Principal Investigator
Kurt Hugenberg is the director of the Stereotyping, Prejudice, & Facial Expression Lab at Indiana University. He is a professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. His research focuses on how perceivers' stereotypes, prejudices, and prejudice-related motives influence how we categorize, perceive, and understand others. For more information, check out his CV or contact him directly at khugenb@indiana.edu.
Postdoctoral Scholar
Ryan Hutchings is a postdoctoral scholar working for Profs. Kurt Hugenberg and Victor Quintanilla. His research focuses primarily on person perception, prejudice, and social cognition. In particular, his research investigates how people visually represent social groups and strategies to change biased visual representations of groups. For more information, please see his CV.
Mattea Sim is a postdoctoral scholar working for Dr. Kurt Hugenberg. Her research focuses primarily on person perception, prejudice, and dehumanization. In particular, her research investigates how perceivers rely on others' physical cues (e.g., bodies) and social identities to make inferences about mental, physical, and emotional sophistication. For more information, view her CV.
Graduate Students
Erin Freiburger is a third year graduate student working with Dr. Kurt Hugenberg. Her research interests center on person perception, prejudice, and face-based trait impressions. In particular, Erin investigates how perceivers rely on stereotypes to evaluate others' traits and attributes (e.g., trustworthiness, masculinity, formidability) from their faces alone. For more information, check out Erin's CV.
Victor D. Quintanilla is a second year graduate student in the lab and also a law school professor. Victor's research investigates civil justice design, access to justice, and legal education by drawing on theory and methods within the field of psychological science, including experiments conducted with judges, lawyers, law students, and members of the public. His research seeks to create, implement, and evaluate social psychological interventions to promote productive mindsets and enhance diversity, equity, and inclusion and the student experience and performance throughout the pipeline of legal education. Victor also harnesses psychological methods to examine how unrepresented persons are socially constructed and stereotyped into pro se parties, and he designs and evaluates social psychological interventions to improve their experiences and outcomes. Victor is thrilled about exploring these research lines within IU's social psych graduate program and to be part of the Hugenberg lab! For more information, checkout Victor's law school website here!
Neelamberi (Neela) Klein is a first year graduate student working with Dr. Kurt Hugenberg. Her research focuses on the overlap between prejudice, person perception, and emotions. Specifically, her work investigates how experienced and perceived emotions influence the expression of prejudice and trait perceptions of diverse targets. For more information, check out Neela's CV.
Jeanine Sempler is a first year graduate student working for Dr. Kurt Hugenberg. Her research interests focus on the intersection of race and gender bias in person perception. In particular, her research investigates intersectional biases in criminal justice contents, such as perceptions of police-civilian interactions and following consequences for use of force justification, blame, and punishment. For more information, check out Jeanine's CV.
Affiliated Graduate Students
Caitlyn Jones is a third year graduate student working under Dr. Mary C. Murphy. Predominantly, she is interested in investigating the ways in which social identities influence interaction, specifically in organizational or academic settings. This interest involves research surrounding stereotyping, prejudice, fixed versus growth mindset, and social identity threat.
Alex Tran (Trần Ngô Quang Anh) is a first-year graduate student from Vietnam advised by Amanda Diekman. He is particularly interested in the psychology of the -isms, bias, prejudice, and interminority coalition. His prior work has focused on the intersectionality of race and gender in social cognition. For more information, check out Alex's CV.
Research Assistants
Ritu Gangadhara (she/her) is a senior undergraduate research assistant in Dr. Kurt Hugenberg's lab. She is double majoring in neuroscience and psychology with minors in history and chemistry. She is interested in how stereotype and prejudice affects historically excluded populations, specifically in STEM spaces and especially within medicine. She is also interested in CRT and stereotype threat within Asian American populations. She hopes to attend medical school in the future to focus on intersectionality, humanities, and cultural literacy in the medical field.
Abby Novotny (she/her) is an undergraduate senior majoring in Psychology and Criminal Justice with a minor in Studio Art. She is interested in the intersection of psychology and criminal justice. Specifically, the many interactions between psychology and the law, restorative justice, stereotypes and prejudices, legislation, and social organization interest her the most. She hopes to further her studies in graduate school and expand upon the literature on psychology and the criminal justice system.
Muriel Mota Schafer
Audrey Elizabeth So
Kendall Anne Greenberg
Bri Gabrielle Rainey
Purva Shah
William Guckien
Lab Alumni
Jason Deska is a Postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto working with Dr. Nick Rule. He investigates questions related to social perception and cognition to inform our understanding of how and when people are subjected to differential judgment and treatment. For more information, check out Jason's website or contact him directly at jason.deska@utoronto.ca.
Paige Lloyd is an Assistant Professor at the University of Denver. Her work investigates the determinants and consequences of person perception, with an emphasis on implications for social inequality and discrimination. For more information, check out Paige's website or contact her directly at paige.lloyd@du.edu.
Don Sacco is an Associate Professor at the University of Southern Mississippi. His research interests fall into three major categories: 1) causes and consequences of social inclusion and exclusion, 2) face perception and nonverbal behavior, and 3) how personality and motivation influence cognition and perception. For more information, check out Don's website or contact him directly at donald.sacco@usm.edu.
Pirita See is an Assistant Professor at South Dakota State University. She specializes in group-based biases involved in person perception (e.g., intergroup face processing, stereotyping, dehumanization, pro-social intentions). For more information, check our Pirita's website or contact her directly at pirita.see@sdstate.edu.
John Paul Wilson is an Assistant Professor at Montclair State University. He is currently focused on how person perception can inform our thinking about social issues and the criminal justice system. For more information, check out John's website or contact him directly at wilsonjoh@montclair.edu.
Ed Shriver is a Lecturer at Emmanuel College. He specializes in prejudice, intergroup relations, and social justice. For more information, contact him directly at edwin.shriver@gmail.com.
Steven Almaraz is an Assistant Professor in the Psychology Department at East Los Angeles College. Although he now spends most of his time educating future psychology enthusiasts, his research interest focuses on how people use perceptual cues (e.g., faces, bodies, movement) to make inferences about the trustworthiness, dominance, sexuality, or mental sophistication of the people around them. Often, his work investigates whether these perceptual inferences are affected by social group memberships and can impact real-world intergroup disparities. For more information, check out Steven's CV and personal website.
Alicia Macchione
Apoorva Sarmal
Mansi Joshi
Madeline Kosins
Catherine Qing
Tessa Benson-Greenwald
Julia Henry
Max Bublick
Daphne Castro Lingl
Kathleen Stanko
Alexa Sucharetza
Austin Mills
Richard Liu