Psychology: Diversity in Psychology

 

Faculty and Student Research with Underrepresented Populations

 


Sinclair Lab

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Faculty
Stacey Sinclair Stacey Sinclair
stacey_sinclair@virginia.edu
 
Graduate students and Post-doc:
Jeff Huntsinger
jrh3y@virginia.edu
Janetta Lun Janetta Lun
janetta@virginia.edu
Robyn Mallett (Post-doc)
mallett@virginia.edu
Wendy Morris
wendymorris@virginia.edu
Erin Rapien
erinrapien@virginia.edu
Jeanine Skorinko
jeanine@virginia.edu

Most of the work in our lab examines how people's motivations and goals in interpersonal relationships influence the establishment and validation of social beliefs and attitudes, as well as how sharing beliefs with others facilitates relationship development and belief affirmation. Specifically, we have been conducting studies that examine how affiliative and epistemic motives in interpersonal contexts motivate individuals to adjust their beliefs and attitudes to match those of their relationship partners. Using this model, we seek to better understand how conscious or non-conscious stereotypic beliefs are attenuated or perpetuated through social interactions, and the ways in which stereotypic beliefs displayed in social relationships influence self-evaluations and behavior of targets of stereotypes.

 


Implicit Social Cognition Lab

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Faculty
Brian Nosek Brian Nosek
ban2b@virginia.edu
http://briannosek.com/
 
Graduate students and Post-doc:
Fred Smyth Fred Smyth (Post-doc)
fsmyth@virginia.edu
http://projectimplicit.net/smyth/

“I've been conducting some research on the effects of exposure to rhetoric about affirmative action, multicultural or colorblind policies on implicit racial bias.”

Nicole Lindner
nml5d@virginia.edu
Kate Ranganath
ranganath@virginia.edu
Colin Smith
cts2e@virginia.edu
 
Links:
Lab site: http://projectimplicit.net/
Web-based research site: http://implicit.harvard.edu/

Our main interests concern thought and feeling that exists outside of conscious awareness or conscious control. In particular, we examine (a) the predictors of correspondence between implicit and explicit preferences, (b) the presence of cognitive-affective consistency in implicit social cognition, (c) the role of implicit attitudes, beliefs, and identity in orientation toward math and science, (d) evidence for multiple or dynamic implicit evaluative processes, (e) the consequences of implicit attitudes and beliefs in judgment and behavior, and (f) methodological developments for investigations of implicit social cognition. These interests are applied in domains of social import such as: ethnicity and prejudice, the participation of women in science, and the relationship between ideology, beliefs, and bias. For example, stereotypes that are not endorsed may still influence judgments or behaviors through their representation in memory even when those representations are not consciously accessible. The qualities of implicit social cognition provide a novel avenue of investigation into the relationship among concepts like attitude, belief and identity, and the freedoms and constraints that accompany membership in social groups.

 


Shigehiro Oishi

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Faculty Member
Shigehiro Oishi
soishi@virginia.edu

George W. Bush said in his inaugural speech "What binds America is not blood or birth or soil but ideals that move us beyond our backgrounds" and that "every immigrant, by embracing these ideals, makes our country more, not less, American." Indeed, cultural diversity has long been an ideal of American society. My students and I believe that cultural diversity is not only an important social issue, but also a critical empirical issue in psychology. Our research aims to identify the conditions under which people feel understood or misunderstood by others with different socio-cultural backgrounds (e.g., race, nationality, religion, SES, political orientation). Our long-term goal is to discover the factors that enhance cross-cultural understanding.

 


Melvin N. Wilson

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Faculty Member
Melvin Wilson
mnw@virginia.edu

Dr. Melvin Wilson has an extensive background in academic, research and training activities generally focused on understanding contextual processes and outcomes in African American families and service delivery in domestic violence issues. His current research interests focus on young, low-income, unwed, and nonresident fathers. In addition, he is working on developing intervention protocols aimed at helping young men meet family responsibilities and involvements..

Currently, Dr. Wilson is conducting a preventative intervention evaluation study as part of a multi-site research project designed to prevent the early-onset of conduct problems among 720 toddlers from low-income African American, Latino and Caucasian families. This project is embedded within the Women, Infants, and Children Nutritional Supplement Program (WIC) Centers in urban (Pittsburgh, PA), suburban (Eugene, OR), and rural (Charlottesville, VA) locations and emphasizes client concerns as momentum toward behavior change in the intervention model. A primary focus of this study is tailoring the intervention to diverse cultural and geographic backgrounds of families.

 


Dick Reppucci

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Faculty Member ndr@virginia.edu

My focus is on Children and the law, and preventive interventions, especially in juvenile justice. There are three major projects currently ongoing in my research lab: 1) police perceptions of juvenile offenders and their interrogation, especially in terms of developmental maturity and competence; 2) etiology of serious juvenile female offenders and their relation to aggression and violence, with special attendance to resiliency, risk and protective factors; and 3) transitions from incarceration to community for juveniles, with special attention to schools and families. All of these areas have especial relevance for ethnic minority members. Moreover on all of these projects we work closely with police departments, the Virginia Department of Juvenile Justice and Charlottesville/Albemarle Legal Aid Social Justice Center.

