Professor Susan Fiske
Curriculum Vitae

Susan T. Fiske is Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology and Professor of Pubic Affairs, Princeton University (Ph.D., Harvard University; honorary doctorates: Université catholique de Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium; Universiteit Leiden, Netherlands).

Fiske publishes widely in social cognition. She has just finished a fourth edition of Social Cognition (1984, 1991, 2008, 2013, each with Taylor) on how people make sense of each other, along with the Sage Handbook of Social Cognition (2012, with Macrae) and the Sage Major Works in Social Cognition (2013).

In the academic trade market, her book, Envy Up, Scorn Down: How Status Divides Us (2011, paperback 2012), sponsored by the Guggenheim and Russell Sage Foundations, is about how we compare ourselves all the time, and the problems this makes for us as individuals, partners, students, employees, and citizens.

With marketing consultant Chris Malone, she has just finished The Human Brand: How We Relate to People, Products, and Companies (2014), which shows that our over-active intent-detectors make us assess corporations as if they are indeed people.

Currently, as a social psychologist, she investigates emotional prejudices (pity, contempt, envy, and pride) at cultural, interpersonal, and neural levels, research previously funded by the Russell Sage Foundation (2008-2010), the National Science Foundation (1984-1986, 1995-1997) and the National Institutes of Health (1986-1995).

She has written more than 300 articles and chapters, as well as editing many books and journal special issues. Notably, she edits the Annual Review of Psychology (with Schacter and Taylor) and the Handbook of Social Psychology (with Gilbert and Lindzey, 5e, 2010). She also wrote an upper-level integrative text, Social Beings: A Core Motives Approach to Social Psychology (2004, 2010, 2014) and edited Beyond Common Sense: Psychological Science in the Courtroom (2008, with Borgida).

Fiske’s work has had real-world impact. The U.S. Supreme Court in a 1989 landmark decision on gender bias cited her expert testimony in discrimination cases. In 1998, she also testified before President Clinton’s Race Initiative Advisory Board, and in 2001-03, she co-authored a National Academy of Science, National Research Council report on Methods for Measuring Discrimination. She is currently chairing an NAS NRC report on IRBs in the social and behavioral sciences. In 2004, she published a Science article explaining how ordinary people can torture enemy prisoners, through processes of prejudice and social influence.

In 2013, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Recently, she  has also won several scientific honors: the Guggenheim Fellowship, the  APA Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award, the APS William James Fellow Award, and the Society for Personality and Social Psychology Donald T. Campbell Award. Previously, she won the American Psychological Association’s Early Career Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest for anti-discrimination testimony and the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues’ Allport Intergroup Relations Award for ambivalent sexism theory (with Glick), as well as Harvard’s Graduate Centennial Medal. She has been elected to several Presidencies: Association for Psychological Science, Federation of Associations in Brain and Behavioral Sciences, Foundation for the Advancement of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, and Society for Personality and Social Psychology, as well as Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, and Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  Her graduate students conspired for her to win Princeton’s graduate mentoring award in 2009. She is grateful to them and to all her generous colleagues for these recognitions that each in fact reflect collaborative work. 

Her expert witness work has familiarized her with workplace discrimination in settings from shipyards and assembly lines to international investment firms, and she has served on diversity committees in several nonprofit settings, including Princeton’s Carl A. Fields Center. She grew up in Chicago’s Hyde Park (Obama’s neighborhood!), a stable, racially integrated community, and she still wonders why the rest of the world does not work that way. She now lives in Princeton and Vermont with her sociologist husband Doug Massey, with treasured visits by daughter, stepdaughter, stepson, and his family.  

Click to view Professor Fiske's Psychology Department page, Woodrow Wilson School page, and Amazon author page.

Dan Ames
Curriculum Vitae

Dan received his B.A. in psychology from Dartmouth College. There, in the wilderness of New Hampshire, he studied the science of human understanding without the distractions of civilization or electricity. During his senior year, he presumably said something sufficiently confusing to be misconstrued as insightful by a visiting professor and, as a result, spent the next two years at Harvard University working as a research assistant and lab (mis)manager. His research in social-cognitive neuroscience during that period focused on perspective-taking, stereotyping and mental state inference. Dan is currently a fifth-year graduate student studying the effects of social power on our perceptions of others' thoughts, feelings and perspectives. He hopes to one day own a Ph.D. and/or a tweed jacket (with elbow patches).

Dan's recent research projects include investigations of perspective-taking, the neural correlates and cognitive malleability of stereotyping, and the processes by which we infer others' mental states. He is currently employing both behavioral and neuroscientific methods to study the ways in which social power affects our perceptions of others' thoughts, feelings and perspectives. 

Mike North
Website

Mike is a fifth-year student in the lab. A New York City native, he received his bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of Michigan in 2006, after which he worked for 2 years as a research assistant and research coordinator at Columbia University's Department of Child Psychiatry. Mike enjoys virtually anything sports-related, virtually all forms of music, "Virtual Insanity" by Jamiroquai, and used to be a big fan of Virtua Fighter II. He can often be seen riding the New Jersey Transit train and making friends with the Newark Penn Station coffee shop employees.

Mike's research interests primarily concern the nature of age-based prejudice (ageism). His work has centered on intergenerational tensions over practical and symbolic resources, and how they motivate younger people to harbor prescriptive, "should"-based stereotypes targeting older people. His dissertation investigates novel strategies to reduce such bias among the young.

