Nick Elacqua

Nick is the Lab Manager for the Applied Public Policy and Leadership Experiments (APPLE) Lab and the Social Cognition and Behavior Lab (SCABL) in the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia. He received his B. A. in Psychological Science from Colgate University and is interested in the interaction between public policy and human thought/behavior, especially in the context of social inequality.

I am a social and political psychologist studying race and democracy in the U.S. Currently, I am a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Virginia's Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. Before that, I received my PhD in social psychology at Yale University as part of the Social Perception and Communication Lab. My work asks what kinds of changes Americans interpret as threatening the current racial hierarchy, and how group identities (especially race and partisanship) shape responses to prospective hierarchy shifts. Recently, I am particularly focused on backlash against democratic institutions. I also study how to confront bias effectively in a variety of contexts, including schools and workplaces.

I am a social and political psychologist studying how oppressed and marginalized people around the world understand power, violence, and resistance. I received my Ph.D. in social psychology from Clark University, where I was mentored by Dr. Johanna Ray Vollhardt. I am currently a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia, working with Drs. Gerald Higginbotham, Jazmin Brown-Iannuzzi, Gabe Admas, and Sophie Trawalter.

Kendall Yamamoto is an Organizational Behavior researcher and Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia. Kendall’s research examines how differences in identity, status, and social position shape collaboration and conflict within and between groups. She focuses on how people interpret differences and how those interpretations are understood as challenges or opportunities. Her work investigates the organizational norms and tools that help people experience difference as beneficial, fostering inclusion and creativity rather than avoidance. Her methods span lab experiments, field experiments and interventions, and inductive qualitative research conducted in collaboration with organizations.​​