Background

Katie is a doctoral student in Developmental Psychology working with Alex Shaw. She graduated from Wesleyan University in 2020 with a B.A. in Psychology. During her undergraduate studies, Katie began researching child development in the Wesleyan University Cognitive Development Lab. Katie also completed her honors thesis in the Wesleyan University Psychometric Lab in which she investigated how self-presentation and wealth inequality influence adults’ generosity. After graduating, Katie worked as Yarrow Dunham’s and Paul Bloom’s laboratory manager at the Yale University Social Cognitive Development and Mind and Development Labs. With Dr. Dunham, she researched children’s early understandings of gender-neutral pronouns and intuitions about trade. With Dr. Bloom, she researched why children and adults think lying is immoral and what types of lies are morally permissible.

Research Interests

Katie broadly researches children's social and moral development. She studies what children believe is moral and is also interested in researching how children behave in socio-moral dilemmas. At the University of Chicago, Katie plans to focus on how children both think about and engage in reputation management through lying and behavioral change with different types of audiences.