Dr. Diana Sanchez is from a small town in New Jersey called Cresskill. Growing up, she was faced with challenges that included losing her mother at the age of 17 to cancer, as well as losing her father years later at the age of 21 due to a stroke. These tragic events did not keep her from continuing to work towards her dreams. Dr. Sanchez stated that her true passion began as a teenager, she said that sometimes she found herself playing the role of psychologist for her friends and family which as we can see now drew her to her current career. She attended Bard College and began conducting social psychological research with Dr. Tracie Stewart, which then lead her to enroll in graduate school in a joint social psychology and PhD program at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor where she focused on social psychology and women’s studies. She is currently an associate professor Rutgers University, and her areas include interdisciplinary health and social psychology.
Also, she has a research lab that focuses on close relationships, identity, and stigma. I thought it was neat to see that she gives undergraduate students the opportunities to be assistants. After reading an interview, I can tell that she is a professor that cares highly about the success of her students and by giving them opportunities as vast as the one I saw listed. There are a many research projects that Dr. Sanchez has worked on through the years. One of them involves examining how sexism, and the social construction of gender, influence interpersonal relationship.
A publication I found on her website is based on the “Theory of Prejudice and American Identity Threat Transfer for Latino and Asian Americans.” This article really caught my eye because I am also a part of the Latino community and I wanted to learn more about the way this project was conduct as well as the conclusion. One of the studies was focused on the shared experience of stigma when exposed to outgroup discrimination. In the article it is stated that, “ Research has demonstrated that companies accused of anti-Latino bias were viewed as more likely to hold anti-Asian attitudes and, therefore, caused Asian Americans to anticipate stigma and American threats” (Sanchez et al., 2018).
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This shows that after conducting research with multiple participants that were told they were a part of a organizational impressions study, the ending result that was achieved from the conduction of this experiment is that preconception aimed at one racial group brought out cultural identity denial in another racial group. Dr. Sanchez’s’ work in the field of psychology is important in many ways. I understand that being a minority comes with many challenges, and as I was doing my research on Dr. Sanchez, I realized that many of the research articles that she has published are based on how certain social situations influence the lives of multiracial heritages.
I am proud of my Mexican heritage and I do understand that there is a lot of stigmas surrounding latinos. Now that I have read one of Dr. Sanchez’s articles I have a better understanding of how stigma also affects other minorities such as Asian Americans. During class we talked about stigmas and how they can affect that way we perceive people, places and things. It is hard to get rid of stigmas once they are created but it is important to try to not classify a whole group of people based on something that does not apply to the majority of that population. I appreciate the work that Dr. Sanchez does because it is researching areas of American Culture that need to be brought to light and talked about more often.
References
- American Psychological Association
- Rutgers University
- Bard College
- Examining the Impact of Sexism on Interpersonal Relationships – PubMed Central
- Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide – Goodreads
- How Warmth and Competence Dimensions Influence Impressions of Sexism – Aaron Kinzler Lab, University of Michigan
