Roster of Participants
Participants whose names are in blue will be attending their first in-person Duck Conference.
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Participants should feel free to contact the conference organizer if they wish to substitute another picture or to add or revise their descriptions of professional or personal interests.
Who's Who
Abigail (Abby) Scholer
(she/her)
Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, University of Virginia
Professional Interests: motivation, self-regulation, goal pursuit, social regulation
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Professional Interests: reading a good novel, running, eating, playing pool volleyball
Amani (Manny) El-Alayli
(she/her)
Amanda Diekman
(she/her)
Indiana University
Professional Interests: Gender, social roles, stereotyping, STEM.
Professional Interests: Reading, happy hour, eating, yoga, TV
Andrew (Andy) Todd
(he/him)
Eastern Washington University
Professional Interests: Biases in self-perception and impressions of others; biases regarding our biases; misc. other things.
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Professional Interests: Snowboarding and volleyball are among my favorite things. Whiskers on kittens are ok too (I've been fostering cats). I also like trying new foods and am one of the last surviving rollerbladers.
University of California Davis
Professional Interests: Mentalizing/perspective taking; egocentrism in social inference; intergroup bias, including stereotyping and prejudice; interplay of automatic and non-automatic processes in social cognition
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Professional Interests: Collecting/listening to new and old music; watching NBA & listening to NBA podcasts; reading (mostly non-fiction); brisk walking (never running); lamenting the end of the golden age of TV
Chris Agnew
(he/him)
Christopher (Chris) Bryant
(he/him)
Christopher K. Marshburn
(he/him)
Purdue University
Professional Interests: My research focuses on close, interpersonal relationships and the use of relational models to understand broader social and health processes. Topics include relationship commitment & dissolution processes, network influences, timing, & technology.
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Professional Interests: Into music, walking, hiking, biking, scootering, and all things relational. Dig family life. Probably play Words With Friends and NYT Crosswords too much, but hey, recognition is the first step.
Donal Carlston
(he/him)
Professor Emeritus, Purdue University
Professional Interests: Impression formation, associative processes and all other social cognitionish stuff.
Professional Interests: Reading, writing, the Personal Preference board game, basketball, pool volleyball, listening to music, Duck.
Evava (Eva) Pietri
(she/her)
University of Colorado Boulder
Professional Interests: Identity-safety and belonging; experiences of women with multiply marginalized identities (e.g., Black and Latina women); role models; attitudes and attitude change
Professional Interests: Going for relatively easy hikes (because Colorado); reading for fun; watching TV; mostly keeping up with my toddler
Keith Maddox
(he/him)
Tufts University
Professional Interests: Social cognition of stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination with a focus on mental representation; strategies to facilitate intergroup dialogue around racial bias remediation (e.g., emotion regulation, humor); Anti-bias education.
Personal Interests: Movies and television, science fiction reading, science podcasts, squash, golf, dancing, karaoke, music. Socializing with family and friends. And cocktails.
McCombs School of Business, The University of Texas at Austin
Professional Interests: Most of my work is focused on designing, testing, and (over the long term) scaling behavioral interventions to address pressing social and organizational problems with an emphasis on problems related to inequality and social mobility.
Professional Interests: My main hobbies are woodworking—I'm currently building a bookcase for the daughter of some friends, music—I play bass in a casual dad metal band, and kickboxing—been training at a gym for a few years.
Elizabeth Haines
(she/her)
William Patterson University
Professional Interests: Social perception, stereotyping, sexism, implicit measurement
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Professional Interests: Gardening, killing/neglecting plants, yoga, complaining that I am sore from yoga, cooking, overeating, NYT puzzles, my children (other children, okay, too), skiing, heated clothing, clever people.
