As a social psychologist, I’m interested in how subtle, often unnoticeable, social psychological mechanisms help maintain intergroup inequality, and how they contribute to disparities in health, mental health, and well-being.

More specifically, I focus on how different social factors, such as social norms and group stereotypes, affect peoples’ explicit and implicit perceptions, goals, and motivations and how these, in turn, affect their behaviors. This includes, for example, how societal beauty norms affect women’s and men’s health and mental health, how stereotypes about specific social groups (gender, racial, or ethnic stereotypes) affect medical decision making and behaviors towards patients who belong to these groups, and how gender stereotypes affect doctors’ career choices.

The lab is a place for people from different disciplines and backgrounds (e.g., psychologists, social workers, healthcare workers) who are interested in how psychology could be used to improve patients’ health and well-being.