Current Graduate Students
Tom Cain
Advisor: Dr. Lee Jussim
Year: 6th
Social
Research Interests: I am currently interested in how fear biases a person's perceptions, judgments and behavior. Additionally, I am interested in examining how individuating information affects implicit bias. That is, whether a person who holds implicit bias towards a stigmatized group also holds implicit bias towards a specific member of that group (e.g. bias towards pirates in general vs. bias towards a specific pirate). For example, my master’s thesis examinined how manipulating individuating information (intelligence, rum consumption) affects implicit bias.
Website: http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~tcain/
George Chavez
Advisor: Dr. Diana Sanchez
Year: 2
Area: Social
Research Interests: I am broadly interested in racial self-identification
and the perception of race. More specifically, I study how multiracial
individuals racially identify under different social contexts, and the
implications this has for their psychological well-being. I am also
currently conducting research with my advisor on how we perceive of
minorities in affirmative action contexts. We hypothesize that people
evaluate some individuals as “more” minority than other individuals, based
on certain criteria (e.g. cultural competence, descent).
Vincent Ciaccio
Advisor: Dr. Richard Contrada
Year: 1st
Social/health
Carrie Coffield
Advisor: Dr. Jeannette Haviland-Jones
Year: 6th
Social/Developmental
Research Interests: I am interested in developmental disabilities and
emotion. Specifically, I have spent time investigating the emotionality of
children with autism: both their expression of emotion and their
perception of emotion. I am also interested in the ways that one's
environment may influence his/her behavior. My dissertation research will,
therefore, investigate the impact of certain environmental factors (light
and odor) of imitation ability of children both with and without autism.
Jason Glushakow
Advisor: Dr. John Aiello
Year: 5th
Social/Industrial-Organizational
Research Interests: My research interests include interruptions, spatial
behavior, social facilitation, telework, digital signage, and the effect
different communication modalities have on interpersonal influence.
Jessica Good
Advisor: Dr. Diana Sanchez, Dr. Laurie Rudman
Year: 3rd
Social
Research Interests: I have broad interests in stereotyping and discrimination, particularly
as it relates to gender and race. Specifically, I am interested in
benevolent sexism (consequences for targets as well as ways to reduce
sexism), as well as how gender roles and beliefs impact close relationships.
I also have a strong interest in how multiracial individuals are perceived
by others (both mixed race individuals and transracial adoptees) in terms of
racial stereotypes and beliefs about affirmative action.
Website: https://www.eden.rutgers.edu/~goodj/
Michael Kuang
Advisor: Dr. John Aiello
Year: 2nd
Social/Industrial-Organizational
Research Interests: Some of my interests include the impact of technology and how it facilities social interaction, changing technology mediums and its influence on the individual and organizations, and the social aspect of virtual environments.
Meng Li
Advisor: Dr. Gretchen Chapman.
Year: 3rd
Social/Health
Research Interests: Decisions, even important ones, can be biased
by subtle cues in the description of the situation. My research tries
to find such biases with real-world implications. I am also interested
in self-control behaviors, such as the choice between immediate
gratification and delayed reward.
Website: URL: http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~mli/
Corinne Moss-Racusin
Advisor: Dr. Laurie Rudman, Dr. Diana Sanchez
Year: 3rd
Social
Research Interests: My primary research interests include stereotyping processes and intergroup conflict, gender roles, and implicit attitudes. More specifically, I am interested in how stereotypes shape behavior processes and self-monitoring, and how they in turn impact politics, the media, and health outcomes. For example, my masters thesis tested a model of women’s self-advocacy detriments relative to men, and examined its implications for workplace gender parity. An additional line of research with Diana Sanchez investigates the ways in which several factors (including ascribing to traditional gender ideals) impact relationship satisfaction.
http://eden.rutgers.edu/~cmossrac/
Graduate Programs
Social Psychology
Heather Nofziger
Advisor: Dr. Lee Jussim
Year: 2nd
Social
Research Interests: Though my research interests tend to be somewhat
eclectic, including gender/sexual identity development and stereotype
processes, my current work focuses on intergroup conflict. My primary
interest is in how and why individuals become involved in and supportive of
violent group conflicts. Specifically, I am looking to model the processes
which contribute to individual participation in genocidal conflicts and to
address the potential methods of intervention.
Julie Phelan
Advisor: Dr. Laurie Rudman, Dr. Diana Sanchez
Year: 4th
Social
Research Interests: Broadly, my research investigates impression
formation, stereotyping, and prejudice. More specifically, I am
interested in automatic associations, including where implicit
attitudes come from, what they predict, and how they can be changed.
Website: www.jephelan.com
L. Alison Phillips
Advisor: Dr. Howard Leventhal, Dr. Gretchen Chapman
Year: 3rd
Social/Health
Research Interests: My research interests can be placed into two broad
areas: the first area involves individuals' consistent behaviors
(habits), especially those important for the prevention and management
of chronic illness, and the decision-making, behavioral, and affective
mechanisms of consistent behavior development and maintenance. The
second topic involves the role of physicians in the development and/or
alteration of patients' mental models of their chronic illness and how
the mental models (beliefs) of patients leads to their behaviors
(specifically their health-related consistent behaviors).
Elizabeth Salib
Advisors: Dr. Lee Jussim & Dr. Dave Wilder
Year: First year
Social
Research Interests: My research interests focus on social cognition and factors affecting the self-concept such as our religious, political, and stereotype beliefs. In
social interactions, these three structures seem to be charged issues that
cause heated debates. These topics may be deeply rooted in our self-concepts
and are important to how we define ourselves. I am interested in the
cognitive mechanisms behind these beliefs.
Websites: www.esalib.com
Lyra Stein
Advisor: Dr. John Aiello
Year: 3rd
Social/Industrial-Organizational
Research Interests: My masters project investigated the contribution of
individual differences to social facilitation and impairment which plays
an important role in employee monitoring and job performance. Future
studies will investigate the role of social presence and social
facilitation in online virtual environments.
Sean Stevens
Advisor: Dr. Dave Wilder, Dr. Lee Jussim
Year: 2nd
Social
Research Interests: political psychology, group identity, intergroup conflict,
bias in interpersonal relations. My current research involves investigating
how perceptions of threat may fuel prejudice and intergroup conflict.
Aarathi Venkatesan
Advisor: Dr. Richard Contrada
Year: 6th
Social/Health
Research Interests: My current research interests consider the role
of real-time attention in the processing of fear arousing communications. My
past research has focused on the effect of social status threats and
dispositional dominance on cardiovascular reactivity.
Jeffrey Vietri
Advisor: Dr. Gretchen Chapman
Year: 5th
Social/Health
Research Interests: How do emotions shape or determine the mental
processes by which we form judgments and make decisions? My recent work
has explored how emotions affect the use of judgmental heuristics,
actor-observer differences in behavioral prediction, and how social
factors shape our own vaccination intentions and the public health
policies we endorse. I'm also starting work that applies findings on
emotion and judgment to more traditionally social-psychological topics,
such as the activation of stereotypes.
Website: www.rci.rutgers.edu/~jvietri