Vincenzo J. Olivett

My research uses a social cognitive approach to investigate mechanisms underlying intergroup phenomena, including police-community relations, political attitudes and behavior, and automatic attitude change. A central focus of my work is on physical threat processes and their influence on social behavior. For example, I find that people automatically associate police officers with physical threat, and that these associations can motivate defensive responses to officers. Other lines of research explore how threat perception shapes political outcomes such as support for political violence and authoritarian attitudes.​

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