about me

I obtained my Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Colorado Boulder, where I worked with Dr. Leaf Van Boven in the Environment, Decision-making, Judgment, and Identity (EDJI) Lab. My research investigates how people make judgments and decisions in social and political contexts, with a particular focus on the development of trust and cooperation across competing groups.

Broadly, I study how identity, emotion, media, and institutional trust shape people’s responses to societal challenges. My recent work examines these dynamics in the context of political polarization, science skepticism, and public health, exploring how exposure to diverse news environments can influence trust in science and promote collective health behaviors like vaccination.

As a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Michigan's School for Environment and Sustainability, I now apply these interests to the domain of environmental health, with a focus on wildfire smoke adaptation. I study how cognitive biases and social factors shape people’s risk perceptions of wildfire smoke—an intermittent, diffuse, and often underappreciated hazard—and investigate what conditions motivate individuals and institutions to take protective action. My goal is to inform communication strategies and policy interventions that promote more equitable, effective public responses to environmental risks.

Risk Perceptions of Wildfire Smoke & Downstream Protective Health Behaviors

• What specific conditions need to be met to motivate people to protect themselves from ostensibly low-risk natural hazards like wildfire smoke?

• How do spatiotemporal characteristics of hazards--such as frequency, duration, and speed of onset--influence perceptions of risk and protective behaviors?

• When are individual protective actions sufficient, and when are policy interventions necessary to safeguard public health?

Political Identity, News Consumption, & Vaccination

• How does news media consumption influence trust in social institutions, science, and willingness to sacrifice to protect your community?

• Can exposure to more ideologically diverse news increase trust in science and adherence to vaccination? 

• How does consuming media convey risk and social norms around vaccination?

• Can classic psychological theory help explain many people's rejection of the 2020 US Presidential Election outcome?

Cooperation & Relationships

• How does gratitude as a social emotion help initiate and maintain cooperative partnerships? 

• How do people decide when to help others in need? 

• How does mere attention impact willingness to trust strangers?