Our Team

Graduate Students

Natalie Strand (she/they)

Natalie is a second year graduate student in the social psychology area working primarily with Dr. Reg Adams. She is broadly interested in emotion and social perception/cognition, and uses neuroimaging methods (e.g., fMRI, EEG) to explore these topics. Natalie is currently investigating how engaging with and enjoying sources of threat can lead to greater resilience. This project aims to elucidate the neural mechanisms involved in threat perception, particularly when people attend to and engage with threat. In addition, her work often explores gender/sex differences and similarities, and employs a feminist approach.

Ronnie Riley (she/they)

Ronnie Riley is a first-year graduate student in the SVIP lab. She received her undergraduate degree in biology at the University of Puget Sound, where she researched the processing of natural and unnatural social cues in the mirror neuron system. After graduating, Ronnie spent several years working a diverse array of jobs from wolf ecology research technician to middle school science teacher. During this time, she tangentially worked with Dr. Paige Lloyd at the Social Detection Lab at University of Denver, studying perceptions of pain expressions across target races. She is currently interested in studying the mechanisms and contexts for evaluating authenticity in social situations.

Brian Xu

Brian Xu is a first-year graduate student in Penn State’s Social Psychology program primarily working with Dr. Reg Adams. He received his Bachelor of Science in Psychology and Health Science at Gettysburg College with departmental honors. Brian’s research focuses on how humans perceive and interpret facial expressions and body postures of others in social context, as well as how different expressions and postures might affect our own cognitive or behavioral outcome. His current research topics include how defensive postures might affect subjective perception of physical stimuli (amplitude of sound, magnitude of size); how people would differ in interpretation on expression of smile following mood inductions. Undefeated on poker tables.

Nikki Hedgecoth (she/they)

Nikki Hedgecoth (M.S.) is a 3rd-year graduate student in Penn State’s psychology program (social area) and is works with both Drs. Reg Adams and Jes Matsick. Their broad research focus is at the intersection of race, gender/sex, and nonverbal behavior. They’re particularly interested in using feminist theory and approaches to bridging perceptual research and action research. Nikki received their Bachelor’s in Psychology and first Master’s degree in Negotiation and Conflict Management from the University of Baltimore.

They were fully funded for their Master’s at the University of Baltimore, working as a research assistant to numerous faculty members from the Negotiation & Conflict Management and Global Affairs & Human Security programs. Nikki also maintains an ongoing collaboration with Dr. Sally Farley that focuses on the “heartfelt” gesture. In their free time, Nikki drinks too much coffee, plays D&D, and likes to learn new art skills.

Research Assistants

Jennifer Miller (she/her)

Jennifer is a double major studying Psychology and Statistics in the Schreyer Honors College at Penn State as a third-year undergraduate student. She hopes to go to graduate school in a few years and study within the realm of social psychology. Over the past year, Jennifer has presented on the perception of sexual orientation based on gender and walk style at SPSP and has also presented the body inversion effect at Penn State's Psi Chi, and she hopes to continue exploring these topics in the future. Jennifer is currently starting her honors thesis with the hope of writing within the realm of humor.

Esme Predko (they/she/he)

Esme is an undergraduate student in the class of 2025 who is pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Psychology with minors in Sociology and English. They are interested in prejudice, social perception and the intersection between social psychology and neuroscience. Esme plans to attend graduate school and become a researcher in the field of psychology. In their free time, Esme likes to draw, knit, and play Stardew Valley.

Faye Schlake (she/they)

Faye is an undergraduate student in the class of 2024 who is pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Psychology with an emphasis in I/O Psychology.

Current Collaborators

Ursula Hess, Ph.D.

Kestas Kveraga, Ph.D.

Jose Soto, Ph.D.

Director Health, Emotion, and Culture Lab

I have been at Penn State since 2005, when I joined the clinical area faculty as an assistant professor. I obtained my Bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and received my Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. After graduating from Berkeley, I completed an internship and postdoctoral appointment at the University of California, San Francisco/San Francisco General Hospital. I am currently licensed as a psychologist in the state of Pennsylvania. Although I am not presently seeing clients of my own, I supervise graduate student therapists who are in training at our clinic. In addition to supervision, I also teach an undergraduate and graduate course focused on diversity. In fact, many of my professional activities can readily be linked to diversity—something I advocate for consistently in my role within the department. I have been a faculty advisor of the Diversity Action Workshop since its inception and plan on continuing my involvement throughout my tenure. Finally, my research is dedicated to understanding the interrelationships between culture, health and emotion.

