Dr. Adi Wiezel

Research/Creative Interests

I am a social (and political) psychologist whose research emphasizes the structure of political attitudes as well as the emotional, motivational, social mechanisms of attitude change and intergroup relations. I also have strong interests in leadership preferences and I have studied the influence of emotion on motivation and engagement in educational settings. Some questions my research has asked in the past include: What is the nature of people’s political attitudes–what do people think governance is for? What are people’s stereotypes of leaders, and are those reflected in what they prefer in leaders, too? What is the nature of people’s political feelings, and how do we reduce political hostilities between groups? If you find these questions intrigue you, please do keep reading! In terms of my training, I earned my PhD in social psychology, as well as a master’s degree in political science, at Arizona State University, and has also organized a number of workshops centered around depolarization.

What types of “data” do you commonly use?

I often use multiple data sources to answer research questions. Typically, I use large secondary or archival data (such as data from the National Election Studies or Pew Research Center) to get a sense of correlations and follow up with a more tightly designed empirical experiments (often online and survey-based) to help make more causal claims. This also helps increase the likelihood of creating works that are publishable in scholarly journals in my fields and subfields, and most of my research projects will also include a pre-registration of the design and analysis plan and an IRB proposal, accordingly, and I mentor students closely during all parts of this process!

What types of collaborations are you open to?

I am open to working with students and potentially other faculty on quantitative research projects that fit under the scope of social and/or political psychology.

What agencies, organizations, or foundations do you have experience with to apply for grants?

Experience applying to internal grants
Previously been part of some larger NSF grants

Student Qualifications

Social science students, with a particular focus on psychology majors, especially those who are political science minors and/or double-majors.
Particularly interested in mentoring students from historically marginalized populations.

In terms of what I am looking for in a research mentee more broadly; I am looking for intellectually curious students who are conscientious and specifically interested in topics related to social psychology and political psychology, including self-presentation, leadership, political feelings, political attitudes, and intergroup relations generally.

You’re welcome to check out my lab website and ResearchGate for some details on what this has looked like in the past.

I am especially interested in students with a close alignment to my own research focus to ensure the best mentor-mentee experience. If this is you, I would love to hear from you! Typically, we would set up a casual chat about your interests and mine, and if there’s a good fit, I would send you a lab application form, which I would review from there.

My Research Mentorship Style

My mentorship style tends to be driven by my student’s goals. Research mentorship with me combines both methodological and content training, as well as milestones that overlap with both mine and my students’ goals. This does mean that I am best suited to mentoring students interested in similar topics. Typically, mentorship in my lab involves some collective projects, some individual projects, some lab meetings, and some 1:1 meetings and goal-tracking and task-tracking exercises that help me gauge your personal goals and your progress towards them. This also means that I take mentorship very seriously (though we absolutely have some fun, too), and I try to only take on as many students as I can support.