Arnold Ho: Arnold is interested in social perceptions, attitudes, and beliefs that function to maintain social hierarchies. In one line of research, he examines the perception of multiracial individuals and its implications for racial hierarchies. In another line of research, he examines hierarchy enhancing attitudes and beliefs and individual differences in the preference for group-based hierarchy (i.e., social dominance orientation). Arnold holds a B.A. in Psychology with a minor in Sociology from the University of California, Davis, a M.A. in Psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and a M.A. in Social Psychology from Harvard University.
Nour Kteily: Nour is a 2nd year graduate student primarily interested in investigating the dynamics of intergroup relations between groups with differential power and status. In particular, he is interested in understanding more about the experience of members of low-power groups, exploring questions such as the conditions under which they accept versus challenge the status quo. Currently, he is conducting research with Israelis and Palestinians to explore the psychological factors that influence their willingness to negotiate with one another, using the lens of power relations to hypothesize about their unique reactions to different pre-negotiation proposals. He is also interested in using Social Dominance Theory’s evolutionary framework to investigate the gender-specific psychologies underlying discrimination towards outgroups, specifically investigating SDT's Outgroup Male Target Hypothesis (OMTH). Nour received a B.Sc. First Class Honors in Psychology with a Minor in Biology from McGill University in Montreal, Canada in 2008.
Jennifer Sheehy-Skeffington: Jennifer is interested in the political psychology of conflict and intergroup relations, which she analyzes through the lens of hierarchical power structures. She aims to take an interdisciplinary and multi-level approach to understanding the interplay of psychological experience and societal processes, with the use of such frameworks as social dominance theory. In so doing, she hopes empirically to capture power in action in lived experience, to outline the determinants of mobilization for social change, and to highlight the importance of social justice in conflict resolution. Jennifer graduated with a BA in Psychology and Philosophy from Trinity College Dublin and an MSc in Social Psychology from the London School of Economics and Political Science, after which she worked for two and a half years with the UK Ministry of Defence as a Social Psychology Research Analyst.
Lotte Thomsen: Lotte defended her Ph.D. in December 2009 (Dissertation committee Jim Sidanius, Susan Carey, Alan Fiske, & Steven Pinker) and is currently on leave from a position as Assistant Professor of Psychology at University of Copenhagen to do a post doc that is a joint position between Harvard University and University of Copenhagen. She is interested in how elementary kinds of relational motives underpin meaningful psychological and social phenomena and intergroup relations, how these relational primitives are represented, and in how relational motives and meanings emerge in phylo- and ontogenesis. Lotte currently addresses these topics using a combination of methods that includes questionnaires and surveys, social psychological scenario- and priming experiments, looking-time experiment with infants, experimental economics games, longitudinal panel studies and ethnographic field work and participant observation (Field site: Ittoqortoormit, North-East Greenland).
Paul Illg: Paul is a visiting student who is currently completing his Masters in Psychology at the University of Konstanz in Germany. He is currently interested in hierarchy legitimizing myths and how they work to cover the real group basis of conflicts in societies. His work attempts to find the mechanisms by which context influences attitude measures like Social Dominance Orientation, and is keen to study these mechanisms in the case of the social hierarchy in Mexico. Paul also likes having fun and spending lots of time chatting with his lab members about social issues!
Soydan Soylu: Soydan explores workplace bullying in Turkey from a social psychological perspective, by using both qualitative and quantitative methods. In his current projects, he examines the effects of social dominance orientation on the experience of bullying at work. In addition, he examines how perpetrators impose intellectual and moral justification towards victims for their bullying behaviors and how institutional discrimination contributes to the experience of bullying at work. His other research interests include paternalistic leadership and organizational justice. Soydan holds a B.A. in Business Administration from Istanbul Bilgi University and an MSc in Organisational and Social Psychology from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