Gerald Higginbotham
(he/him)
Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia
Professional Interests: Racism, sociocultural selves and identity, intersectionality, motivated social cognition, and social policy attitudes relevant to firearms, voting, and history repair
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Professional Interests: Testing new ways to disprove my green thumb, learning how to play bass, spending time with friends and family, being in or near water, hiking/jogging/being active
Kerri Johnson
(she/her)
University of California Los Angeles
Professional Interests: social cognition and social vision, person perception, people perception
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Personal Interests: food, wine, and friends
University of Kentucky
Professional Interests: Inter- and intra-personal factors that influence how people think about, understand, perpetuate, and cope with racism.
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Professional Interests: Watching movies, talking about movies, and playing video games. I'm always down to play flag football (former 2007 Division III preseason All-American...well, second team, but still something, right?)
Emily Balcetis
(she/her)
New York University
Professional Interests: Motivated social cognition and self-regulation, as applied to probing causes of and solutions to disparities in health, decision-making, the law, leadership, and other topics
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Professional Interests: Finding awe, laughing, friendships, creating community, hiking, eating, yoga-ing, making messes, and momming
Jeff Hunger
(he/him)
Miami University
Professional Interests:
Stigma and discrimination; social identity threat; disparities in mental and physical health
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Professional Interests: Travel, cooking/being an insufferable foodie, cycling (at home on the Peloton), any trashy procedural drama, spending time with my husband and out cats.
Kristin Laurin
(she/her)
University of British Columbia
Professional Interests: politics, motivated cognition, social inequality and social class, religion, power and status
Personal Interests: cooking food, eating food, riding bikes, lifting heavy things, complaining about not having time to watch TV, wasting all my limited TV time on love is blind
Kurt Hugenberg
(he/him)
Indiana University
Professional Interests: social cognition; face perception; stereotyping + prejudice; intergroup relations
Personal Interests: biking, books, games, hammock sitting, terrible television
Lora Park
(she/her)
University of Buffalo
Professional Interests: Self/identity, motivation, well-being, interpersonal processes, STEM, social cognition
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Personal Interests: Travel, nature/outdoors, power yoga, snowboarding, hiking, running, listening to music, singing, reading, time with family and friends
Kyle Ratner
(he/him)
University of California Santa Barbara
Professional Interests: social identity, face processing, stigma and discrimination, incentive processing
Personal Interests:
Liz Dunn
(she/her)
University of British Columbia
Professional Interests: Happiness! And also time, money, techology, and climate change.
Personal Interests: Surfing! And also skiing, mountain biking, and delicious food.
Michael Bernstein
(he/him)
Penn State University Abington College
Professional Interests: Face memory and face processing; social ostracism, inclusion, and exclusion; group categorization
Personal Interests: Being a dad; good and bad movies; good TV; reading; cooking; spending time with my kiddo; video games; board games
Rachel Smallman
(she/her)
Texas A&M University
Professional Interests: Counterfactual thinking (and related processes) and their influence on motivation, goal pursuit, intention formation, and behavior change in both basic and applied settings
Personal Interests: Spending time with my kiddos; cooking; squeezing in time for good books, good wine, and bad TV
Shira Gabriel
(she/her)
University of Buffalo
Professional Interests: Belonging; Social Surrogates (i.e. nontraditional ways to fill the need to belong); Collective Effervescence
Personal Interests: Time with family, Time with friends, watching TV, reading about TV, Talking to people about TV, doing research on TV, Euchre, the Personal Preference board game
Spike W. S. Lee
(he/him)
University of Toronto
Professional Interests: These days, I'm most passionate about identifying the most basic moral and other psychological ingredients of political ideology, extremity, polarization, and intellectual arrogance. I'm designing and testing ways to fix these problems.
Personal Interests: Writing original song lyrics and rewriting existing song lyrics, all in Cantonese, a language with 9 tones that create endless linguistic opportunities for puns, innuendos, and other awesome quirks.
Steven (Steve) Stroessner
(he/him)
University of California Los Angeles
Professional Interests: Shared reality in intergroup interaction; social cognitive factors in processing non-social stimuli; linguistic biases in intergroup communication; Social cognition factors in human-robotic interaction
Personal Interests: Cooking; Reading, thinking, and talking politics; New music