Research Interests

Research Statement 

    My research program is focused on the cognitive and motivational processes underlying the construction of norms and expectations – the standards on which individuals rely to make sense of themselves and the world. Examples of these standards include norms of equality and fairness at the social level, and worldviews and values created and endorsed at the individual level. Additionally, I am particularly interested in the psychological and social consequences that occur when individuals face threats to their constructed standards. To elucidate these processes, I am pursuing four major lines of research.

Equality and Fairness

    In 1959, the political scientist Robert Lane proposed a perpetual tension in the modern individual’s psyche. Specifically, he pointed to the battle between norms of equality as a foundation for democracy and capitalistic expectations to “be better” and to “have more,” which encourage citizens to be unequal. In collaboration with Dr. Mark Snyder at the University of Minnesota, I have started to test Lane’s assertion regarding this psychological battle of the norms and, in particular, I have started to map out the boundaries for when individuals will or will not benefit from equality. An example of this work is a paper currently under review that presents evidence that individuals are significantly more confident in their ability to succeed in a competition when they perceive that their chances are equal to those of others, even though their objective odds are the same as other individuals facing an unequal opportunity. We also find that equality can do more than just boost confidence levels; in fact, individuals experiencing equal opportunity actually performed better on a competitive task than did people with too little or even too much opportunity. Moreover, in certain situations the equal distribution of resources engenders higher perceptions of social power among individuals. Finally, we provide empirical support for Lane’s hypothesis in that participants consistently reveal expectations that they would be better off having more opportunity and/or resources than other individuals, despite the equality-induced boosts in confidence, performance, and social power.
    Future work for this line of research involves exploring how individuals high in social dominance orientation (SDO; Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth, & Malle, 1994), and thus who endorse inequality as necessary and just, respond to equal and unequal situations. I have already found evidence that individuals high in SDO put significantly more effort into a competition when they face unequal opportunity, compared to people low in SDO. The next step is to explore whether this increased effort among high SDOs is simply a result of their orientation or whether it actually works as a mediator to predict their endorsement of social inequality.
    In a related vein, my collaboration with Dr. Marti Hope Gonzales at the University of Minnesota is exploring the attributional processes and system-justifying tendencies of individuals who find themselves advantaged or disadvantaged by legitimate or illegitimate distributions of valuable resources. Among other things, our findings highlight boundary conditions for when the disadvantaged will defend an unmerited outcome; specifically, we show that disadvantaged participants support illegitimate systems as long their disadvantage is due to chance rather than systematic biases. A manuscript for this research is in preparation and the data have been presented at the 11th International Conference on Social Justice Research in Berlin.

The Self

    My work in the domain of the self involves the human awareness of mortality and how resulting existential crises motivate individuals to construct systems of meaning in which they can operate. In an article published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, I advanced the novel perspective of transcendence management theory as a much-needed extension to terror management theory (TMT; Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1986). TMT posits that individuals construct worldviews (i.e., sets of norms, standards, and expectations) in an attempt to assuage their overwhelming fear of mortality. Research supporting TMT shows that when individuals are reminded of their mortality, they are more likely to defend their worldviews. Conversely, with transcendence management theory I have shown that under certain conditions, mortality awareness has the potential to generate worldview capitulation rather than worldview defense. Specifically, I have drawn the distinction between the abstract mortality salience techniques commonly employed in TMT and a more concrete and contemplative manipulation called death reflection. Among other things, my work addresses the question of whether or not all constructed worldviews are equally stable. For example, I have shown that individuals who are extrinsically oriented (i.e., valuing wealth and fame) defend that worldview when faced with a traditional mortality salience manipulation and evidence more greed than do intrinsically oriented individuals (i.e., valuing intimacy and personal growth). However, when extrinsically oriented individuals face a death reflection manipulation, they become significantly less greedy, in a sense abandoning their previously endorsed worldview.
    In collaboration with Dr. Jonathan Haidt at the University of Virginia, I am continuing this exploration of positive approaches to mortality with a series of studies investigating changes in value reports as a function of death acceptance. Additionally, my work with Dr. Kennon M. Sheldon at the University of Missouri has led to a manuscript showing that individuals induced to imagine that their time is limited – as opposed to open-ended –adjust value reports in favor of intrinsic pursuits and evidence behavioral changes such as social cooperation and generosity. Finally, I am employing a cognitive-neuroscience approach in collaboration with Dr. Chad J. Marsolek and Lane Beckes the University of Minnesota to test my conception of dual existential systems (in press at Psychological Inquiry).

The Psychology of Liberty

    One of the most basic human needs that individuals seek to satisfy is the need to be free. This need for freedom – or autonomy – refers to the natural desire of individuals to self-organize experience and behavior, rather than having an external force dictate those experiences and behaviors (deCharms, 1968; Deci, 1980; Sheldon & Elliot, 1999). In this post-September 11, 2001 world, however, politicians have either enacted - or are pursuing - policies designed to maintain security that also have the potential to restrict the freedoms of ordinary citizens (e.g., CCTV monitoring, National ID cards, extended detentions). Consequently, some politicians and police leaders have cautioned citizens about threats to their personal liberty; in particular, Liberal Party Leader Nick Clegg has warned that the UK is under threat due to a “surveillance society ruled by the technology and the politics of fear”, and the Deputy Chief Constable of Hampshire Police, Ian Redhead, referred to the current situation as ‘Orwellian’ (BBC, 2007a, 2007b). In fact, the most recent annual survey by Privacy International and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (2007) classified the U.K. as an “endemic surveillance society” that ranked worst in the European Union regarding policies relevant to freedom and privacy.  

