Amy studies how social and economic factors shape the way we see, think and feel about, and make decisions for others. She was born and raised in rural Minnesota and received a B.S. in Psychology from the University of Wisconsin - Madison, where she investigated intersectionality and discriminatory judgments with Professor Colleen F. Moore. Next she moved to New York City and researched intertemporal choice and risky decision making at Columbia University with Professors Elke U. Weber, Eric J. Johnson, and Bernd Figner at the Center for the Decision Sciences. She then completed a PhD at New York University with Professor David Amodio, where she examined economic scarcity effects on discrimination through multiple levels of social perception - from mental representations to neural encoding. She most recently worked as a post-doc with Professor Mina Cikara at Harvard University investigating social value and reinforcement learning. Amy joined the Cornell psychology department as an Assistant Professor in July, 2016, and is excited to get back to the woods.  cv  |  email

Catherine earned her B.S. in Psychology from Virginia Commonwealth University, where she worked with numerous labs in both Social and Health Psychology. Her research interests holistically focus on bias and prejudice, considering both internal and external factors and outcomes. While her primary research focuses on concealable minority status individuals, she is interested in intersectional identities. Catherine joined the Social Perception & Intergroup Inequality Lab in the Summer 2018 as the lab manager. She enjoys spending her free time hiking, baking, and learning to play new instruments.

email

Benedek is an experimental psychologist whose work seeks to understand the knowledge that comes to be activated automatically as we interact with our social environments, especially as it relates to membership in social categories such as gender, race, and sexual orientation. In addition to traditional experiments conducted online and in the lab and using a variety of learning paradigms, his research also relies on advanced quantitative methods, including natural language processing, meta-analyses, and computational modeling. Since July 2019, Benedek has been a postdoctoral associate in the Psychology Department at Cornell University, jointly supervised by Melissa Ferguson and Amy Krosch. Benedek obtained his A.M. and his Ph.D. at Harvard University where he worked with Mahzarin Banaji, Fiery Cushman, and Sam Gershman. His work has been published in Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, American Psychologist, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He has won multiple awards for teaching statistics at the undergraduate and graduate levels. email | CV | website

Stephanie Tepper is a graduate student in the Krosch Lab studying how people make decisions in ways that influence high-level social inequalities. She focuses on questions related to perceptions of inequality, resource allocation decisions, and interventions to promote equal outcomes. Prior to starting graduate school, she worked at the Center for Advanced Hindsight conducting research to improve financial decision-making through behavioral intervention. Stephanie received a B.A. in Psychology & Neuroscience from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Outside of the lab, she enjoys browsing Ithaca's local markets and playing music. website | email | cv

Rachel is a second-year Ph.D. student in social psychology working with Drs. Amy Krosch and Katherine Kinzler, and she is broadly interested in the development of social group concepts and biases. In the Krosch Lab, Rachel researches people's thinking about social category-based privilege and designs interventions to reduce intergroup biases. Outside of the Krosch Lab, Rachel researches adults' and children's thinking about wealth, geography, and social mobility. email

Mikaela is a second year graduate student who studies perceptual bias at the intersection of race and gender. Her research focuses on revealing the ideological barriers to social justice that exist for minority groups. She works to understand how our beliefs about the overarching American system amplify discrimination and inequality in order to uncover interventions that can aid in reducing bias and addressing disparities in America. Mikaela earned her MA in experimental psychology from Wake Forest University, and her BS in neuroscience from The College of William and Mary. She enjoys going to concerts, doing yoga, and watching football. email

Jesse Walker is a graduate student at Cornell who studies biased judgment. His work has examined biases in consumer behavior, strategic decision making, everyday social interaction, and musical preferences. In the Krosch Lab, he studies barriers to overcoming inequality by investigating the effect of minority advancement on judgment and behavior. His newest hobby involves finding creative ways to sleep that fit the unpredictable schedule of his one year old son.    email

Xi mainly researches implicit impression formation and updating and judgments about trustworthiness. In the Krosch Lab, she studies how people's perception of facial trustworthiness could be influenced by threatening situations. Xi received her B.S. in China and M.A at NYU without leaving psychology. She enjoys traveling and searching on Yelp for good and bad restaurants. email

