Efrén Pérez (Ph.D., Duke University) is Full Professor of Political Science and Psychology at UCLA, where he directs its Race, Ethnicity, Politics, and Society (REPS) Lab and co-directs its Intergroup Relations (IRL) Lab.

Efrén draws on psychological principles to better understand the political attitudes and behaviors of racial and ethnic groups in the United States, especially people of color. His research primarily focuses on group identity, interminority politics, and language and public opinion. He is an expert in the design and analysis of experiments, especially with hard-to-reach populations like African Americans, Asian Americans, and Latinos. He is also skilled in developing and validating measures of attitudes and beliefs in intergroup settings.

Efrén has published articles on these topics in leading journals for general science, political science, and psychological science, including Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Political Psychology, and Social Psychological and Personality Science. His book, Unspoken Politics: Implicit Attitudes and Political Thinking (Cambridge University Press), was the recipient of the 2017 Best Book Award from the Race, Ethnicity, and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association; and the 2017 Best Book on Latino Politics from the Latino Caucus of the American Political Science Association.

Efrén recently published three new books. His latest one (with Margit Tavits) is titled Voicing Politics: How Language Shapes Public Opinion (Princeton University Press). This volume brings together the latest findings from psychology and political science to reveal how the linguistic peculiarities of different languages can have meaningful consequences for political attitudes and beliefs around the world. In August 2021, he also published Diversity’s Child: People of Color and the Politics of Identity  (University of Chicago Press), which examines the political consequences of identifying as a person of color. Parts of this book have been featured in the Washington Post’s The Monkey Cage and NPR’s Codeswitch podcast. His third book (with Enya Kuo) is titled Racial Order, Racialized Responses: Interminority Politics in a Diverse Nation (2021, Cambridge University Press). It investigates the various connections between racial stratification and interminority politics in the United States.

Contact Information:

Efrén O. Pérez
University of California, Los Angeles
Department of Political Science
4289 Bunche Hall
Los Angeles, CA 90095
perezeo@ucla.edu