Dr. Laurie O’Brien

Dr. Laurie O’Brien is a professor of psychology at Tulane University. She joined the faculty at Tulane in 2005, and before that she worked as a post doctoral researcher with Dr. Brenda Major at the University of California Santa Barbara. Laurie earned a B.A. in Psychology from St. Louis University in 1997 and a Ph.D from the University of Kansas in 2002.

As an experimental social psychologist, she is interested in issues related to prejudice, stereotyping, discrimination, and stigma. Two central questions of her research are: (1) How do people from high status and low status groups make judgments about what constitutes prejudice? (2) What are the consequences of perceiving prejudice and discrimination for people from both high and low status groups?

Dr. O’Brien’s work has been published in some of the top journals in social psychology including, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, and Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. In addition, she has received funding for her work from the National Science Foundation, the Louisiana Board of Regents, the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, and Tulane University’s Research Enhancement Fund.

You can contact Dr. O’Brien at lobrien2@tulane.edu, view her CV or her Google Scholar page.