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Shantal Marshall
Third Year Doctoral Student
Social Psychology


Research Statement

How do people understand the concept of race on a daily basis? Shantal is interested in where people acquire their concepts of race and how this affects the way they interact with the world. One potential source of race conception is in scientific representations of racial groups. Another potential source is popular culture - such as associations between racial groups and particular types of music. People also have concepts of how racial groups relate to one another in society, which can come from seemingly objective descriptions of differences between racial groups. All of these conceptions affect the way people interpret the world around them, and therefore how they interact with it. She is specifically interested in how people interpret violations to their conceptions of racial groups, and relations between those groups, and whether and how the concepts can change.

Short CV


"'If This is Darwinism...' How Lay Understandings of Human Evolution Suggest Racial Inferiority," Expanding Horizons in Cultural Psychology Conference at Stanford University, August 2007.

"From Greenday to Tupac: Music as a Cue to Racial Identity," Stanford University Social Lab, June 2007.

"What's Your Favorite Music? How Music Preferences Cue Racial Identity," Society for Personality and Social Psychology Annual Conference, January 2007.

"Body Mass Index, Dieting, and Gender as Predictors of Eating Behavior," UCLA Psychology Undergraduate Research Conference, May 2004.

"The Role of Self-enhancement in the Individualistic Cultures of Denmark and the United States," UCLA Westwind Conference, April 2003.


"Body Mass Index, Dieting, and Gender as Predictors of Eating Behavior," Claremont Graduate University McNair Research Journal, Spring 2005, Vol. 3.