Our research spans three content areas to examine social perception, intergroup relations, and how people navigate, and are treated in, social contexts as a function of their identities.
For a list of past publications, and some current questions we are investigating, read below!
What are the effects of identity on perception and cognition?
How do people determine whether a group or organization is diverse, and with what implications?
What factors affect how we categorize others into social groups?
What are the antecedents and consequences of social connection and belonging relative to social rejection and isolation?
How do people navigate multiple identities in interactions with others?
How do people who belong to stigmatized groups evaluate situational and interpersonal cues to belonging or threat?
What factors drive inequitable treatment in higher education, and how can these be mitigated?
When shared group membership is salient, are people more likely to confront discrimination against others?
Norman, J. B., Viole, E., & Bird, A. (2026). University climate and neurodiversity accommodations: Associations with academic and social-psychological student outcomes. Research in Neurodiversity. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rin.2026.100032
*Open Access Publication!
Lindström, J., Manokara, K., Norman, J. B., Leal, A., Russell, P. S., & Cohen-Chen, S. (2026). American gratitude-plus-pride differentially predict benevolent and activism support across political ideology. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/pac0000838
Malik, H. B., Norman, J. B., & Puente, A. E. (2025). A vignette-based study examining attitudes toward mental and brain illness in the United States and Pakistan. Stigma and Health, 10(3), 456–466. https://doi.org/10.1037/sah0000514
Norman, J. B., Castro Lingl, D., Hehman, E., & Chen, J. M. (2024). Race in the eye of the beholder: Decomposing perceiver- and target-level variation in perceived racial prototypicality. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2024.104667
Norman, J. B., Geerling, D. M., Thoman, D. B., Tang, Y., & Sansone, C. (2024). Student attributions about interest-value shape academic decisions and recommendations. Motivation Science. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/mot0000350
*Preprint available for download at: https://osf.io/2tm5s/
Norman, J. B., Franco, M. G., & Chen, J. M. (2022). Multiracial individuals’ rejection and acceptance experiences and implications for life satisfaction. Journal of Social Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224545.2021.1996322
Norman, J. B., Fuesting, M. A., Geerling, D. M., Chen, J. M., Gable, S. L., & Diekman, A. B. (2021). To Pursue or Not to Pursue STEM? Faculty Behavior Enhances Student Involvement in STEM Roles by Signaling Role-Specific Support. Social Psychological and Personality Science. https://doi.org/10.1177/19485506211035003.
*Preprint available for download at: https://osf.io/gdcx4/
Chen, J. M., Norman, J. B., & Nam, Y. (2021). Broadening the stimulus set: Introducing the American Multiracial Faces Database. Behavior Research Methods, 53, 371-389. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-020-01447-8.
*Stimuli free to use for academic research accessible through the SCIP Lab Website
Development and Validation of the Social Safety Questionnaire: In collaboration with Dimitris Tsomokos at the UCL Institute of Education and several researchers from the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA, our lab worked toward developing a 20-item scale measuring perceived social safety. Although social safety—the multifaceted perception of safety (e.g., belonging, trust) and threat (e.g., devaluation, exclusion) in one’s social world—is robustly linked to socioemotional and health outcomes, research in this area is hindered by measurement. The 20-item Social Safety Questionnaire (SSQ) explained over 40% of the variance in psychological distress and was a significant predictor above and beyond social support, safeness, and loneliness. We look forward to making this scale accessible for future research. Read more and access preliminary data about the SSQ.
Social Comparison on Social Media: When you scroll through social media, do you find yourself naturally comparing your characteristics, experiences, or qualities to the posts you see? Do you do this more for some accounts compared to others? Expanding off past work showing social media can intensify social comparison tendencies, Maggie Crowell, a Master's student in the lab is investigating when and why people compare as a function of the content people see. This project will explore questions such as whether AI-labeling reduces the level or changes the type of social comparison, how people compare themselves to group photos relative to individual posts, and to what extent social media does or does not help fulfill belongingness motives.