Students Katie Agate '21, Mason Drusano '22, Janna Mawuli '22, Sonder Van Wert '23, alumni Ceara Daugherty '20, Anna Moorehead '20, and assistant professors of psychology Gili Freedman and Kristina Howansky presented virtual posters at the 22nd Annual Meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) conference in mid-February 2021.
Mawuli, Moorhead, Howansky and collaborators presented "(Trans)Gender Stereotypes Across Racial Groups: The Relationship between Stereotypes and Deleterious Consequences for Transgender Racial Minorities." This work investigates the generation and endorsement of transgender stereotypes across racial groups. Participants generated trans-specific stereotypes and endorsed these stereotypes to the same extent across racial groups. We examine the relationship among trans-stereotypes, prejudice, dehumanization, and identity denial of transgender people.
Van Wert and Howansky presented "Roleplaying Video Games & the Gender Identity Development of Transgender Individuals." This work explored the connection between role-playing video games (RPG’s) and the gender identity exploration of transgender individuals. Transgender participants reported that RPG’s functioned as a form of self-expression and that playing as a character whose gender did not match their assigned sex felt more authentic, was identity affirming, and impacted their gender identity discovery.
Agate, Drusano, Freedman and their collaborators presented "Ghosting in the Time of COVID." This work examined whether the COVID-19 pandemic has changed attitudes toward ghosting. In an exploratory study (N = 733) examining how attitudes toward ghosting have changed due to the pandemic, over half of participants reported the pandemic has influenced their feelings—with a majority reporting more negative feelings about ghosting. Participants who felt more threatened by COVID-19 also felt more negatively about individuals who ghost.
Daugherty and Freedman presented "I'm Mean to You, but I Like You: Reciprocity of Liking and Disagreeable People" which was based on Daugherty's St. Mary's Project. In a preregistered study (N=118), participants rated their liking of a target person after reading about that person's interests and then after learning of that person's desire for the participant. Results revealed that liking increased significantly over time for the disagreeable target but did not change for the agreeable target.
