You can download below a copy of my most recent CV:

Here is a brief selection of recent research papers I have worked on. About one third of the scholarship I produce through the REPS Lab consists of active collaborations with talented undergraduate students at UCLA, many of them in political science, psychology, or other analog disciplines. The papers below include some of these collaborations.

“All Aboard? Solidarity Between People of Color and the Validated Votes of Black, Latino, and Asian Adults.” Under review (with Andrew M. Engelhardt, Kasheena G. Rogbeer, and Emily Ortiz)

Accumulating research establishes that solidarity between people of color (PoC) unifies the political opinions of Black, Asian, Latino, and other racially stigmatized adults. Does solidarity also galvanize their political actions? By synthesizing research on PoC solidarity with insights about attitudes and behavior, we yield a set of pre-registered hypotheses that we evaluate by 1) testing whether solidarity galvanizes people of color to cast presidential ballots; and 2) pinpointing which PoC are more likely to engage in solidarity-based voting. Leveraging survey experimental data (N = 2,550) gathered three weeks before 2024’s presidential election, we find that inducing a sense of shared discrimination activated PoC solidarity, with this camaraderie boosting validated turnout among Black, Asian, and Latino adults. We corroborate this pattern in a 3-wave panel of these populations (N=3,627), showing that solidarity measured at Wave 1 (pre-election) also reliably increased validated turnout independently of key covariates and time-invariant confounding. Finally, parting with previous work, we establish that solidarity significantly mobilized PoC who are Democrats, but demobilized PoC who are Republicans, implying these turnout gains benefit Democratic candidates. We discuss our results’ implications for political scientists and practitioners.

Solidarity between U.S. People of Color: Synthesizing Evidence, Highlighting  Challenges, and Proposing Actionable Solutions Under review

Mounting research establishes that solidarity between U.S. people of color (PoC) is triggered when a racially stigmatized ingroup believes they are discriminated similarly to another outgroup based on their alleged inferiority or foreignness. This heightened solidarity then produces political opinions and behaviors that benefit stigmatized outgroups who are not one’s own—for example, Black adults become more pro-Latino, Asian adults become more pro-Black, and Latino adults become more pro-Asian. This essay organizes, discusses, and synthesizes the overflowing evidence on this solidarity mechanism, paying special attention to its generality across stigmatized groups and political settings. The essay then highlights major pending challenges and opportunities to learn more about U.S. inter-minority solidarity, emphasizing rival explanations, complementary pathways, and methodological pluralism. In parallel, this latter discussion illustrates the advantages of creating greater conceptual and theoretical synergy with comparativist research on ethnic identities and political conflict in nations across sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Finally, the article outlines new research agendas to deepen our understanding about U.S. inter-minority politics, paying special attention to intra-group processes that regulate solidarity’s vitality in an uncertain, complex, and threatening polity.

Anti-White Attitudes Neither Structure Nor Follow From PoC Identity: Evidence from a Panel Study of 3,536 Black, Latino, and Asian Adults Under review (with Sydney Tran, UCLA Doctoral Student in Psychology)

Demographic shifts are remaking America’s racial hierarchy, with stigmatized outgroups sharing an identity as people of color and White Americans supporting political backlashes against teeming racial diversity. Given this acrimony, do anti-White attitudes inform one’s sense of PoC identity? We tackle this by analyzing a three-wave survey of Black, Latino, and Asian adults (N=3,546). Synthesizing insights from social identity theoryand related work, we evaluate the interface between anti-White attitudes and PoC identity from a within-person perspective. We find, first, that stronger anti-White attitudes are positively but weakly correlated with PoC ID per wave (r_avg. = .081). Capitalizing on the rich variances of these variables, we then show that within-person increases in anti-White attitudes are unrelated to later rises in PoC identity over time. We also find that within-person increases in PoC identity are unconnected to later changes in anti-White sentiment. This null pattern between both variables does not appear driven by unmodeled moderators: neither belief in structural racism nor a preference for intergroup equality strengthen the link between anti-White attitudes and PoC ID. We conclude that even in this racially divisive political era, anti-White attitudes are a weak component of one’s sense of identity as a person of color.  

“Does Perceived Discrimination Shape PoC Identity OR Does PoC Identity Shape Perceived Discrimination? Yes, with Evidence From a 3-Wave Panel of Asian, Black, and Latino Adults“

U.S. inter-minority relations are generally conflictual, with cooperation being sporadic and fleeting. However, two variables compactly explain when racially stigmatized groups effectively galvanize around common goals—perceived discrimination (PD) and self-identification as a person of color (PoC ID). Published experiments establish that PD heightens one’s sense of PoC ID when racially stigmatized individuals view prejudiced actions as broadly shared by distinct groups. Yet these one-shot studies cannot rule out other viable pathways, including whether self-identification as a person of color also sharpens perceptions of discrimination. I consider three pre-registered hypotheses about this interface: 1) PD promotes stronger PoC ID; 2) PoC ID boosts PD; and 3) PD and PoC ID are reciprocally related. I evaluate these predictions using a unique 3-wave panel of 3,627 African American, Asian American, and Latino adults that straddled the 2024 presidential election. A suite of cross-lagged panel models indicate that reciprocal relations over time best characterize this interface between PD and PoC ID, with PoC identity yielding larger effects on perceived discrimination across racially stigmatized populations and (non-)electoral contexts. These dynamics encourage closer attention to a more complex interplay between these two crucial variables among people of color than prior research has found.