My name is Pete and I hold a PhD in social psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles. At UCLA, I worked with Dr. Tiffany Brannon in the Culture and Contact Lab in the Department of Psychology and Dr. Efrén Pérez in the Race, Ethnicity, and Politics Lab in the Department of Political Science. I studied privileged social identities and interventions to change attitudes towards social equity from within privileged social groups.
I am from Mercer Island, Washington in the greater Seattle area. I completed my undergraduate studies at Lewis & Clark College where I double majored in psychology and Hispanic studies. At Lewis & Clark, I ran varsity track and cross country, studied abroad in Valparaíso, Chile, and worked with Drs. Jerusha and Brian Detweiler-Bedell in the Behavioral Health and Social Psychology Lab.
After graduating from Lewis & Clark in 2013, I worked at the Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative and helped public health researchers access and use huge datasets to improve the wellbeing of kids. My brief foray into the world of public health was enlightening and impactful, but I decided to follow my calling back into social psychology. I worked as lab manager for Dr. Christopher Bryan at UC San Diego and then later with the amazing folks at the College Transition Collaborative at Stanford University. These experiences were formative for me, both in terms of personal growth and in developing my research interests from faint ideas into empirical questions. You can read more about my research interests here.
Outside of my interests in social psychology and behavioral science, I enjoy basketball, weird electronic music, detective novels, video games, getting outdoors, and looking at the big picture.
