Bailey Immel

Graduate Student

Advisor

Research Area

Social Psychology

Biography

Bailey Immel received her BS in Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2018. After earning her BS, she remained in Madison, WI to work as a lab manager working on projects related to children's social cognition and how parent's communicate with their children about race. Bailey joined the UCSB Psychological and Brain Sciences department in 2020 under the guidance of Dr. Zoe Liberman where she studies children's understanding of social category membership.

Research

My research focuses broadly on children's understanding of social categories and what types of behaviors make these social categories more salient to others. More specifically, I am interested in how food serves as a significant social and cultural signal of group memberships and how children use that information when deciding who to interact with. Some current projects I am working on involve how rituals are used to differentially determine affiliation in the food and object domains as well as how food may impact children's categorization of others based on nationality. Beyond food, I am interested in exploring the role of exposure to various types of diversity (e.g., racial, linguistic, ethnic, etc.) in shaping children's stereotypes, biases, and executive functioning. 

[Child Development, Social Cognition, Group Membership ]