Diversity research at PBS
Members of our faculty manage labs that contribute to understanding DEIJ.
The statements below were contributed by the individual researchers and don’t necessarily reflect the views of DAC, but instead reflect the variety of perspectives on DEIJ research that exist in PBS.
- Aina Puce
In the Social Neuroscience Lab, Professor Puce and her collaborators are developing a model of emotion that is applicable to people in general. So this means considering potential differences in sex & gender, as well as race & ethnicity.
Faculty profile
- Alexandra Moussa-Tooks
Motor Adaptations in Psychotic Disorders
Demographic Disparities and Individual Differences in Assessment, Evaluation, Conceptualization, and Treatment of the Psychosis-Spectrum.
Our work is limited by the reliability and validity of our constructs. A critical area of need is assessing the measurement and development of diagnostic and behavioral constructs and refining these assessments with the goal of (1) decreasing heterogeneity and over-inclusion in diagnosis and (2) improving the dimensional and transdiagnostic utility of current measures. An especially promising area of interest has been the influence of demographic disparities in assessment. Our work has been focused on understanding bias in self-report assessment tools of psychosis symptomology, with striking implications for research and clinical assessment.
**ACCEPTING undergraduate researchers**
Faculty profile
- Amanda Diekman
Social Roles Lab
Provost Professor Diekman’s research group investigates how individuals navigate the social structure, and how the social structure influences perceived and actual characteristics of groups. Her longstanding interest is in gender roles, and especially how gender roles have remained stable and changed over time.
Faculty profile
- Amy Holtzworth-Munroe
Holtzworth-Munroe Lab
Professor Holtzworth-Munroe’s lab is not studying diversity directly, but because of where they conduct our studies, they often end up having underrepresented samples in their studies. For example, their NIJ funded study was conducted in DC court and their sample was about 85% self-identified Black/African American. In other, earlier studies in Indy courts, they often had samples with large proportion of Black study participants. And most of their research, conducted now in court-affiliated programs, involves many participants at the low end of the SES spectrum, often including rural families with low resources. Their newest studies allow self-identification as trans or non-binary, but they’ve just begun gathering data in that study. Occasionally, in their discussion sections of papers, they discuss some implications from these samples, but they have not directly compared subgroup based on identity nor directly studied disparities, etc.
Faculty profile
- Anne Krendl
Neuroscience of Mind and Behavior Lab
Associate Professor Krendl’s research addresses questions related to social stigma (e.g., race, age, gender, mental/physical illness), and how being stigmatized affects its targets.
Faculty profile
- Anne Prieto
Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience
Associate Professor Prieto’s research seeks to uncover molecular mechanisms underlying cellular processes that drive neural development and develop tools to combat CNS damage or disease. She also looks to provide mentorship for students interested in pursuing a neuroscience research career.
Faculty profile
- Brian D’Onofrio
Developmental Psychopathology Lab
Professor D’Onofrio’s lab studies health disparities in the etiology and treatment of psychological disorders.
Faculty profile
- Dorainne Green
Assistant Professor Green is a social psychologist with a focus on intergroup dynamics. Her research interests center broadly on understanding and addressing the factors that contribute to social inequality by focusing on social identity threat.
Faculty profile
- Kurt Hugenberg
Stereotyping, Prejudice, and Facial Expression Lab
Nearly all of Professor Hugenberg’s research is focused on diversity, bias, or intergroup relations. Research in his lab focuses on how perceivers’ stereotypes, prejudices, and prejudice-related motives influence how we categorize, perceive, and understand others. Much of the work that they do has a particular focus on how perceptions of others’ faces and bodies interface with beliefs about social groups.
Faculty profile
- Lorenzo Lorenzo-Luaces
Study of Affective Disorders’ Classification and Treatment (SADCAT) Lab
Assistant Professor Lorenzo-Luaces’ lab addresses diversity-related issues in a few different ways.
Personalized medicine: They use data-driven algorithms to identify individual differences in treatment response and engagement according to variables like socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, gender identity, etc. Across several studies, for example, they have found that unemployment status is a risk factor for poor depression outcomes, though unemployed individuals have relatively better outcomes with cognitive-behavioral therapies (CBTs) than other interventions.
Race/ethnicity and sexual orientation: In addition to their “data-driven” work, his lab also focuses on understanding dimensions of minoritized identity like being a racial-ethnic minority or being lesbian, gay, or bisexual (LGB) and how they relate to the treatment of internalizing distress. They have studied how the efficacy of emotion-regulation strategies (e.g., reappraisal, suppression) for individuals with minoritized identity varies according to the nature of the stressors individuals face (i.e., minority-identity specific stressors vs. other stressors). They have also studied the acceptability of low-intensity (CBT; e.g., internet-based CBT) for individuals with minoritized identities (e.g., Black women). Robinson de Jesús-Romero and Amani Holder-Dixon are key collaborators in this work.
Faculty profile
- Mary Murphy
Mind and Identity in Context Lab
Broadly speaking, Professor Murphy’s research focuses on developing and testing theories about how people’s social identities and group memberships interact with the contexts they encounter to affect their thoughts, feelings, behaviors, physiology, and motivation.
Faculty profile
- Natasha Chaku
interACT Lab
Assumptions of homogeneity have negatively impacted youth with diverse ethnic and racial identities because social position factors contribute to – often overlooked – individual differences. The interACT lab is interested in exploring how positive and negative experiences during adolescence are related to feelings of belonging and wellbeing among diverse youth. Current projects include exploring how the racial/ethnic make-up of peer groups impacts perceptions of puberty, assessing the sociopolitical development of rural youth, and examining associations between class-based discrimination, emotion -regulation, and learning in first-generation college students.
Faculty profile
- Robert “BJ” Rydell
Associate Professor Rydell is a social psychologist with a focus on understanding the mechanisms underlying stereotype threat-based performance and learning decrements.
Faculty profile
- William P. Hetrick
Clinical and Cognitive Neuroscience Center
J Wolny is a doctoral student in Clinical Science under the mentorship of Professor Bill Hetrick. Their research focuses on understanding the mechanisms driving the racial disparities in the diagnostic rates of psychotic disorders, whereby Black Americans are 3-4x more likely to be diagnosed compared to their White counterparts. Within this domain, their present work employs psychometric methods (e.g., Item Response Theory) to begin parsing what may be adaptive or cultural paranoia (i.e., heightened, yet appropriate, levels of suspiciousness and mistrust due to racial oppression) in Black Americans, from clinical paranoia denoting psychopathological risk. In parallel, their work aims to identify the factors and experiences associated with race which may contextualize potential racial group differences in the expression of paranoia.
Faculty profile
The College of Arts