Neil Lewis, Jr. - "Stratified cognition: How social stratification shapes meaning making, motivation, and behavior"

Abstract:
When societies separate people into different groups and provide those groups with differential access to resources, members those groups inevitably have different experiences in life. Due to situated cognition processes, differences in contexts that arise from such social stratification influence how people make meaning of the world. Moreover, those differences in meaning-making have cascading effects on the decisions people make. In this talk, I will share recent findings on these processes in the context of the United States. We have been examining how segregation (i.e., by race and socioeconomic status) influences how Americans make meaning of their experiences, and the implications of that meaning for their motivation to pursue different goals and success in goal pursuit efforts, particularly in the domains of education and health. I will discuss the implications of this research for both theory and intervention practice.

Bio:
Neil Lewis, Jr., is a first-generation college graduate earning his B.A. in Economics and Psychology at Cornell University and his Ph.D. in Social Psychology at the University of Michigan. Currently, he has faculty appointments in Communication, Psychology, and the Weill Cornell Medical College at Cornell University. He recently was identified as a Rising Star by the Association for Psychological Science.