Peter Leavitt

Background

About Peter Leavitt

I am a social scientist and educator with 10+ years of experience translating complex and socially relevant psychological science for the college classroom. My teaching and scholarly work are centered around understanding people and helping people feel understood, especially when doing so is difficult. I take particular interest in a social psychological approach to teaching about and studying culture and diversity, social identities, and intergroup contact. I've studied the psychology of social class, media representations of underrepresented groups like Native Americans, the political discussion norms of young people, reactions to anti-racism scholarship, and the experiences of ex-religious people. The common thread in my interests is the process of identifying groups that are poorly understood and figuring out how we can understand them better.