Jennifer Beatty-Wright

Assistant Professor

Pronouns: she/her/hers

 

Contact Information

• Office: 47-23Q
• Phone: 805-756-1851
• Email: jfbeatty@calpoly.edu
• Curriculum Vitae

 

Education

• B.A., Psychology, Theater, George Washington University, 2013
• M.S., Education, University of Pennsylvania, 2015
• M.A., Applied Positive Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, 2018
• M.A., Psychological and Brain Science, Washington University in St. Louis, 2022
• Ph.D., Psychological and Brain Sciences, Washington Univeristy in St. Louis, 2025

 

Courses Taught

 

Research Interests

Dr. Jennifer Beatty-Wright is a social and personality psychologist who studies intergroup relations, with a focus on bias regulation, specifically how people aim to downregulate, maintain, or upregulate their biases. Her work examines the psychological and emotional processes that unfold during intergroup interactions, including how people respond when they recognize their own bias and how targets of bias cope with tense or discriminatory encounters. Using mixed methods and longitudinal designs, her research explores the antecedents, processes, and consequences of bias regulation, as well as stress and emotional responses that arise during difficult intergroup situations.

A second line of her work focuses on developing immersive interventions that help people reflect on and change their responses to intergroup experiences. Drawing on interdisciplinary training in education, documentary filmmaking, theater, and social psychology, Dr. Beatty-Wright designs innovative experiments that examine how intergroup experiences can shape people’s thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Her long-term research agenda aims to better understand bias regulation across the lifespan and apply this work to high-impact settings such as the legal system, hiring contexts, and healthcare.

 

Selected Publications

Beatty-Wright, J.F. & Hill, P.L. (in press). Registered report: An exposure-therapy approach to reducing prejudice and anxiety towards Black people. British Journal of Social Psychology.

Beatty-Wright, J.F., Doriscar, J.E., Hill, P. L., & Leath, S. (in press). The process of racial bias awareness in White Americans: Qualitative themes of bias, justifications, and emotions across the lifespan. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry.

Beatty-Wright, J.F., Lohani, M. & Hill, P. L. (2025). Intergroup bias regulation strategies. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations. https://doi.org/10.1177/13684302251378044