Our lab uses a variety of social science research methods to better understand, and ultimately upend, societal inequality. Projects we undertake range in their methodology, and this range includes archival studies, controlled laboratory experiments, large-scale attitude surveys, psychophysiological assessments, qualitative interviews, and social interactions between two or more people. The work is grounded in social psychology but typically sits at the intersection of one or more disciplines including organizational behavior, sociology, economics, and political science. Below we provide summaries of a few papers/projects that help you get a sense of our work in the lab:
The Function of Inequality
Inequality is a defining challenge of societies across history, and psychology research can support understanding of its persistence and impacts. Our lab studies inequality by focusing on the function of inequality in producing structures of domination or promoting resistance to those structures. This is in contrast to approaches to the study of inequality that focus on deficits in individual behavior and psychology. Taking a functional approach involves four basic steps: questioning causal assumptions of existing psychological models that focus on deficit-based mental states; studying impacts of inequality rather than intentions of actors in unequal settings; embracing immersive methods and practices that engage with the complexity of structural inequality; and applying research that uses cross-level analytic techniques to examine relationships between individual psychology and societal structures.
A PUBLIC Approach
Psychological approaches to the study of the politics of inequality are welcome and warranted because psychology is foundational to understanding inequality, including ways to rectify it. While some approaches narrow political psychology’s focus through a lens of a particular discipline and definition of inequality the focus of our lab is to center the public. That is, psychology is best situated to study the politics of inequality if it approaches the problem of inequality from a broader perspective: that of people—a perspective which goes well beyond a small handful of academic disciplines or socioeconomic strata. To accomplish this goal, we take a PUBLIC approach to a political psychology of inequality. This approach should be Pluralistic in its application of evidence and ways of knowing, UnBiased in the perspectives that it centers, Local in its focus on psychology, politics, and impact, Intersectional in its understanding of inequality and solidarity, and Critical in its analysis of power and advantage. Implications for policy and collective action are highlighted.
Theories of Power
One of the overarching themes of our past and contemporary scholarship develops a sense of how people understand their own place within an unequal society, and in particular what that means for how they intervene on systems or structures that are unjust and inequitable. One example of this approach examines how learning about union bargaining structures changes how people think about collective power.
Intergroup Solidarity
Group categories can be important sources of belonging, collective action, and social support, as well as sources of conflict and competition. Another of the overarching themes of our current work is an ongoing attempt to better understand the conditions that increase feelings of linked fate and solidarity between marginalized people that develop despite histories of conflict and narratives that divide them in society-at-large.