Xuechunzi Bai 白 雪純子

I am Bai (pronounce like bye)!

I am a fifth-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Psychology at Princeton University. I will hold a certificate in Statistics and Machine Learning and a joint degree in Social Policy from the School of Public and International Affairs. I am a graduate student fellow in the Program in Cognitive Science and a winner of the Prize Fellowship in the Social Sciences at Princeton.

My research examines how and why humans learn inaccurate stereotypes. I work with and learn from Susan Fiske, Tom Griffiths, and Alex Todorov.

I am on the academic job market in 2022 fall. [CV]

People form mental maps of individuals and groups in society to help them navigate their social environment, avoid obstacles, and reach their goals. Mental maps of human groups not only passively represent social reality; they also actively construct social reality. One example is social stereotypes; people represent groups as located in different regions in their mental maps. I wonder: Where do stereotypes come from? How can we make stereotypes go away?

My research combines insights from social and cognitive psychology, computer science and machine learning, and public policy. I use multiple methodologies to pursue these questions, including cross-national surveys, large-scale online behavioral experiments, naturalistic text analyses, and computational cognitive models, all aiming to provide science-based insights to mitigate intergroup misunderstanding.

Illustrative Publications

• Bai, X., Griffiths, T. L., & Fiske, S. T. (under review). Explore-exploit tradeoffs generate cascading societal stereotypes. [preprint]

  • This paper presents a flavor of my research interests, methods, and vision.

• Bai, X., Fiske, S. T., & Griffiths, T. L. (2022). Globally inaccurate stereotypes can result from locally adaptive exploration. Psychological Science. [paper][data & code][slides]

  • Presented at Social Biases in Machine Learning and in Human Nature workshop​, Princeton, 2021.

  • A 15-min talk presented at the Computational Social Cognition symposium, SPSP, 2022.

• Bai, X., Ramos, M.R., & Fiske, S. T. (2020). As diversity increases, people paradoxically perceive social groups as more similar. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [paper][data & code][slides]

  • Featured in Princeton School of Public and International Affairs News, The Conversation, and The Greater Good at Berkeley​

• Grigoryan, L., Bai, X., Durante, F., Fiske, S. T., Fabrykant, M., Maloku, E., Verbilovich, V., Hakobjanyan, A., Kadirov, K., Mullabaeva, N., Makashyili, A., Morozova-Larina, O., Yahiiaiev, I., Samekin, A., Berdyna, E. M. (2020). Stereotypes as historical accidents: Images of social class in post-communist versus capitalist societies. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. [paper] [data & code][slides]​

  • Winner of SPSP Student Publication Prize​

In leisure time, I dance (hip-hop), walk (my malamute), and play (mahjong).

© 2022 By Xuechunzi Bai. All rights reserved.