Department of Psychology

Research Interests

My research program has focused on the integration of implicit social-cognitive processes with the study of broad social issues. At the moment, I am particularly interested in how motivations to see the world as just, orderly, and non-chaotic influence perceptions of others and the social systems within which we all live (i.e., governments, schools, organizations, etc.). This has led to several specific lines of research. Examples include: What are the myriad ways by which people cope with, adapt to, and rationalize social inequalities? Why and how do people defend the legitimacy of their social systems in the face of evidence that these system sometimes act illegitimately? What are the social cognitive processes that give rise to the creation and defense of religious beliefs? In a secondary line of work, I examine how social stimuli that we pay little or no attention to in our day to day lives (i.e., nonconcious primes) can influence social perception and behaviors, such as those that occur in contexts of interpersonal conflict.