Brandeis University

Graduate Student, Psychology

About

    I am currently a doctoral candidate in Social Psychology at Brandeis University.

My research interests include:
• Autonomic nervous system monitoring, including cardiovascular and neuroendocrine parameters.
•Psychophysiological responses to stress, intergroup interactions, stigma, decision making (e.g., challenge and threat appraisal processes, moral judgment, discrimination)
• Social emotions (e.g., shame, pride, empathy) in shaping physiology, appraisal and behavior (e.g., social identity, self-esteem, implicit bias, trust, morality, relationship formation and maintenance)
• Social class and health disparities, resilience, etiology and epidemiology of disease related to social processes.

    For the past 4+ years, I have been a research assistant with Dr. Wendy Berry Mendes at the Harvard Health and Psychophysiology Lab. Her research focuses on physiological indicators of stress with variables such as self-evaluation, race, social influence, creativity, and affective cues. The physiological methods in her lab include autonomic nervous system monitoring using impedance cardiography, electrocardiography, and peripheral measures, facial electromyography, and collection of neuroendocrine and immune parameters. I am now currently a co-PI with Dr. Mendes on two studies funded by the United Nations Alliance Fund. These psychophysiological studies assesses media influence of intergroup members on subsequent intergroup actions, specifically Arab/Muslim Americans and White Americans. Using the above measures, we assess cardiovascular, peripheral, and neuroendocrine reactivity, as well as self-report on social dominance orientation, self-esteem, bias, and just-world belief scale.
The current facial EMG study takes place at Harvard Kennedy School's new facility: Decision Science Lab.

http://wbm.wjh.harvard.edu/cms/health-and-psychophysiology-lab/graduate-students.html

http://decisionlab.harvard.edu/

    I was also a research assistant with Dr. Tamar Mendelson at the Harvard School of Public Health. Her study investigated the effects of experimentally induced social status on physiology and mood. The experiment induced social status in the lab to examine the effects of status hierarchy formation. It was predicted that induced subordinate status would produce a different pattern of affective and physiological responses than induced dominant status. Outcome measures included self-reported affect, cardiovascular functioning (as indexed by systolic and diastolic blood pressure), and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis functioning (as indexed by changes in cortisol levels).

My dissertation investigates physiological correlates related to moral aversion to harm and the influence of social evaluative stress on moral decision making.
I was recently award the 2010 APA dissertation award for my doctoral dissertation. titled: Moral Congruity: the influence of social evaluative stress on decision-making."

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