About Kayla

We know that emotions spread, but it is unclear who in a group is most likely to be a carrier or catcher of contagion.  In my dissertation, I investigate whether some emotions are more contagious than others, depending on the relative status of the person emitting the emotion. I also investigate how specific emotions–happiness, sadness, and anger–might matter in this process. When this work is complete, I can use it to help organizations guard against toxic emotion environments, particularly in team-based task groups such as with EMTs, pilots and police officers.

You can read more about this work in an interview.

Clickbait often has missing information, and I am interested in how people fill in these gaps.  More importantly, I am interested in understanding the patterns of these cognitive processes.  How is a person’s race and political affiliation related to these cognitive processes?  When clickbait produces emotional discomfort, what strategies do people use to reduce it? My research will answer these questions, which will help us understand what drives clicks, how people fill in cognitive gaps, and how different people process startling information.

When people come forward to report workplace misconduct, are all people equally likely to be believed? Are some people more credible than others based on their race and gender? In this project, I use experimental methods to explore whether some people are more credible than others and can more easily rally social support, using theories of status and identity. This work can be used to build more equitable human resource practices.

What motivates strangers to come together to grieve for someone they never met? How do they navigate collective grieving for someone who died a stigmatized death? I answer these questions by analyzing a Reddit forum that was created in response to Robin Williams’s suicide. Using these data, I first identify the emotional and social functions that optional grief expressions serve. Second, I identify characteristics of successful conversational attempts in online forums.