I am a PhD candidate in Social Psychology at Cornell University working with Dr. Amy Krosch and Dr. Tom Gilovich.
I study the cognitive processes and motivations underlying stereotype persistence.
My current research focuses on the reward value of stereotype confirmation, i.e. the idea that people find it subjectively rewarding when their stereotype-based expectations about a person are confirmed. I am interested in how this reward value may reinforce people’s stereotype beliefs over time. I am also currently investigating neural responses to stereotype violations and other forms of expectation violation, aiming to identify mechanisms that hinder belief updating.
I use a multi-method approach to explore these questions, including behavioral experiments, computational modeling, and functional neuroimaging.