Welcome to the ASC Lab!

I have always been intrigued by what makes people tick. Trying to understand my own and others’ behavior with a focus on individual and situational factors made psychology and social and personality psychology, a natural place for me. I love the challenge of designing a study to answer tough questions about behavior and am fascinated by many different types of behavior.  Loving to teach drew my attention to learning. What are the best ways to study, to design a class for effective learning, to use AI, to inspire learning?  These are some of the questions I continue to work on.  Living in different countries and states and having multiple identities attuned me to how humans treat those who are different and how superficial but important factors such as clothing can influence both how people are perceived but how people feel about themselves.

My early work focused on social support (Univ. Washington) and predicting health behaviors, stress, and coping (UCLA), I have evolved to study three distinct areas: Building Identity and Belonging (BIP), Fostering AI Literacy Safely (Project FAILSafe), and Perceptions of People (POP. especially objectification, sexism, prejudice, and stereotyping). For the 2025-26 academic year I will be focusing on studying belonging during the transition to college, enhancing learning in introductory psychology and research methods classes, taking a close look at the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in learning, and the role of clothing in performance, cultural stereotypes, sexism, and racism.

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In my Applied Social Cognition (ASC) Lab we ASC the tough questions. If you are interested in working in my lab, click on the link below to complete the application.  I support URSA Engage students as well as Honors College students.