Kumar Yogeeswaran
Contact
Department of Psychology
626 Tobin Hall
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA 01003, USA
kumar@psych.umass.edu
I am a third year Doctoral student in Social Psychology at the University of Massachusetts - Amherst. At the broadest level, my research interests lie in the realm of implicit social cognition and intergroup relations. This interest is fuelled by the desire to understand how people’s membership in particular groups (e.g. ethnic, racial, or national groups) shape their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors toward others as well as their own self-conceptions. For my research, I use different methods including reaction time measures, self-report measures, and electrophysiological measures.
My current research falls into different realms:
1) White America: Investigates national identity and perceptions of diversity
This line of research seeks to better understand Americans’ perceptions of diversity, its antecedents, and consequences. Some of the research questions that have guided my thinking are as follows: Have we as Americans really internalized the view of our nation as a multiethnic society or is the U.S. seen as a White country where ethnic minorities are perpetual foreigners? To what extent does the explicit ethos of multiculturalism, prevalent in the larger society, fit with individual Americans’ implicit perceptions? Do implicit and explicit beliefs about ethnic homogeneity exacerbate social inequalities by excluding some who are legitimately American? Recent research on this topic has found that Americans of all races implicitly associate American with White even if they do not express this association when asked to self-report who is legitimately American (Devos & Banaji, 2005). Using these initial findings as a starting point, I am interested in two broad questions:
a) Do implicit and explicit beliefs about who is "truly" American influence people's behaviors and judgments about individuals who are not White?
b) If implicit and explicit beliefs about who is "truly" American influence behaviors and judgments, what are conditions that strengthen versus weaken these beliefs?
2) ERP: Examines implicit social cognition using ERP (event-related brain potentials)
This line of research uses event-related potentials (fluctuations in electrical activity of the brain that occur in response to specific stimuli) to study the relationship between intergroup emotion and implicit prejudice. For example, we are using ERP to understand the mechanism behind why a negative group-based emotion like anger increases implicit prejudice against outgroups. That is, does anger increase vigilance or threat perception, decrease cognitive control, or do both? ERPs serve as a great tool to study such processes because they provide high temporal resolution of brain activity (in milliseconds) which permits parsing of functions that occur quickly after stimulus onset.
3) National Symbols and Threat: Investigates the effect of national symbols and threat on intergroup relations
This work is in collaboration with Dr. David Butz at the University of Massachusetts - Amherst who is taking the lead role in this research. We are interested in examining the role of threat and national symbols on intergroup relations.
4) Implicit Stereotypes in Law: Investigates the role of implicit stereotypes in the legal domain
My advisor and I are currently collaborating with Dr. Jerry Kang and Dr. Gary Blasi at the UCLA Law School to investigate the predictive validity of implicit stereotypes about Asian Americans in the domain of law.
My Current Mentees
Cristian Gomez
The overwhelming majority of United States citizens are descendents of immigrants from all over the world. Americans, in fact, hold a very inclusive definition of American identity that represents a multicultural society. Yet people's implicit beliefs suggest that White European Americans are seen as more "American" than Asian and Hispanic Americans born and raised in the U.S. My current research focuses on the malleability of implicit beliefs that the prototypical American is White..
Christi-Anne King
Generally speaking, my research interests relate to the relationship between implicit social cognition and behavior. I am interested in studying how one defines who belongs in the country and how these beliefs affect behavior. More specifically, my research explores how implicit beliefs that the prototypical American is White affect an individual’s behavior, even when the individual may explicitly endorse egalitarian values.
Christina Beebe
An emphasis is placed throughout classrooms and the workplace in the United States expressing the importance of multicultural acceptance. Americans explicitly claim strong positive attitudes regarding the topic, but do these external endorsements of multiculturalism parallel their implicit attitudes? Generally speaking, my research is concerned with whether the explicit ethos of multiculturalism in the US fit with implicit perceptions of individual Americans. Recent research suggests that Americans of all races grant American identity more swiftly to White than non-White individuals in the country. If the prototypical American is perceived to be white, I would like to gain a greater understanding of where the boundaries lie and what conditions blur the line between “American” and “Foreign”. Furthermore, I would like to understand what the motivating factors are that maintain the gap between the broader societal perceptions of multiculturalism and the implicit cognitions of Americans.