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Current Students

Trisha Dehrone

Trisha Dehrone received her B.A. in Psychology at Rutgers University – Newark in 2015. Prior to joining the lab, she was a project manager for two large-scale social psychological interventions with Dr. Mary Murphy at Indiana University. She became interested in conflict resolution during her experiences as a military wife and while interning in the White House Office of Presidential Correspondence. During this internship she managed casework for constituents interfacing with Department of Justice (DOJ) on a range of discrimination and justice cases and with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) fleeing violence and seeking asylum and refugee status.

Broadly, Trisha’s research interests center around intergroup relations, prejudice reduction, and conflict associated with social justice efforts. She is specifically interested in understanding how positive contact can enhance white’s psychological investment in racial equality (empathy, humanizing outgroups, etc.) and testing strategies to eliminate the barriers to this investment (dehumanization, negative contact). She is also interested in understanding the factors that make bystanders more likely to intervene against discrimination and violence (i.e., hate crimes, genocide). She is invested in conducting research and evaluating programs designed to improve interracial relations and reduce racial and ethnic conflict.

Heather Kumove

Heather A. Kumove graduated summa cum laude with a BA honors in Psychology with a minor in Government in 2017 from the Interdisciplinary Center Herzilya, Israel. Additionally, she was admitted to the Brain and Mind research internship, a program for exceptional students interested in brain research. She has worked closely with Professor Gilad Hirschberger on various projects using psychophysiological tools to examine how collective existential threats influence the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She also collaborated with Professor Boaz Ben-David and Professor Hirschberger on a series of studies which examined how political metaphors bias spatial processing. Their work has highlighted an aversion to the word left within the predominantly rightwing Israeli society.

Heather is fascinated with understanding the antecedents which lead to intergroup strife and hopes to identify factors which can mitigate the harmful consequences of violent conflicts. Within social psychology, Heather is broadly interested in studying social emotion, intergroup conflict, moral judgement, and political attitudes. She utilizes psychophysiological and neuroscientific tools to explore questions within these disciplines. Her research focuses on intergroup emotions and their contribution to intergroup conflict. More specifically, she examines factors which moderate the expression and failure of prosocial emotions towards outgroup members. Heather also investigates intergroup emotion and group attachment within polarized political climates, exploring their impact on political decision making. Finally, her work aims to delineate factors which are effective at restoring justice between groups and ultimately contribute to conflict resolution.

Liora Morhayim

Liora Morhayim received her B.A. as a double major in Psychology (with honors) and International Relations at Brown University in 2019. As an undergraduate student, she worked at Dr.Bertram Malle's Social Cognitive Science lab and pursued an independent project on microaggressions. Then she earned a  Master's degree in conflict mediation from the University of Barcelona in 2020.  During her studies, she volunteered in organizations that bring together members of groups in conflict for educational workshops and community mediation sessions, in Israel and Catalonia.
 
Liora is broadly interested in investigating psychological reasons of social-political conflicts and finding interventions informed by social psychology to improve group relations. She is specifically interested in intergroup contact, how it can be applied in the field and how potential negative effects can be prevented. She is also interested in exploring complex social identities. Currently, she is working with the International Organization for Migration to develop a toolkit for practitioners to help them implement social cohesion activities informed by contact research and scientifically evaluate these programs.