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, organizational) and otherwise (e.g., critical race, law, decolonial studies), to center lay, marginalized perspectives and subvert 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 the understudied lay, marginalized, and systemic perspectives, my research advances a critical understanding of activism. Earlier, my work has demonstrated lay beliefs about the goals and motivations of anti-racism activism (Pham, Chaney, & Ramírez-Esparza, 2023, RASP). Experimental evidence then showed that Black (but not White) people perceive anti-racism organizational efforts that target White power/privilege versus discrimination as both effective (Pham & Chaney, in press, GPIR). On this basis, my current work investigates the roles of neutrality in perpetuating oppression (Pham & Sarmal, in prep), and of a lay theory of neutrality-dismantling activism (e.g., a person either stands with the oppressed or the oppressor; Pham & Chaney, in prep) for activism engagement. Directly interrogating the role of systems of oppression, I have begun to examine beliefs about (abolishing) police/state violence (e.g., Abolitionist Ideology scale; Oswald, Pham, & Chaney, 2024, ASAP) to ultimately develop critical interventions for people to recognize and act against state violence.
My research integrates intersectional and strength-based approaches to holistically understand the conditions that facilitates equitable and sustained solidarity. Going beyond the dominant shared-discrimination mechanism (Pham & Chaney, in press, PSPB), my prior work demonstrated a lay belief of generalized prejudice, or shared perpetrators of prejudice, as a mechanism of solidarity among diverse marginalized groups and cultures (Pham, Chaney, & Lin, 2024, PSPB; Pham, Chaney, & Sanchez, 2024, Self & Identity). My research has begun to center the hierarchies of discrimination (e.g., passing down the mic is a novel, effective act of intersectional solidarity to promote women of color’s identity safety; Pham & Chaney, in press, SPPS) and is currently examining how a hierarchy-challenging solidarity belief (i.e., uplifting marginalized people from below helps those who are above) can address intersectional disparities (Pham et al., invited submission, SPCO). Finally, my dissertation integrates a strength-based lens to theorize that marginalized people share identity-conscious strengths that may motivate intraminority solidarity (Pham, Chaney, & Garr-Schultz, R&R, PSPR).