The CRIS Lab
Current Projects
Scroll to learn more about the current projects that the graduate students in our lab are conducting.
Essentialism, prejudice, and socialization
Zoey Eddy
Zoey’s two primary lines of research focus on Multiracial identity and reducing prejudice. Her research on Multiracial identity examines (1) how Multiracial microaggressions influence Multiracial people’s social cognition and well-being, and (2) how parents of Multiracial children teach their children about race and their racial identity. Her research on reducing prejudice examines (1) lay beliefs about reducing prejudice, and (2) parents’ motivations for raising antiracist children. Zoey is a recipient of the National Science Foundation's Graduate Research Fellowship for her work on these topics.
Gendered experiences of sexuality and the orgasm gap
Grace Wetzel
Grace studies how gender impacts experiences of sexuality from a feminist psychological perspective. More specifically, she studies the well-established orgasm gap between cisgender men and women during partnered sex. Her main lines of research focus on (1) lay beliefs about and perceptions of the orgasm gap, (2) how biological essentialist explanations are used to justify and perpetuate the orgasm gap, and (3) women's decisions to pursue or not pursue orgasm as a goal in their sexual encounters. Grace is a recipient of the National Science Foundation's Graduate Research Fellowship for her work on this topic.
Ableism & Disability Stigma
Tory G. Benson
Tory studies disability as a stigmatized identity, and how social norms influence the way we conceptualize disability. Her lines of research include: (1) perceptions of disabled people, and how these vary based on disability type, (2) when and how people disclose their disability, and responses to these disclosures, and (3) how factors like social norms and gender identity shape these processes.
Origin, Experience, and Reduction of Prejudice and Discrimination.
Brianna Lopez
Bri’s research centers around the origin, experience, and reduction of prejudice and discrimination with a particular interest in the experience of multiracial and multiethnic individuals. She is interested in (1) the development of racial self-identification in multiracial individuals, (2) how diversity initiatives and prejudice reduction interventions may change the racial categorization of racially ambiguous faces, (3) how individual characteristics and belief systems, such as racial essentialism or egalitarian values, impact perceptions of multiracial individuals by monoracial individuals and (4) examining prejudice reduction interventions more generally, and determining what methods are most and least effective.