Eric Shuman

Research Associate in Psychology Dr. Eric Shuman at the University of Virginia invites applications for a post-doctoral research associate with expertise in the social psychology of social protest, social change, and/or in big data, ...

I am looking to recruit a postdoc to join my lab next fall, & work on projects focused on online mobilization with social media datasets - see more details here: bit.ly/4r49x9b . If anyone knows of someone with relevant skills who is looking for a postdoc- please pass this on!

Are you an undergrad just starting to think about grad school? Wondering what your options are and how you can be prepared? @uvapsychology.bsky.social is hosting a panel next week to answer these kinds of questions and more, come join us!

Please share with any students you know who may be interested!

I am hoping to recruit a Ph.D. student to join the SPARC (Social Psychology of Activism, Resistance, & Change) Lab at @UVAPsyc in Fall 2026! You can find more info about my research on my website (ericshuman.com), and the program here (psychology.as.virginia.edu/social-psych...).

I am looking to recruit a postdoc to join my lab next fall, & work on 2 projects focused on online mobilization with social media datasets. If anyone knows of someone with computational skills (network analysis, NLP, etc.) who is looking for a postdoc- have them reach out to me.

I'm really excited to announce that I will be joining @uvapsychology.bsky.social as an Assistant Professor of Social Psychology starting this fall!

Join us next Monday, Feb. 3 in the Psychology of Resistance virtual meeting series for a session with Dr. Eric Shuman and climate activists to discuss: "What do we know and what do we still need to know about the effects of disruptive collective action?" Registration and session info in🧵

A big thank you to my advisors who guided me on this project: Martijn van Zomeren; Tamar Saguy, @ericdknowles.bsky.social, and Eran Halperin - I wouldn't have been able to pull all this together without all your help and advice along the way.

We discuss how these concepts and measures can be used to gain a deeper understanding of the psychology of members of historically advantaged groups and their potential resistance to social change towards greater equality.

Across 6 studies (total N = 4617) in three contexts (white-black race relations & gender relations in the US and Jewish-Arab/Palestinian relations in Israel), we examine this scale’s structure & validity, and find strong support for our proposed factor structure & the measure's construct validity.

Beyond, these strategies we also built scales to measure the tendency to Deny the existence of intergroup inequality, and to seek to Dismantle inequality, which were both part of the original Knowles, et al., 2014 framework.

On the other hand, Distancing from Identity involves separating one's self concept from the group and avoiding thinking in group based terms.

In addition, we uncover that Distancing is composed of two components (Distancing from Inequality and Distancing from Identity). Distancing from Inequality involves asserting that one does not benefit group-based inequalities (even if they exist in general).

Specifically, we add an additional identity management strategy, Defend, which refers to when advantaged group members overtly defend their status by justifying or legitimizing inequality.

How do members of historically advantaged groups manage that identity? Knowles, et al., 2014 proposed the Deny-Distance-Dismantle framework to answer this question. We develop a measure of this framework and in the process discover some additional D's:

Really excited to announce that our paper introducing an expanded framework and measure of advantaged identity management has been accepted @ PSPB! You can check out the thread below for more details and find an updated preprint here: tinyurl.com/2uvem5nh

I’d like to thank my advisors,
@amit-goldenberg.bsky.social, Eran Halperin, Tamar Saguy, & Martijn van Zomeren for all their help in developing these ideas and thoughtful work on this paper.

When organizing past findings with this framework, we find a pattern suggesting that normative nonviolent forms of action may be effective in mobilizing sympathetic audiences, and more disruptive action may be effective at motivating policy concessions from resistant audiences.

We introduce such a framework for evaluating effectiveness of social protest made up of three components: 1) what types of action are being considered; 2) what target audience is being affected; and 3) what outcomes are being evaluated? And then use it to organize past findings.

While some may see such findings as conflicting, we contend that these disparate findings highlight the need for an integrative framework that defines what it means for social protests to be effective.

There are many findings indicating that normative  nonviolent protests generally tend to be most effective However, there is also empirical evidence that more disruptive forms of social protests can be more effective.

Both laypeople and scholars have begun to ask when social protests are effective, and to debate whether peaceful, more disruptive, or even violent protests are most effective for advancing social change.

When Are Social Protests Effective? Around the world, people engage in social protests aimed at addressing major societal problems. Certain protests have led to significant progress, yet…

Really excited to share our new paper, out in @TICS, that introduces a new theoretical framework for evaluating the effectiveness of social protest: tinyurl.com/mr4bd3sc

Finally made the jump to bluer skies :)
Looking forward to sharing and discussing research here in the future!
If you're curious about my past work you can check out my website: www.ericshuman.com