Lusine Grigoryan
Lecturer (Assistant Professor)

Profile

Biography

• Lecturer/Assistant Professor in Psychology, University of York (2023 - )
• Visiting Scholar, University of Massachusetts Amherst (2022)
• Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Ruhr University Bochum (2019-2022)
• Visiting PhD student, University of Sussex (2017)
• PhD Social Psychology, Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences (2015-2019)
• Lecturer in Psychology, Higher School of Economics (2012-2015)
• Research fellow, Centre for Sociocultural Research, Higher School of Economics (2010-2016)
• MSc Psychology, Higher School of Economics (2010-2012)
• BSc Psychology, Higher School of Economics (2006-2010)

Research

Overview

• Intergroup relations, prejudice and discrimination
• Impression formation, social categorization, and stereotyping
• Social identity complexity and identity integration
• Values and morality
• Cross-cultural research and open science collaborations

Projects

Identity and prejudice in everyday interactions

How do multiple social groups we belong to impact our everyday interactions? In this project, funded by the German Science Foundation (DFG), we look into the quantity and quality of intergroup contact in people’s daily interactions with others, as well as identity salience and perceived discrimination along multiple dimensions of social categorization (e.g., gender, ethnicity, religion). We are interested in the consequences of these interactions for intergroup attitudes and mental health. 

Impression formation and stereotyping

I am interested in what information people infer from different group memberships when forming impressions of others. We recently proposed a distinction between belief-indicative groups that are particularly informative of group members’ values and beliefs and status-indicative groups that are informative of members’ status and competence and showed that different mechanisms of impression formation are at play depending on group type (Grigoryan et al., 2022). I am currently working on various applications of this typology and looking forward to expanding this line of research.

Social identity integration / intersectionality

With a large team of collaborators, we are taking stock of research on social identity integration across disciplines. We aim to bring together and integrate disparate lines of research that are concerned with the coexistence of multiple social identities within the self, potentially proposing a unified model of identity integration. To advance this goal, we are reviewing research on bicultural identity integration, intersectionality, identity styles, identity compatibility, social identity complexity, and more. Get in touch if you would like to get involved in this project. 

Social identity and mental health

I am interested in the role of social identity in mental health and have several ongoing projects that look into this relationship from different angles. Is belonging to many social groups beneficial for mental health (the “social cure” hypothesis) and if so, does this positive effect generalise across cultures? Can social identity buffer the negative impact of perceived discrimination on mental health or does its protective function depend on how well that particular identity is integrated with other identities? These are some of the questions I am currently working on.

Political action in authoritarian regimes

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 highlighted the degree of political alienation and passivity in Russian society, which is typical of many authoritarian regimes. To understand what motivates people in such contexts to take political action, we recently conducted a large online survey in Russia, focusing on predictors and correlates of anti-war action. The dataset includes measures of behaviours in support or in opposition to the war in Ukraine, and potential correlates of anti-war action, such as media consumption, political alienation, group-based guilt and shame, and others. Get in touch if you would like to explore this dataset or expand this line of work to other contexts.  

Radicalization and extremism

In collaboration with colleagues from Uppsala University and the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, we are applying the recently developed Personal Values Dictionary (PVD; Ponizovskiy, Ardag, Grigoryan et al., 2020) to extremist online content. By analysing thousands of online forums, blogs, and boards, we aim to identify the value profiles of different extremist ideologies. 

Grants

• 2021 – 2024: Identity and prejudice in everyday interactions. German Science Foundation (DFG, £215,000)
• 2021: The role of shared morality in intergroup behaviour. EASP Seedcorn Research Grant (£2,400)
• 2020 – 2021: Replication study award for “Systematizing Confidence in Open Research and Evidence” (SCORE) project. Center for Open Science (≈ £9,000)
• 2014 – 2015: Evaluation of the country’s past as a predictor of attitudes towards outgroups. Russian Foundation for Humanities (≈ £15,000).

Collaborators

• Wilhelm Hofmann, Ruhr University Bochum
• Matthew Easterbrook and Peter Smith, University of Sussex
• Shalom Schwartz, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
• Susan Fiske and Xuechunzi Bai, Princeton University
• Linda Tropp and Brian Lickel, University of Massachusetts Amherst
• Angela Dorrough, University of Cologne
• Yasin Koc, University of Groningen 
• Klaus Boehnke and Dora Simunovic, Jacobs University Bremen
• Christopher Cohrs, Philipps University Marburg

Available PhD research projects

I would be happy to hear from potential PhD students interested in prejudice and discrimination, social identity, values and morality, or cross-cultural research. Please get in touch if this is you.

Teaching

Publications

Selected publications

• Grigoryan L., Seo S., Simunovic D., Hofmann W. (2023). Helping the ingroup versus harming the outgroup: Evidence from morality-based groups. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 105. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2022.104436
• Grigoryan L., Jones H.B., Cohrs J.C., Boehnke K., Easterbrook M. (2022). Differentiating between belief-indicative and status-indicative groups improves predictions of intergroup attitudes. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672221092852
• Grigoryan L., Cohrs J.C., Boehnke K., van de Vijver A.J.R., Easterbrook M. (2022). Multiple categorization and intergroup bias: Examining the generalizability of three theories of intergroup relations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 122(1), 34-52.
• Grigoryan L., Bai X., Durante F., Fiske S.T. [et al.] (2020). Stereotypes as historical accidents: Images of social class in post-communist versus capitalist societies. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 46(6), 927-943. [SPSP Student Publication Prize 2021]
• Ponizovskiy V., Ardag M., Grigoryan L., Boyd R., Dobewall H., Holtz P. (2020). Development and validation of the Personal Values Dictionary: A theory-driven tool for investigating references to basic human values in text. European Journal of Personality, 34(5), 885-902. [BIGSSS Best Paper Award 2021]
• Grigoryan L. (2020). Perceived similarity in multiple categorization. Applied Psychology, 69(4), 1122-1144. [BIGSSS Best Paper Award 2020]

Full publications list

See Google Scholar or ResearchGate page for the full list of publications.

External activities