Primary Investigator
Lisa Libby
Lisa is a Professor in the Psychology Department at The Ohio State University. She studies the subjective nature of social perception and implications for the self, decision-making, emotional well-being, and interpersonal and intergroup relations.
Department Website | Personal Website
Graduate Students
Phuong Le
Phuong is a sixth-year Ph.D. candidate in social psychology working with Drs. Kentaro Fujita and Lisa Libby. Her research interests encompass topics in motivation, self-regulation, and perspectives. She is investigating how people motivate themselves and others to pursue valued long-term goals.
Seulbee Lee
Seulbee is a sixth-year Ph.D. candidate in social psychology working with Drs. Lisa Libby and Kentaro Fujita. Her research interests broadly include emotion, motivation, self-regulation, and decision-making. She is primarily interested in exploring the role of emotional and motivational factors in the processes of goal pursuit and decision making.
Kenny Slagell
Kenny is a sixth-year Ph.D. candidate in social psychology working with Dr. Lisa Libby. His research looks at the alignment of enjoyability and usefulness in goal pursuit, and the beliefs that can inhibit this alignment.
Jesse Ladanyi
Jesse is a sixth-year Ph.D. candidate in social psychology working with Drs. Russ Fazio and Lisa Libby. His research focuses on the development of the self-concept and in understanding when our self-beliefs are likely to predict our behavior. He’s also quite passionate about teaching and building inclusive spaces in the classroom and beyond.
Vanessa Ivy
Vanessa is a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in social psychology working with Drs. Steven Spencer and Lisa Libby. Her research focuses on interracial social support and when certain types of support might be well received or go awry.
Courtney Moore
Courtney is a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in social psychology working with Drs. Russ Fazio and Lisa Libby. Her research broadly focuses on means of increasing one’s openness to new people, information, and experiences. Across her varied interests, she aims to focus on how social psychological findings can be utilized in interventions to improve interpersonal interactions and goal pursuit.
Stephanie Stewart-Hill
Stephanie is a third-year PhD candidate in social psychology working with Drs. Lisa Libby, Kentaro Fujita, and Steven Spencer. Generally, she is interested in self and identity, interpersonal goals, and social cognition. Specifically, she is focused on how people’s subjective perspectives impact their experiences of social power, and how this extends to interpersonal and intrapersonal processes.
Rani Bawa
Rani is a third-year Ph.D. candidate in social psychology working with Drs. Lisa Libby and Dylan Wagner. She uses a social cognitive approach to study how familiarity affects the way we perceive, think about, and act towards others. Specifically, she is interested in the effects of subjective perspectives on trait and personality characterization of others, trait transference, experiences of discrimination, and tokenism. She uses both behavioral and neural imaging methods to explore these research questions.
Sami Lapka
Sami is a second-year Ph.D. student in social psychology working with Drs. Kentaro Fujita and Lisa Libby. Her research interests broadly include social perception, mindset, motivation, and interpersonal relationships. Currently, she is investigating lay beliefs about self-control, and how differences in these beliefs can impact self-control success and perceptions of others experiencing self-control conflicts.
Karla Caldera
Karla is a second-year PhD student in Social Psychology working with Drs. Steve Spencer and Lisa Libby. Her research interests focus on understanding how cultural contexts influence beliefs about the self and identity, specifically in Hispanic immigrant populations. Her goal is to ultimately contribute to the current literature and promote culturally responsive therapy models.
Lab Alumni
Tina Nguyen, Ph.D.
Zachary A. Niese, Ph.D.
Courtney Hsing, Ph.D.
Micah Goldfarb, Ph.D.
Jessica N. Rea, Ph.D.
Janet J. Rha, Ph.D.
Greta Valenti, Ph.D.
Courtney Hsing, Ph.D.
Micah Goldfarb, Ph.D.
Karen Hines, Ph.D.
Tiffany Hardy, Ph.D.
Geoff Kaufman, Ph.D.
Eric Shaeffer, Ph.D.
Alison Pfent, Ph.D.