I’m a PhD candidate in social psychology working with Josh Ackerman [.html] at the University of Michigan. Before I started at Michigan, I received my bachelor’s degree in neuroscience from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN. After graduating, I worked as a research assistant and lab manager at the University of Minnesota and the Carlson School of Management.

Broadly, I use advanced methods and statistics to study how both modern and evolutionarily-relevant threats affect how people perceive themselves and others. For example, in my current work, I use the reverse correlation image classification task to estimate mental representations of infected persons. I’m also conducting a Cross-Temporal Meta-Analysis to test whether stereotype threat effects have dissapated over time, depending on negatively stereotyped group (e.g., Women, Black Americans).

I’m asking three main questions right now: (1) How do people mentally represent threatening persons, (2) How do people use emotional expressions in trait judgements, and (3) What are the effects of negative stereotypes changing over time?