Nicole Tausch

Biography

I obtained my undergraduate degree in Psychology from the Martin-Luther University Halle Wittenberg in Germany. I then completed my PhD at the Department of Experimental Psychology/New College, University of Oxford (D.Phil. 2006) focussing on prejudice and intergroup relations in India and Northern Ireland. After my PhD I took a postdoctoral position there. I also held vising researcher positions at the University of Allahabad in India and the University of Connecticut in the United States during this time. In 2007 I won a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship to examine psychological processes involved in support for terrorism at Cardiff University. I joined the School of Psychology at St Andrews in 2010. My current work continues to examine intergroup relations in a variety of social context, with a particular focus on understanding non-normative and violent forms of group action.

Research Interest

Nicole Tausch is a social psychologist broadly interested in intergroup relations and conflict, prejudice and discrimination, and social perception. She has in the past investigated the effects of cross-community contact in Northern Ireland and India, the importance of different types of threat in shaping intergroup attitudes, the role of cognitive and motivational factors in trait attribution (in particular the attribution of warmth and competence to other people and groups), and the effects of ideological orientation and cognitive preferences on stereotype maintenance. Her current lines of research include (1) factors influencing willingness to participate in normative and non-normative political action, in particular injustice and efficacy appraisals and group-based emotions (anger and contempt), (2) psychological consequences of participating in normative and non-normative collective action, and (3) the potential counter-productive effects of intergroup contact in achieving social change towards group equality. She was recently funded by the British Academy and the Economic and Social Research Council (jointly with Russell Spears at Cardiff University) to investigate the roles of social context, injustice appraisals and group-based emotions in predicting different forms of political participation and support for political violence.