Research Overview

Welcome to the Social Psychology Laboratory at Bard College! We are a group of faculty and students who collaborate on ongoing research in social psychology. The lab has a particular focus on implicit social cognition – the study of attitudes, identities and beliefs that exist outside of conscious awareness yet influence behavior in unintentional and automatic ways.

We are interested in the theoretical underpinnings of such cognitions, asking questions such as:

  • How do we come to develop implicit preferences or beliefs?
  • What is the span of the network of implicit attitudes – could knowing how much someone likes their school tell us something about their racial attitudes?
  • “I am large, I contain multitudes” – Walt Whitman How do we navigate and balance the many social identities that we all have?

At the same time, we are interested in the consequences and policy implications of research on implicit social cognition. Here we ask questions such as:

  • How can implicit stereotypes about gender and science help to explain the gender gap in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields?
  • What are the implications of research showing the power and pervasiveness of implicit social cognition for the legal system?