My research asks two distinct but interrelated questions: (1) How do social category defaults take root in the mind? and (2) How do social category defaults operate in the world? More information on each is below.

1. Who do we perceive as defaults for everyday social categories, and how do such defaults take root? 

Imagine, for a moment, the most typical person you can think of. Who comes to mind? Past work suggests that, when asked this question, adults tend to call to mind certain categories of people (e.g., White people, men) more readily than others. My research seeks to build upon these discoveries by examining the development of such defaults. I do so by investigating the category defaults that children themselves possess, as well as by examining both adults' and children's perceptions of social categories that describe children (e.g., boy, girl, kid). In this line of research, I use tightly controlled experimental methods to illuminate the defaults that children and adults possess, as well as to explore which sociocultural forces (e.g., linguistic cues) may give rise to them. 

2. What are the experiences of youth who possess non-default (vs. default) identities? 

How we construct categories in our minds--including the psychological defaults we form--seeps into the world outside of us. Specifically, our tendency to perceive certain category members as further from (or closer to) the default can have profound implications for how we engage with others and even how we view ourselves. My research examines the experiences of a cohort of youth who are frequently viewed as "non-default" members of the gender category they belong to: transgender youth. As part of a large-scale longitudinal study of gender-diverse youth, I explore the self-perceptions, beliefs, and wellbeing of transgender youth (and their families) relative to a comparison sample of cisgender youth (and their families). 

In other research, I investigate children's social cognition in other category domains, such those based on social status (e.g., high- vs. low-status groups), race (e.g., White vs. Black vs. Asian people), and entirely made-up dimensions that allow us to probe more basic questions about conceptual development.