McLean Morgan

I am a PhD Candidate in the Department of Psychology at the University of Toronto. My research focuses on how people infer others' identity and status from subtle cues in their physcial appearance, and from the things they create, select, and display to others.

My work ultimately aims to understand how people judge each other from cues (both within and outside of their control) and how these judgments shape social and economic outcomes. Primarily, I examine how perceivers use these subtle cues to form impressions across a range of creative contexts, and how targets leverage the same cues to communicate valid information about their gender to others.

Currently, the bulk of my research develops these ideas through my broader theoretical framework, the Theory of Extrapersonal Social Perception, which proposes that people project aspects of their identity into the things they produce, and that perceivers treat these “things” as diagnostic of the person.

I use a combination of experimental methods, secondary dataset analysis, and mixed models. I have published papers in various journals, such as Scientific Reports, The European Journal of Social Psychology, and the Journal of Nonverbal Behavior. 

Outside of work, I run, bike, and create pottery that clutter every flat surface in my house.