I am an Associate Professor in the Psychology Department at St. Mary's College of Maryland. As a social psychologist, I focus on two main themes within the topic of interpersonal processes.
First, I examine the two-sided nature of social exclusion with a particular focus on the point of view of the rejector. Although there has been a lot of research on how it feels to be rejected, very little research has considered the two-sided nature of this difficult interpersonal interaction. My work considers how people reject, why they do so, how they are perceived, and what the consequences are for both parties.
My second line of research is in examining gender and racial biases and creating interventions to combat them. My work applies social psychological theory to inform the creation of game and narrative-based interventions. Within this work, I focus on creating interventions to combat gender biases and interventions to improve retention of women in STEM.
In both of my lines of work, I use a range of interdisciplinary tools, from traditional social psychological methods (e.g., lab studies with actors, field studies) to more modern methods (e.g., digital games, interactive narrative software).
I earned my Ph.D. in Social and Personality Psychology from the University of Texas at Austin and my B.A. in Psychology from Haverford College. I was a postdoctoral researcher at Tiltfactor, a Dartmouth College interdisciplinary lab that creates and studies games designed to foster social change.