My current research projects attempt to better understand the following questions:

Politics Project(s):

Do the safety cues of political diversity in friendship networks and learning goals independently and/or additively contribute to decreased social identity threat and improved interaction outcomes for liberals and conservatives in the United States?

With Paula Sholander and Drs. Daryl Wout and Grace Flores-Robles, we are attempting to build off of recently published work (Anderson et al., 2025) showing that encountering an interaction partner who is across the political divide and also has political diversity, rather than political homogeneity, in their friendship network can decrease social identity threat and improve interaction outcomes among White liberals and White conservatives in the United States. We have analyzed data for a pilot study with liberals in the United States, and we found that learning goals, like friendship diversity, also positively impact social identity threat and interaction outcomes, although to a somewhat lesser degree. While learning goals did independently impact identity threat and the interaction outcomes, it was not additive to the friendship diversity manipulation. Results for a second study with conservatives in the United States appear to largely replicate the effects from the first study.

Disability and Race-Related Project(s):

How do articles published in major social-psychological journals include or discuss disability?

Members of the Disability Advocacy and Research Network (DARN) and I are researching how disability is either discussed or mentioned in articles published in major social-psychological journals (JPSP, PSPB, SPPS). We found that major social-psychological journals rarely publish articles as a primary focus (the central focus of the article) or a non-primary focus (e.g., within the methods, statistical analyses, etc.). The manuscript is currently under review at Social Psychological and Personality Science.

How can intraminority relations between White disabled people and nondisabled racial minorities be improved?

Based upon data analyses from a pilot study, other members of DARN, Dr. Daryl Wout, and I are planning on conducting studies related to improving intraminority relations between Black individuals and disabled individuals. We are currently designing a correlational study investigating how Black women and Black men differ from each other and White people on (1) agreement with different models of disability, (2) perceiving shared discrimination and linked fate between disabled people and their racial group, and (3) support for structural changes to address disability discrimination and inequality. I am particularly interested in incorporating this research with issues related to leftism, necropolitics, and eugenics.