Courtney Bearns

A native of Southern California, Courtney earned her undergraduate degree from Williams College in 2007, under the direction of Dr. Steven Fein. She most recently worked with Drs. Geoff Cohen, Julio Garcia, and Valerie Purdie-Vaughns at Columbia University on "Project Achieve," a longitudinal stereotype threat intervention project. Courtney is currently a third year student in the lab. Her research looks broadly at the effects of social class on success in a variety of domains, ultimately with an emphasis on potential interventions to help ameliorate the negative effects of status anxiety. 

Courtney's research looks broadly at the effects of social class on success in a variety of domains, ultimately with an emphasis on potential interventions to help ameliorate the negative effects of status anxiety. 

Pam Mueller

Pam is a third-year student from Chicago. She has a bachelor's degree in psychology from Loyola University Chicago and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. Her work is broadly aimed at the intersection of law and psychology, particularly issues related to intentionality, morality, and legal consequences. Before joining the Fiske Lab, she worked with John Darley on research regarding the effect of different types and amounts of knowledge on perceptions of intentionality. Her current work addresses differences in perceived justice and perceived intentionality when a harm-doer faces criminal and/or civil consequences. Pam occasionally gets distracted from research by shiny things like gymnastics apparatuses, trivia contests, and roles in community theatre productions. 

Pam's work is broadly aimed at the intersection of law and psychology, particularly issues related to intentionality, morality, and legal consequences. Her current work addresses differences in perceived justice and perceived intentionality when a harm-doer faces criminal and/or civil consequences. 

Jillian Swencionis

Jillian is a second-year student in the lab studying how we get to know others beyond categories. In her undergraduate thesis at Harvard, she investigated how we misperceive others' memory, expecting others to recall events that only later became important. After a brief stint working as a management consultant in New York City, Jillian returned to the research world, studying intergroup behavior and social neuroscience at New York University for two years before starting graduate school. A proud native New Jerseyan, Jillian will defend her home state to the finish (while embodying some NJ stereotypes but not others). 

Jillian is studying the motivations and processes involved in how we individuate others: in other words, how we get to know others in terms of individual qualities that explain their traits and behaviors, as opposed to forming category-based expectancies.

Cydney Dupree

Cydney is a first year graduate student from Maryland. She received her B.A. in psychology from Brown University, where she wrote her honors thesis under the direction of Dr. Bertram Malle examining visual perspective taking-- the difficult task of seeing things from another’s point of view. Before joining the Fiske lab, she worked for a year at Brown University as research assistant at Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies (CAAS) and as lab manager of the Social Cognitive Science Research Center (SCSRC). Cydney enjoys reading, gymming, Netflix-ing, and devising excuses to visit the local Trader Joes.

Cydney is broadly interested in the impact of social exclusion on identity development, social perception, and group processes. As part of the Fiske Lab, she will likely explore causes and implications of failed perspective-taking.

Deborah Holoien
Website

Deborah was born in Chicago but spent her early childhood in Seoul, South Korea. As an undergraduate at Northwestern University, she worked in various psychology labs and fell in love with intergroup and close relationships research. She completed her B.A. in psychology and Japanese language in 2008. She is currently a fifth-year student and continues to research intergroup relations with Nicole Shelton and Susan Fiske. When not pondering her own and her participants' intergroup relationships, she loves watching TV, trying out new recipes, traveling, playing games of all sorts (video, word, board), and reading trashy novels. Deborah's research includes examination of colorblind and multicultural ideologies, intergroup social support, and self-presentation. Her research with Susan Fiske investigates the compensatory relationship between the domains of warmth and competence in self-presentation.  

Deborah's research includes examination of colorblind and multicultural ideologies, intergroup social support, and self-presentation. Her research with Susan Fiske investigates the compensatory relationship between the domains of warmth and competence in self-presentation.

Peter Mende-Siedlecki

Peter is a fourth-year student in the lab. Born in Buffalo, he received his B.A. in Neuroscience and Behavior from Columbia University in 2007. During his time at Columbia, he worked as an undergrad research assistant in the Social Relations Lab, and later the SCAN Lab, where he worked as a full-time research assistant following graduation. Peter's research at Princeton primarily focuses on how people update their impressions of others, as well as how we manage others' impressions of ourselves. Peter misses New York like crazy and visits as often as he can, though he is glad to no longer be living in a basement room with no doors. He enjoys writing plays, pulling for Minnesota sports teams, drinking whisky and/or coffee, feeling nostalgic, and playing catch. Peter's current research focuses on impression management, specifically the interaction between specific impression management strategies and status. He hopes to address his research interests with social neuroscientific techniques in the future. 

Peter's current research focuses on impression management, specifically the interaction between specific impression management strategies and status. He hopes to address his research interests with social neuroscientific techniques in the future.

Pan (Rachel) Hu

Rachel is a second-year graduate student who comes from Singapore, the country where people speak English at work, order their food in Mandarin, and sing their national anthem in Malay. Rachel received her B.A. in psychology from UCLA, where she explored how culture affects the way we perceive and seek help under the direction of Dr. Shelley Taylor. After graduation, she worked for a year in a neuroimaging lab at Stanford, learning about emotions and decision-making. Rachel is broadly interested in the relationship between intergroup perceptions and affect, as well as how they affect decision making and judgment.

Rachel is broadly interested in the relationship between intergroup perceptions and affect, as well as how they affect decision making and judgment.

Yarrow Dunham

Yarrow is a social and developmental psychologist interested in the origins of intergroup social cognition. How do basic processes supporting categorization in general play out when the categories in question are kinds of people? Yarrow's research suggests that dividing the world into "us" and "them" happens early and automatically, and that once it happens, it pervasively affects how children construct richer understandings about their social world.