Jamie Amemiya, PhD
Hello and welcome to my website! I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Occidental College. My research program examines the social cognition of people's perceptions of, explanations for, and responses to social differences (e.g., racial inequality, gender disparities, differences in beliefs). Theoretically, I take an interdisciplinary approach that integrates social, cognitive, and developmental psychological perspectives. I employ a range of methods, including social-cognitive experiments, cross-cultural research, interventions in real-world settings, and daily diary studies. Together, my work sheds light on the roots and consequences of people’s beliefs about difference, with implications for reducing social inequality and bridging divides.
Representative Articles:
Amemiya, J., Mortenson, E., Heyman, G. D., & Walker, C. M. (2023). Thinking structurally: A cognitive framework for understanding how people attribute inequality to structural causes. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 18, 259-274. doi:10.1177/17456916221093593
*Donovan, B. M., Weindling, M., *Amemiya, J., Salazar, B., Lee, D., Syed, A., Stuhlsatz, M., & Snowden, J. (2024). Humane genomics education can reduce racism. Science, 383, 818-822. doi: 10.1126/science.adi7895
*Corresponding author.
Amemiya, J., Heyman, G. D., & Gerstenberg, T. (2024). Children use disagreement to infer what happened. Cognition, 250, 105836. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105836
*Popat, A., Amemiya, J., Heyman, G. D., & Walker, C. M. (forthcoming). Hiding discrimination in plain sight: The development of reasoning about disparate impact policies. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.
E-mail: amemiya@oxy.edu | Bluesky: @jamieamemiya.bsky.social