Episode 41
"Friends / ones (our social cognition) can depend on" (with Ryan Lei)
June 18th, 2026
1 hr 54 mins 23 secs
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About this Episode
In the first half of this episode, Deon chats with Dr. Ryan Lei -- associate professor of psychology at Haverford College -- about his unique (and somewhat fortuitous) academic journey, what life is like as a professor at a Small Liberal Arts College (SLAC), and how SLACs differ from R1s. In the second segment, we talk about his 2020 Psychological Science paper, "The development of intersectional social prototypes", which explored whether children's ability to categorize faces by gender is impacted by the race of those faces.
Plus, we spend quite a bit of time talking about the broader topic of "intersectionality" and "intersectional invisibility" and the implications each has for our everyday lives. And of course, there's lots of talk about mechanism! What a fun, jam-packed episode!
Links
Lei, R. F., Leshin, R. A., & Rhodes, M. (2020). The development of intersectional social prototypes. Psychological Science, 31(8), 911-926. Link