    In fact, according to the Home Office, some 4.2 million CCTV cameras observe and record British citizens leading to claims that Britain is the most surveilled industrialized nation in the Western world (BBC, 2007c); according to the BBC, the average Briton is monitored electronically more than 300 times during a typical workday. Additionally, the Government is considering other policy initiatives to ensure safety and security, including ‘talking CCTVs’, proposed National ID cards, extended detention without criminal charges, DNA retention plans, and expanded ‘stop-and-search’ laws. With this desire to increase security, however, comes the potential to restrict the freedoms of ordinary citizens. What are the implications of these policies? Does a need to be secure usurp our important needs for autonomy? Does restricting liberty generate an averse reactive state among individuals that lowers trust in others and in prominent institutions? The research proposed in this project is a novel first step to to clarify some of these questions by looking at the social-psychological consequences of threatened liberty.

Social Capital

    What leads to norms of trust and helping in society? What are the psychological processes of social bonding? Furthermore, what are the outcomes of this bonding for individuals and for society at large? These are the sorts of questions I am asking in my work on social capital.
    Social capital broadly refers to the networks that bind individuals together and that provide social norms from which individuals and society benefit, such as norms of reciprocity and norms of trusting (Coleman, 1988; Putnam, 2000). Although we know a good deal about the societal benefits of high social capital (e.g., drops in crime, higher rates of political participation, better health outcomes, higher rates of volunteerism), there has been little work to date exploring the psychology of social capital. To address this gap in the field, I am working with my fellow graduate student, Lane Beckes, to develop a social-psychological model of social capital. The model extends the current sociological understanding of social capital by exploring the individual and group-level factors that contribute to the processes, the outcomes, and the persistence of social bonding. I believe that this work, which is designed to map out the psychological factors that can increase or decrease social capital, is capable of generating research and research funding for a number of years as I work to test the model empirically.
    Similarly, my dissertation studies explored the social-psychological processes underlying the relationship between social capital and equality. It is well documented that as economic equality increases in societies, so too does social capital. A broad goal of my dissertation was to develop a systematic experimental approach to capture the psychology of the relationship between equality and social capital, thus advancing important previous work that has largely employed a macro, societal-level approach. I believe equality and social capital are inherently psychological variables and, as such, require a focus on the individual if the relationship is to be fully understood. To that end, I  designed two studies: In the first study, I manipulated the equal or unequal distribution of resources and then assessed social capital among participants, and in the second study I manipulated high or low levels of social capital and then assessed the degree to which participants distributed resources equally or unequally to other students. Across both studies, I am also explored the potential role that diversity plays in the relationship between equality and social capital. The results of these studies, along with converging evidence from the 1996 GSS data set, suggest that the equal - compared to the unequal - distribution of resources does in fact cause increases in social capital, and that this effect is mediated by the experience of positive and negative affect. A paper presenting this evidence is currently under review.
    Finally, my work with Dr. Mark Snyder is focused on certain manifestations of social capital such as volunteerism. Specifically, we are exploring whether individuals think and feel differently about volunteers who adopt either a professional-type approach or a peer-type approach to helping. We have found that people strongly prefer volunteers who endorse working with their clients as if they were friends, even when the domain of helping is professional in nature (e.g., career counseling).
 

•BBC. (2007a, September 20). Surveillance 'is a threat to UK'. Retrieved October 16, 2007, from the World
    Wide Web: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7004485.stm 

•BBC. (2007b, May 20). Police chief's 'Orwellian' fears. Retrieved October 15, 2007, from the World Wide
    Web: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6673579.stm 

•BBC. (2007c, January 9). New CCTV unit tackles UK crime. Retrieved October 15, 2007, from the World
    Wide Web: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6241051.stm

•Coleman, J. (1988). Social capital in the creation of human capital. American Journal of Sociology, 94, 95-120.

•deCharms, R. (1968). Personal causation. New York: Academic.

•Deci, E. L. (1980). The psychology of self-determination. Lexington, MA: Heath. 

•Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., & Solomon, S. (1986). The causes and consequences of the need for self-esteem: A terror    management theory. In R. F. Baumeister (Ed.), Public self and private self (pp. 189-212). New York: Springer-Verlag.

•Lane, R. E. (1959). The fear of equality. The American Political Science Review, 53, 35-51.

•Pratto, F., Sidanius, J., Stallworth, L. M., & Malle, B. F. (1994). Social dominance orientation: A personality variable predicting social and political attitudes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 741-763.

•Privacy International. (2007, December 28). Leading surveillance societies in the EU and the World 2007.
Retrieved January 8, 2008, from the World Wide Web:
http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml?cmd[347]=x-347-559597 

•Putnam, R. (2000). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. New York: Simon & Schuster. 

•Sheldon, K. M., & Elliot, A. J. (1999). Goal striving, need satisfaction, and longitudinal well-being: The
self-concordance model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76, 546–557.