katie.duchscherer@yale.edu	CV	Katie Duchscherer is a fifth-year Ph.D. student. Before beginning her studies at the Intergroup Lab, she received her BA in psychology from Stanford University. In general, Katie is interested in the processes behind stereotyping and identity formation, and features of online interaction that promote prosocial behavior and community formation. She is currently researching the effects of self-expressive and persistent pseudonyms, compared to anonymity, on helping behavior and norm enforcement in online forum interactions. She is also investigating the moderating effects of group identity, social context, and personality differences on these behavioral outcomes.
	Kathleen Oltman Dunham 328B kathleen.oltman@yale.edu	CV	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.
	Gina Roussos, M.S Dunham 328A gina.roussos@yale.edu	CV	Gina Roussos is a PhD candidate in the Social Psychology program at Yale University, studying under the direction of Dr. John Dovidio and Dr. Yarrow Dunham. Before coming to Yale, she received her B.S. in Psychology from the University of Pittsburgh. She investigates the antecedents and consequences of prejudiced attitudes, beliefs, and behavior as well as how these biases can be mitigated. Her dissertation examines how racial prejudice and freedom of speech beliefs influence individuals’ willingness to punish racially motivated threats of violence toward White versus Black individuals. Gina’s goal is to use psychological research to inform the creation of, garner support for, and assist in implementing policies and practices in the public and/or private sector that promote positive intergroup relations and enhance the wellbeing of individuals from marginalized communities.
	Fabian Schellhaas Dunham 328C fabian.schellhaas@yale.edu Website		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.
	Roseanna Sommers Dunham 322F roseanna.sommers@yale.edu Website	CV	Roseanna Sommers is in her fourth year of a dual degree program in psychology and law. Her research uses insights from psychology to critique theories of human cognition and behavior embedded in legal doctrines. Before coming to Yale, Roseanna served as a fellow in the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). She holds a BA in psychology from Swarthmore College.
	April Bailey Dunham 328D april.bailey@yale.edu	CV	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.
	Bennett Callaghan Dunham 328A bennett.callaghan@yale.edu Website	CV	Bennett Callaghan is a third-year doctoral student. His research interests broadly relate to the psychology of social class, both in terms of how it is experienced (on a personal and cultural level) and how it is implicated in collective and inter-group process. For example, one current line of research investigates how class influences political participation and what kind of messages appeal to those of varying class backgrounds. Another one investigates the role of social class in propensities toward—and reactions to—prosocial behaviors, and a third examines class as a status-based entity that can be signaled to, and elicit particular behaviors from, others. He received his BA in Forensic Psychology, with a minor in English, at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (City University of New York) and spent two years at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign before coming to Yale.
	Natalie Wittlin Dunham 328A natalie.wittlin@yale.edu	CV	Natalie Markowitz Wittlin is a third-year doctoral student whose research focuses on beliefs about members of gender minority groups. In one line of work, for example, she employs methods from the study of gender essentialism to uncover implicit categorizations of transgender women and men. In another, she investigates how the knowledge that someone is transgender influences memory for that person’s physical appearance. Natalie earned her B. A. from Barnard College at Columbia University with a major in psychology and a minor in political science. Prior to beginning graduate school, she worked in the fields of education, public health, and psychology.
	Julian Rucker Dunham 328D julian.rucker@yale.edu	CV	Julian Rucker is a second-year doctoral student. He is broadly interested in investigating the psychological factors shaping perceptions of, reactions to and motivations to address intergroup inequality across a number of societal domains (e.g., criminal justice, education, health). For example, one of his main lines of research examines how lay beliefs about the interpersonal or structural nature of racism shape subsequent responses, after exposure to racial disparities in the U.S. Criminal Justice System. Before coming to Yale, Julian received a BA in Psychology, with a minor in Sociology, at The University of Texas at Austin and received a MA in Psychology from Northwestern University.
	Natalie Daumeyer Dunham 328D natalie.daumeyer@yale.edu		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.

Lab Affiliates
	Silvia Abad-Merino, Ph.D. silvia.abadmerino@yale.edu		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.
	Karolina Hansen, Ph.D. karolina.hansen@psych.uw.edu.pl Website	CV	Karolina Hansen is an assistant professor at the Center for Research on Prejudice at the University of Warsaw, Poland, and a research affiliate at Yale. She received her PhD in psychology from Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, Germany. She was a visiting assistant in research at Yale University, a Marie Curie fellow at the Initial Training Network “Language, Cognition, & Gender” at the University of Bern, and an assistant researcher at the Polish Academy of Sciences. Her research interests are in the fields of social psychology, sociolinguistics, and cross-cultural psychology, and include topics such as attitudes about language and accents, stereotyping, gender-fair language, linguistic biases, and cross-cultural differences in social cognition. Currently, she studies accent attitudes in Poland, Germany, and the US.
	Susana Lavado susana.lavado@ics.ul.pt	CV	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.
	Hyeyoung Shin, Ph.D. hyeyoung.shin@yale.edu		Hyeyoung Shin is a research associate at Yale Intergroup Relations Lab working with Dr. John Dovidio. She received a B.A. magna cum laude in psychology and a Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Maryland College Park and a M.A. in psychology from New York University. She also worked at Child & Family Research, NICHD as a data analyst for several years. She has been conducting research on what makes people have prejudice toward certain social groups/categories and the different processes that underlie these biases between individual- and group-oriented cultures. Her works examined cultural differences in stigmatization of non-normative groups, the role of economic competitiveness in prejudice toward immigrants/foreign workers, and associations between individual/group orientation and social/biological hierarchy beliefs.