Colloquium

Yarrow Dunham, Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, Yale University

Dr. Dunham is a social psychologist and developmental psychologist who conducts research on a variety of topics related to social cognition, social perception, and intergroup relations.

Title: On the origins and consequences of group identity

Abstract: Social groups constrain and define us in complex ways. But before they acquire that richness they are something more basic, a simple division of social space demarcating ingroup and outgroup, us and them. In the first part of my talk I outline the psychological consequences of that initial division, asking how merely belonging to a group impacts social evaluation and learning in childhood. I then consider what happens when those groups come to be arrayed into a vertical status hierarchy. Finally, I shift gears a bit to present some newer work exploring social collectives as creative sites of meaning making. In so doing I begin to characterize the domain of “institutional kinds,” _a set of causally distinct entities that emerge from the coordinated beliefs and behavior of the group.

Join us the before the presentation at 3:15 pm for cookies, coffee, and conversation in the Psychology Lounge!