My research program examines social cognitive mechanism underlying, for example, police-community relations, political attitudes and behavior, and racial bias. Much of my research of my research focuses on physical threat responses and their role in shaping behavior. For example, my work finds that people automatically associate police officers with physical threat, and these associations in turn motivate defensive behaviors to officers. Other lines of work examine the implications of threat perception and threat sensitivity for aggressive political attitudes such as support for political violence and deference to authority.​

​