Welcome!

Our lab is housed within the Psychology Department and is a part of our top-ranked Clinical Psychology Program. Research conducted in our lab falls under the broad umbrella of studying cultural and contextual influences on emotional functioning, mental health and well-being. Historically, this has included how basic emotional processes are shaped by variation in core aspects of identity such as race/ethnicity, culture, and gender. More recently, we have focused primarily on understanding the experiences of of members of oppressed groups (racialized or minoritized individuals, sexual and gender minorities, etc.), with an eye toward more accurately assessing how these individuals perceive and cope with the challenges associated with having less privilege and power (discrimination, bias, etc.).

There are two important characteristics of our approach to the issues outlined above. First, in our work we subscribe to a broad definition of culture (Pedersen, 1999), which includes any or all potentially salient ethnographic, demographic, status or affiliation identities (religion, age, sexual identity, gender, race, etc.). Second, we have assessed well-being and stress using a multi-method approach that has tried to incorporate self-report methods, with psychophysiology and behavioral measurement in the laboratory. Ultimately, our goal is to apply scientific rigor to the study of diverse and marginalized groups in order to elucidate how aspects integral to belonging to these groups (e.g., discrimination, oppression) relate to important outcomes such as health and overall psychological functioning.