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Dr. Bu's Research Lab

Research Interests 

Dr. Bu is a social psychologist whose primary interests are, broadly, intergroup relations and stereotypes and prejudice. Specific topics she is currently interested in investigating include: 

  • Intergroup relations involving minorities (or intra-minority group relations)
  • Stereotypes and prejudices  
  • Intra-minority group solidarity
  • Social identity and identity threat/safety
  • Belonging and experiences of members of marginalized groups  
  • Political Psychology
  • Psych & Law

What Dr. Bu is looking for in a Research Assistant 

Although she is open to any student who wishes to conduct research with her, she has 3 main things she wants in her assistant(s): 

  • Someone who is enthusiastic in the subjects she is conducting research on.
  • Someone who is self-motivated.
  • Someone who has their own ideas and insights to bring to the discussion.  

Dr. Bu also wants it to be known that she is happy to supervise ANY intergroup relations, political psych, or psych & law projects students are interested in working on with her.   

Current & Past Research 

Dr. Bu is currently studying one of her subjects of interest (intergroup solidarity) in a study she describes as “Applying sense of belonging towards state of residency to intergroup relations and solidarity.” The goals of her research are to develop a scale to measure an individual’s sense of belonging to their state of residence, and she wishes to identify how this data relates to minority status. She eventually wants this to be able to be studied on a national level, and ideally hopes to discover how sense of belonging can be used to create solidarity.   
 
In the past, she briefly worked with a graduate student on a project related to belonging and gender and identity safety. In her own educational background, as the senior graduate student she examined how to measure white savior attitudes and how that related to willingness to help POC (underprivileged POC vs white people). Additionally, her post-doc was focused on faculty and institutional mindset, and during this time she provided feedback to graduate students working on similar/related research projects.  

Contact Dr. Bu 

If you are interested in working with Dr. Bu, please contact her at wbu@roanoke.edu  
Her office is also located in Life Science in room 523