Assistant Professor at Wellesley University
About
Angela Bahns, assistant professor of psychology at Wellesley College, is a social psychologist with research interests in prejudice and the initiation of personal relationships. Professor Bahns’s research looks at similarity and diversity in friendship networks by focusing on the individual-level and community-level factors that affect friendship choices. Using survey-based field methods and multilevel analysis, her work explores the role of diversity attitudes, local norms about diversity, and community size and diversity in fostering diverse friendships.
Current Work:
Dr. Bahns is working on a project that aims to identify the individual-level and community-level factors that promote diverse friendships. Diverse friendships are associated with many desirable outcomes including reduced prejudice and intergroup anxiety, multicultural competence, and leadership skills. While much of the extant literature looks exclusively at sociodemographic dimensions of friendship diversity (especially race/ethnicity), her research assesses both sociodemographic and attitudinal diversity. Using a survey-based field method, friendship pairs complete measures of diversity attitudes, social network diversity, social and political attitudes, and sociodemographic variables. Pairs are sampled from public spaces in college campus and community settings that vary in population size and racial/ethnic diversity. She predicts that small and racially/ethnically diverse communities will foster more diverse friendships, especially for individuals who value diversity and in communities that value diversity. Thus, the role of community size and racial/ethnic diversity in predicting diverse friendships depends on individual-level and community-level valuing of diversity.
Research Area(s):
- Psychology
- Social Psychology