 


John Nesselroade

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Faculty Member
John Nesselroade
jrn8z@virginia.edu

My research is focused on personality and ability development and change, broadly defined. I also work on the development of methods and techniques for measuring and modeling such changes. Both long-term, developmental changes and shorter-term, within person variability are of interest to my students and me. Our research of the past decade or so has been conducted primarily on older adult samples.

 


John Bonvillian

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Faculty Member
John Bonvillian
jdb5b@virginia.edu

My principal research focus in recent years has been the development of a simplified sign communication system. This project is built on the findings of earlier studies of sign language acquisition in children of deaf parents and of motor and language processing in children with autistic disorder. Because nearly half of all children with autistic disorder historically have failed to acquire useful speech, many of these speech-limited children were taught signs to communicate. In many instances, the signs taught were from American Sign Language (ASL), the sign language used by Deaf persons in the United States. These signs, however, often are difficult for children with autistic disorder to form and to remember. In our efforts to devise a simpler sign system, we have tried to create signs that are easy to form motorically and that are highly iconic (i.e., clearly resemble the concepts for which they stand). Studies of sign learning and recall involving college students have shown that these simplified signs are much more readily learned and recalled than ASL signs. Preliminary findings with atypical populations also indicate that our simplified signs are quite successfully learned. Finally, although our initial goal was to develop an effective sign communication system for children with autistic disorder and with mental retardation, we now believe that the system may prove beneficial for a much wider population (e.g., hearing-impaired elderly clients in nursing home facilities).

 


KLIFF Lab

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Faculty
Joe Allen Joe Allen
allen@virginia.edu

Kids' Lives, Families, and Friends (KLIFF) is our ongoing longitudinal study examining the influence of social relationships, autonomy, and attachment processes on adolescent development. In this study, we are working to learn more about how young teenagers develop and manage friendships with their peers, and how family relationships influence qualities of these peer relationships and teens susceptibility to peer pressure.

Sixth, seventh, and eighth grade students were recruited from a local middle school in Charlottesville, Virginia. We have 185 families in our study, with over 700 visits happening each year! The sample included 105 European American adolescents, 49 African American, and 20 that identified themselves as other/unspecified. The adolescents were of diverse family socioeconomic status, with the parents reporting a mean family income of $40,000 - $59,9999. Thirty-three percent of the parents reported a total family income above $60,000 while 44% of reported an income below $40,000.
In our first wave of our study, our teens came in with their parental figures and later came in with their closest friend. Two additional friends of the teen also provide additional information. We are currently in our sixth wave of study and are eager to continue learning more about them as they grow older.

Data is collected about several different areas of adolescence, such as the quality of family relationships, friendships, peer pressure, school achievement, delinquency, and internalizing behaviors. The project uses a variety of measurement methods, including self-reports, semi-structured interviews, parent-reports, peer reports, and observations of family and peer interactions.

 


Monica Williams

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Graduate student
Monica Williams
mt4h@virginia.edu
 
Faculty
Eric Turkheimer
ent3c@virginia.edu

We are doing work on racial differences (specifically Black/White) on measures of anxiety.


Tynessa Gordon

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Graduate Student tlg8v@virginia.edu

My primary area of research is the investigation of ethnic differences in triggers of anxiety. I am currently working on two studies which examine the relationship between anxiety and cardiovascular triggers in African Americans. The first study uses a series of anxiety provocations to investigate whether African Americans show a unique sensitivity to cardiovascular arousal symptoms. The second study evaluates emotional vulnerability resulting from threat appraisals of cardiovascular arousal. Using a false feedback paradigm, the study assesses the effects of receiving elevated heart rate feedback on subsequent physiological, subjective, cognitive and behavioral markers of anxiety.

A third study that I am conducting with Dr. Bethany Teachman is an empirical evaluation of age-differences in threat appraisals of bodily sensations and other anxious symptoms, using a measure of interpretation bias and through a series of anxiety provocations to trigger symptoms of anxious arousal. Our sample includes young adults (ages 18-35) and older adults (ages 60-85).


Robyn Mallett

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Post-doc mallett@virginia.edu
 
Links:
Homepage: http://people.virginia.edu/~rm6ys/Index.htm

I study the psychology of prejudice and intergroup relations from the perspective of members of both stigmatized and nonstigmatized social groups. Three interrelated questions guide my research: 1) How can we optimize intergroup contact? 2) How can the stigmatized and nonstigmatized minimize the consequences of discrimination? and 3) How do individual differences in perceptions of prejudice and identification influence intergroup attitudes and ideologies? In each area I attempt to examine important theoretical issues while addressing significant practical problems.


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