Steve studies how perceived time scarcity (i.e., feeling as if one does not have enough time to do the things that need to be done) influences life satisfaction as well as everyday judgments and decisions. One project explores how life satisfaction is differentially influenced by subjective busyness (i.e., perceived time scarcity) and objective busyness (i.e., number of hours spent on work-related activities). Before beginning his Ph.D. at Cornell, Steve studied psychology at the University of Michigan, working primarily with Ethan Kross.  When not in the lab, Steve enjoys spending time in the natural areas around Ithaca – hiking, running, biking, and kayaking. He also enjoys traveling, cooking, and watching his favorite team– Liverpool FC. email

Randy Lee is a graduate student is interested in three distinct, but interrelated topics: 1) emotion and emotion theory (e.g., equifinality and equipotentiality of emotion); 2) the deliberate and automatic ways we intrapsychically and interpersonally regulate emotion (e.g., attachment behaviors); and 3) the causes, responses, and outcomes of and to social exclusion at the intrapsychic, interpersonal, communal, and institutional levels. Randy received his B.A. in psychology from the University of California, Berkeley.  email

Sabrina is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences pursuing majors in Psychology and Government and minors in Theatre and Inequality Studies. She is currently conducting her honors thesis in the Social Perception & Intergroup Inequality Lab, investigating social perceptions of previously incarcerated citizens in job application processes. After graduation, she is considering a Master of Fine Arts in drama, and she may also go to law school. email

Lab Manager (Fall 2016-Summer 2018) Rachel earned a B.A. in psychology and philosophy from Rutgers University - New Brunswick and completed an honors thesis that employed forensic analytic techniques (p-curve, replicability index, and test of insufficient variance) to examine the evidential value of politicized and non-politicized literatures within social psychology. Rachel joined the lab in Fall 2016 as Lab Manager and researched essentialist beliefs about race and gender, perceptions of gender ambiguity, and representations of race in the legal context. Rachel is now located New York City in a Quantitative User Experience Analyst role learning more about what motivates consumer behavior. email   

Suzy graduated from Cornell’s College of Arts and Sciences double majoring in Economics and Psychology, and minoring in Law and Society. While she was a member of the Krosch Lab, she conducted an honors thesis on how the perception of minority advancement influences White Americans’ perception of and behaviors toward Black Americans. Suzy has since gone on to seek higher education at Columbia Law.  email

Research Assistant (Fall 2016-Spring 2017) Abby Nissenbaum is a third-year PhD student at Clark University who is currently collaborating with the Krosch Lab. Broadly, her research interests coalesce into areas of stereotyping, prejudice, and violence toward marginalized sex and gender groups. email

Megan Sexton (Spring 2017-Spring 2018) graduated from Cornell College of Arts and Sciences as a Psychology and Government double major.

Alana Sullivan (Fall 2017-Fall 2018) is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences double majoring in Psychology and English. 

Lydia Baulch (Spring 2017-Spring2019) graduated from Cornell College of Arts and Sciences with a major in Psychology with a minor in Communication. 

Research assistants

Michael Massiah (Spring 2017-current) is from Lugano, Switzerland and is currently a junior double majoring in Economics and Psychology at Cornell. He is interested in pursuing an academic career researching and teaching in the field of Behavioral Economics.

Nassima Boukhalfa (Spring 2018-current) is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences majoring in Linguistics and is on the pre-med track. 

Katie Kuhl (Summer 2019 - current) is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences majoring in Psychology.

Collaborators

David Amodio, New York University
Jay Van Bavel, New York University
John Jost, New York University
Mina Cikara, Harvard University
Elizabeth Phelps, Harvard University
Jennifer Kubota, University of Chicago
Peter Sokol-Hessner, University of Denver
Emily Balcetis, New York University
Tom Tyler, Yale University
Damian Stanley, Caltech
Fiery Cushman, Harvard University
Wouter Kool, Harvard University
Ryan Miller, Harvard University
Elke Weber, Columbia University
Eric Johnson, Columbia University
Bernd Figner, Radbound University