Rebecca Peretz-Lange
Rebecca Peretz-Lange conducts research at the intersection of cognitive, developmental, and social psychology to investigate the processes driving prejudice development. For example, she is interested in how young children explain social inequalities, carve the world into social categories, and conceive of social identities, as well as the consequences of this reasoning for early attitudes toward gender, race, class, weight, sexual orientation, and more. She hopes to advance basic research while also contributing to empirically-grounded interventions to tackle prejudice at its roots.
Rebecca Peretz-Lange (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Psychological Science at Vassar College. She earned a BA in Psychology and Philosophy from Wesleyan University and a PhD in Psychology from Tufts University. She held postdoctoral positions at Boston University and Harvard University, as well as a faculty position in the SUNY system, prior to joining Vassar.
Professor Peretz-Lange directs the Early Social Concepts Lab, where she and her students examine the early-developing, intuitive processes through which people make sense of the social world. Studies in the lab probe children’s explanations (e.g., for why inequalities exist, for why people hold different identities), judgments (e.g., of inequalities as fair, of identities as favorable), and choices (e.g., whom to befriend, whom to donate to). Understanding the processes driving prejudice development is crucial for effectively disrupting these processes and mitigating prejudice at its roots. With these social impacts in mind, Professor Peretz-Lange has translated basic research out of the lab through partnering with social justice education organizations and leading workshops on raising anti-racist children at Google, teacher training centers, children’s museums, and libraries.
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