James Wang, Ph.D.

Graduate Alumni

Daniel Albohn, Ph.D.

My professional expertise and passion is social psychology, with an emphasis on person perception. I hold a master’s degree in clinical psychology, and have over five years of academic research experience that spans fields as diverse as

health psychology, clinical psychology, behavioral interventions, human-animal bond, and person and emotion perception.

My research interests broadly include emotion perception and emotion theory, person perception, and social vision. Specifically, I am interested in understanding what an emotion is, how we measure them, and how emotion perception changes. One of my personal interests is understanding the neutral face and how the perception of a neutral face can change impression formation. A recent interest of mine is examining how socio-visual mechanisms of person perception interact with psychophysiology (e.g., heart rate variability, respiratory sinus arrhythmia) to change perception.

In my free time, I enjoy being outside, taking care of my newly adopted dog, and pretending to be a movie connoisseur. For more information, feel free to visit my personal website.

Joe Brandenburg

King of the pirates. Joe Brandenburg is a 2nd year graduate student in the school psychology program at The Pennsylvania State University. He has been working in and collaborating with the members of the Social Vision and Interpersonal Perception lab for 7+ years throughout his undergraduate and post-graduate career. Joe has his Masters of Science in clinical psychology from Millersville University. Joe's research interests include emotion, emotion regulation, stress, and psychophysiology. He has worked on myriad projects including these topics with an emerging interest in how wearable technologies can help within these already existing arenas of interest. Joe's career goals are to be a faculty at an R01 institution publishing, teaching, and seeing kiddo clients in the realm of private practice for therapy and clinical assessments.

Flora Oswald

Flora Oswald (M.S) is a 3rd year Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Fellow in the dual-title PhD program in Psychology (social area) and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (primary advisor: Dr. Jes Matsick). Flora’s research interests lie primarily at the intersection of sexuality, gender, and body size; she is interested in stigma and prejudice as they relate to these identities, and in body perception generally. In the SVIP lab, Flora’s work bridges feminist social psychological approaches with visual perception research to elucidate the basic mechanisms underlying prejudice and stigmatization of marginalized sexuality, gender, and bodily identities.

Flora has been honored with the Dr. Susan Rankin Award for her LGBTQ+ advocacy in 2020 and the LGBTQ+ Academic Achievement Award in 2021. In 2021, she also received the Laura Richardson Whitaker Award for research excellence in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the Edna Bennet Pierce Prevention Research Center Research Award to Reduce Racism and Promote Antiracism, and the Matthew Ryan Serafino Award for research excellence in Psychology. She has also received diversity awards from both SPSP and SPSSI.

Robby Franklin, Ph.D.

SVIP Lab PhDs

Anthony Nelson, Ph.D.

Hi, my name is Anthony Nelson. I was a graduate student in the SVIP Lab from 2008-2015. I currently serve as a lecturer for Penn State's World Campus, and will be starting an online-only Social Perception and Attention Laboratory in the Spring 2016 semester. Under the supervision of Dr. Adams, I completed my Master's in August 2011 and Ph.D. in August 2015. My research focuses on how social factors (e.g., gender, age, race) moderate perceptions of and attention to others, with a particular focus on how we process the faces of others, and how these processes unfold within mere milliseconds after exposure to a face.

I currently live in Denver, Colorado with my wife and two fur children. We enjoy making the city and the mountains our personal playground.

Carlos Garrido, Ph.D.

My name is Carlos Garrido and I am a member of the Social Perception and Emotion Laboratory at Penn State. I transferred to Penn State from the University of Florida, where I obtained a Master of Science degree in social psychology. While at Florida, I conducted research associated with biased thought processes (stigma, stereotypes, prejudicial views) mostly from the perspective of minority group members. My research interests expanded into the interpersonal perception realm, leading me to join Dr. Reginald Adams’ SVIP Lab. At the current time, my research focuses on cross-group perceptions of facial cues and on the effects of intersectional statuses (e.g., age, gender) on perceptual accuracy. I also have an interest in expanding my methods for measuring human behavior to include social cognitive affective neuroscience methodology.

When I am not at the laboratory conducting research, I enjoy doing outdoor activities, such as hiking and running. I also enjoy leisurely reading, working out, and traveling internationally. I was born and raised in the fourth largest city of Venezuela. Exposure to various cultures early in life have contributed to my appreciation for diversity and acute interest in studying human behavior. For more information about me or about my research, see my professional website at www.carlosogarrido.com.

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