Christopher W. Coleman

Education

• M.A., Psychology, University of California, Davis, 2021
• B.A., Psychology, Morehouse College, 2017

About

Christopher W. Coleman is a Ph.D. candidate in the Psychology Department at UC Davis. Christopher is a member of the Attitudes and Group Identity Lab (PI: Alison Ledgerwood), and his research centers on the intersection between minority intergroup relations, racial and ethnic identification, and social hierarchy. Christopher is working on his dissertation and anticipates completing his degree in June 2024.

Christopher is committed to advancing diversity, equity & inclusion (DEI) within his university. He previously served as a graduate student researcher (GSR), working directly with the Associate Provost for DEI on a grant to advance faculty diversity and improve climate and retention. Christopher has also served as a GSR for UC Davis' Office of the Vice Chancellor's DEI department on a grant titled "Dialogues Across Difference: Solutions to Disruptive Speech in the Learning Environment," meant to assess how negative workplace climate and racial trauma both contribute to loss of productivity among marginalized faculty and to faculty turnover. Christopher is a member of the DEI committee for the student branch of the Psychology Department and College of Letters and Science (L&S).

Additionally, Christopher is a member of the American Evaluation Association's (AEA) Graduate Education Diversity Internship (GEDI), where he works as a Program Evaluation intern on the Research and Evaluation team at FoodCorps.

Research Focus

Christopher W. Coleman's research centers on placing individuals traditionally excluded from psychological research at the forefront, particularly those who identify as BIPOC. He recruits from various marginalized racial populations (e.g., Latinx, Black, Asian) to answer complex questions about our racialized society. A substantial amount of research on racially marginalized populations often perpetuates a colorblind racial ideology by emphasizing sameness between under-represented groups. Christopher opposes this assumption of homogeneity by examining the distinctive psychological experiences of different ethnoracial groups and the unique factors contributing to variability in how they understand the world.

Publications

• Sánchez, A. M., Coleman, C. W., & Ledgerwood, A. (2021). Does temporal distance influence abstraction? A large pre-registered experiment. Social Cognition, 39(3), 352-365. https://doi.org/10.1521/soco.2021.39.3.352
• Itani, A. I., Coleman, C. W., AlGhazali, R., AlMalik, M., da Silva Frost, A. Fadavi, N., Imran, M., Weltzien, K., Yousef, S. M., Ledgerwood, A. & Maitner, A. T. (2023). Exploring sequential framing effects with Arab participants in the UAE. Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology.