My overarching research goal is to critically examine how and why people from dominant and marginalized groups engage in activism to advance equity. In two lines of work, (1) activism and (2) intraminority solidarity, I integrate theories across disciplines, psychology (e.g., social, clinical, political, cultural) and otherwise (e.g., critical race, law, decolonial studies), to center lay, marginalized perspectives and interrogate the intersectional systems of power. I conduct my research using both quantitative (e.g., experiment, daily diary, longitudinal) and qualitative methods (e.g., meaning extraction, thematic analysis). Ultimately, my work seeks to build rigorous, empirically grounded theories and interventions for grassroots organizing and policy-making.
Activism
Incorporating lay, marginalized, and critical perspectives, my research advances a critical understanding of activism. Earlier, my work demonstrated lay beliefs about the goals of anti-racism activism (Pham et al., 2023, RASP). Experimental evidence then showed that Black (but not White) people perceive anti-racism organizations that target White power and discrimination against POC as both effective (Pham & Chaney, 2026, GPIR). Integrating the critical race literature demonstrating that neutrality legitimizes systemic oppression (Pham & Sarmal, under review), I am examining how a lay theory of anti-neutral activism (e.g., a belief that a person either stands with the oppressed or the oppressor; Pham & Chaney, R&R) mobilizes engagement in activism across different political contexts.
Directly interrogating the role of systems of oppression via an abolitionist framework, I study beliefs about and activism against police violence. For instance, I co-created the Abolitionist Ideology Scale and demonstrated its relationships with political behavior and creativity (e.g., Oswald, Pham, & Chaney, 2024, ASAP). Presently, I am examining how learning about a critical history about police and the scope of police brutality may shift attribution of violence and abolitionist outcomes (Pham & Blanchette, under review).
My research integrates intersectional and strength-based approaches to holistically understand the conditions that facilitates equitable and sustained intraminority solidarity. I found that a shared discrimination frame can facilitate solidarity in the face of intraminority discrimination (Pham & Chaney, 2026, PSPB) and at the same time can benefit from historical-materialism to interrogate oppressive socio-political-economic systems such as capitalism and colonialism (Pham et al., in press, EJSP). Extending the dominant stigma-based solidarity mechanism, I next demonstrated a lay belief of generalized prejudice, or shared perpetrators of prejudice, as a mechanism of solidarity among diverse marginalized groups and cultures (e.g., Pham et al., 2024, Self & Identity).
Going beyond the interconnectedness of oppression, my research is seeking to attend to the hierarchies of oppression. For example, I developed passing down the mic as a novel, effective act of intersectional solidarity to promote women of color’s identity safety (Pham & Chaney, 2025, SPPS). I am currently examining how a lay theory of bottom-up activism (i.e., belief that uplifting marginalized people lower in the social hierarchies trickle up to benefit those who are above) can address intersectional disparities (Pham et al., 2026, Compass).
Concurrently, I use a strength-based lens to study solidarity efforts. For example, ancestral self-concept increased Black Americans’ activism to advance Palestinian and U.S. immigrant rights. In my strength-based solidarity framework, I theorize that marginalized people share identity-conscious strengths that may motivate intraminority solidarity (Pham, Chaney, & Garr-Schultz, in press, PSPR; Pham, Zhang, et al., R&R).