Inequality is a powerful force shaping social dynamics, conflict, and organizations around the globe. During the last year, the wealth gap in the United States has continued to widen as low-income workers bear the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic through high-risk essential jobs and inequitable vaccine distribution. Moreover, the murder of George Floyd has catapulted racial discrimination to the forefront of America’s collective attention. Despite this, employees at organizations like LinkedIn and Cisco have pushed back on policies meant to redress these inequalities, and support for Black Lives Matter has nearly returned to its pre-2020 baseline. The goal of my work is to generate and leverage psychological theories to address these, and other, pressing social problems head on.

In my work I have (i) uncovered various biased belief systems (e.g., beliefs about income mobility and poverty) that legitimize damaging inequalities, (ii) used these insights to develop and test interventions (e.g., perspective taking, cross-social class contact) to correct these biases, and (iii) developed a new methodological approach uncovering areas of bipartisan agreement in addressing poverty and inequality, offering a path towards meaningful bipartisan policy.

You can see my full research statement here.

Wiwad, D., Shariff, A, & Kteily, N. S. (Under Review). Trade-offs in economic preferences: Both Democrats and Republicans prioritize poverty alleviation over equality and efficiency.

Wiwad, D., Jachimowicz, J, & Davidai, S. (Under Review). Perceived Upward workplace mobility shapes zero-sum thinking, quality of workplace relationships, and acceptance of higher CEO-to-median worker pay ratios.

To, C., Wiwad, D., & Kouchaki, M. (Revise and Resubmit). Inequality increases the acceptability of unethical behavior.