School of Humanities and Sciences
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Sakaria Laisene Auelua-Toomey
Ph.D. Student in Psychology, admitted Autumn 2018
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsRacism involves a complex interplay between social contexts and individual thoughts, feelings, and actions. My research highlights how social contexts disproportionately affect marginalized groups’ meta-beliefs (i.e., beliefs about others’ beliefs), and how those meta-beliefs subsequently influence marginalized group members (but not advantaged group members) to disengage with those contexts. Moreover, I highlight how changes to social contexts can change how marginalized groups think about those contexts, often leading to greater racial equity. My research integrates the social psychological literature in social identity threat and systemic racism, employs diverse methods (e.g., surveys, field experiments, archival analyses, natural language processing) and includes participants from diverse backgrounds to uncover how changes to social contexts can reduce racial inequity across a variety of domains (e.g., scientific publications, interracial relationships, workplace settings, healthcare).
