(CANCELLED) November 15, 2018: Elizabeth Page-Gould

(University of Toronto)

http://www.page-gould.com/

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The Nature of Diversity in Our Social World

Humanity has always been diverse, but the degree to which people from different groups actually interact and communicate has rapidly increased over the last century. How does this diversity play into our close- and collaborative relationships? The talk will begin with a theoretical model of the relation between diverse interactions and intergroup attitudes. I will then discuss a set of studies from both the lab and the field that explore the nature of our social interactions with strangers, friends, project groups, and teammates. The first study will be a deep dive into the nature of our activities and conversations with same- and cross-ethnic friends. The second study will describe an experimental manipulation of cross-ethnic friendship paired with an experimental manipulation of whether the “new friend” is introduced to an existing friend in order to understand the role of physiological stress in why cross-ethnic friendships tend to be isolates in social networks. The talk will jump off from here to consider the individual and group at the same time, specifically investigating the role of individual and regional intergroup contact in anti-gay bias. The latter two studies will explore the performance of project-group and sports teams as a function of their diversity, broadly defined, in addition to deconstructing interpersonal dynamics in the sport context. Altogether, this work helps to paint a rich picture of the way diversity intersects with our everyday lives, from the individual to the group.