In this line of my work, my focus is intergroup threat, essentialist attitudes, and strategies to reduce prejudice and discrimination against refugees and immigrants. Below are some of my key projects I have worked on:

Project 1: Prejudice Against Outgroups and Social Cohesion

I am interested in improving social cohesion in immigrant/refugee-receiving societies. In my current project at Georgetown, I work on the changes in intergroup relations between the Syrian refugees and host society members in Turkey following the devastating February 2023 earthquake. We are now analyzing fieldwork data to assess the evolving attitudes and sentiments of both groups.

In earlier projects, I explored two well-known strategies for reducing prejudice: perspective-taking(PT) and intergroup contact. PT involves actively considering others’ experiences and has shown promise in reducing bias in Western contexts. Studies in psychology have also shown that PT interventions can backfire in environments marked by strong ingroup identification or intense intergroup competition. The fact that PT interventions sometimes produce the desired bias-reducing effects while other times they backfire and increase conflict suggests that the underlying context conditions the effects of these interventions.

With Dr. Sambanis and Dr. Simonson, we take a set of established PT techniques tested in developed countries and use them in the Global South so as to push the literature in the direction of exploring scope conditions for the application of PT interventions. In our first study, we examined whether reminding people of the displacement history of their ancestors (salience prime) can improve their attitudes towards the Syrian refugees. While effective in the U.S., Greece, and Germany, our survey experiments in Turkey and Cyprus (2021–2022) found that the intervention produced no significant changes in attitudes and even backfired among individuals with personal displacement histories. These findings are published in the Journal of Politics. Now, we are exploring the reasons behind the resistance to perspective-taking.

In the area of refugee integration, I examined the effect of group contact on threat perceptions. Most of the contact literature focuses on contact with positive valence and high intensity, such as intimate forms of contact as observed in the case of friendship. However, the most common form of intergroup contact is casual contact, a much less-studied form of intergroup interaction, such as brief encounters in stores or on public transit. Unlike friendships, these involuntary interactions are less intensive and ubiquitous in immigrant-receiving countries. In collaboration with a co-author, I studied the effects of casual contact on attitudes toward Syrian refugees in Turkey. Our findings, published in the Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies, reveal that casual contact is associated with increased threat perceptions. This research challenges assumptions about the negative effects of contextual diversity, showing that such effects may stem from the quality, rather than the mere presence, of intergroup interactions.

Most recently, I am interested in whether generative AI can be used to develop personalized interventions that address the specific concerns underlying anti-immigrant attitudes. Rather than relying on standardized messages, I would like to examine whether interventions tailored to individuals’ economic, cultural, and security concerns can encourage perspective-taking and reduce perceived threats. Using survey experiments, I want to compare the effectiveness of personalized messages, historical narratives of migration and displacement, and approaches that acknowledge and validate people’s concerns.

Project 2: Genetic Ancestry Tests, Ethnic Identification, and Racial Essentialism

This project is on changes in Americans’ racial and ethnic identities after taking genetic ancestry tests (GAT). As a postdoctoral fellow in UBC’s Department of Sociology, I collaborated with Dr. Wendy Roth to produce three articles:

• In Current Psychology, we developed a scale to measure genetic essentialism for race using original survey data (lead author).
• In PLOS One, we identified the causal effects of GATs on essentialist views through a randomized controlled trial (second author).
• In the American Journal of Sociology, we examined the role of aspirations and perceptions of ethnic groups in shaping decisions to adopt new identities after receiving GAT results (equal co-author).

This work highlights how technological advances, as observed in the GATs, influence identity formation and essentialist thinking, contributing to the broader understanding of race and ethnicity in the genomic era.

Project 3: Historical Memory and Contemporary Group Boundaries: Identity and Outgroup Attitudes among Acadians

How do collective memories of historical displacement shape contemporary group identities and attitudes toward outsiders? This project examines how the memory of the Acadian Expulsion (Le Grand Dérangement) continues to influence Acadian identity and understandings of belonging in New Brunswick. Through in-depth interviews and focus groups with Acadian communities, we explore how historical memories are transmitted across generations, how Acadians define the boundaries of their community, and whether their history of forced displacement shapes their attitudes toward contemporary refugees and immigrants. More broadly, the project investigates whether collective memories of historical suffering encourage solidarity with displaced populations or reinforce boundaries between insiders and outsiders.

Project 4: Sense of Belonging and Identity in Immigration: Exploring the Differences between Forced and Voluntary Migrants

How does the experience of migration shape people’s sense of identity, home, and belonging? This project examines how refugees and voluntary migrants negotiate their identities and develop a sense of belonging in their new societies. Focusing on Syrian, Afghan, and Venezuelan migrants in Canada and the United States, I explore how migration experiences, legal status, reception by host communities, and continuing ties to countries of origin shape their experiences of integration and belonging. Through qualitative interviews, the project also questions the conventional distinction between forced and voluntary migration, examining how these categories overlap and how they shape migrants’ opportunities, experiences, and relationships with their new societies.