Associate Professor of Psychology & Women's and Gender Studies
About
Additional Research Interests: Qualitative Methods
I am a critical feminist psychologist who studies the development and maintenance of stigma and discrimination.
A central question I pursue concerns the politics of measurement, which I’ve studied through analyzing topics such as the “success” of abstinence-only sex education, measures of sexual (dys)function in women diagnosed with Stage IV breast cancer, and assessments of sexual satisfaction in adults. Across this body of work, I examine the role of socially and historically meaningful cues, including negative stereotypes, embedded in survey measurement tools. Given the role of psychological research in national policy conversations, it is crucial that we not ignore the part we play in forming, and perhaps reproducing, inequalities in the name of measuring them.
My current project focuses on issues of implicit racial stereotyping in national polls that survey Americans about their abortion attitudes (i.e., Gallop, Pew, etc.). Over the last two years, I have interviewed individuals across the U.S. about who and what they imagine when they answer survey questions about abortion. In this project, I test and develop an array of innovative methods to study individuals' imaginations and associations while taking surveys. In this project, I am particularly focused on how stereotypes of Black women as hypersexual, as well as welfare policies and messages about deservingness, play a crucial role in forming attitudes about who “wants” and “needs” abortion care.
In a second line of research, I investigate how individuals accommodate to unjust treatment over time, especially when they are oppressed or harmed by those close to them. Across many of my studies (with queer youth, with ill women at the end of life, with students who have recently been sexually assaulted), people frequently dismiss their experiences of pain, discrimination, and abuse as “no big deal.” This presents a crucial methodological and policy dilemma when researchers and policy makers rely on individuals to recount their own experiences of mistreatment in order to document and pursue justice claims. For example, in my research on forms of sexual stigma that lesbian, bisexual, and queer women face, I find that those who face chronic marginalization see small injustices as normal and to be expected, which in turn, makes research on “mundane" or chronic experiences of discrimination especially difficult to measure and interpret. My work intervenes in this dilemma by developing feminist psychological theories and methods that acknowledge the role of testimonial, as well as its limits.
I received my PhD in Psychology (2009), was a postdoctoral scholar in the Michigan Society of Fellows (2009-2012), and received the Class of 1923 Memorial Teaching Award, the Distinguished Early Career Contributions in Qualitative Inquiry Award (APA Div 5), the Mary Walsh Roth Teaching the Psychology of Women Award (APA Div 35) and the Michele Alexander Early Career Award for Scholarship and Service (APA Div 9).
More information about my research can be found at: ProgressLab.info.
Area
- Personality & Social Contexts
- Joint Program in Women's and Gender Studies and Psychology
Field(s) of Study
- feminist research methods
- gender/sexuality
- critical psychology
- adolescence
- social justice
