Joseph M. Quinn

DEMC Lab | CV | Google Scholar | LinkedIn

I'm an Assistant Professor of Sociology at The University of South Carolina. I use experiments, surveys, and computational models to ask how cognitive mechanisms combine with organizational structures to (1) shape peoples' emotions and behaviors regarding members of different groups, and (2) reproduce or modify broad social patterns like segregation and stratification.

Much of my ongoing work uses experimental or quasi-experimental manipulations of networks, group arrangements, and long-term social exposures to explore when and how structural arrangements and repeated exchanges cause people to form or revise beliefs and behave cooperatively at the micro level - and how these changes can lead to cultural evolution at the macro level.

Here are some questions I'm currently asking:

• Why do people stay in groups that reject their beliefs? Does doing so cause belief change?
• How do social network mechanisms shape support-seeking and well-being in organizations?
• Did the Covid-19 pandemic cause culture-wide belief change about certain occupations?
• Who do people prefer to compete with? Existing or new ties? In-group or out-group members?
• Does the motherhood penalty operate differently when mothers work from home? Or as their kids age?

I got my PhD in sociology at Duke University, specializing in network methods and social psychology. Before that, I worked at MDRC in support of several large-scale program evaluations funded by the Institute of Educational Sciences, the US Department of Education, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. And before that, I taught physics and coached soccer at McKinley Technology High School in DC (Go Trainers!) and volunteered as a research assistant at the Poverty and Inequality Research Lab at Johns Hopkins.

Students collaborate with me via my working group, the Dynamic Environments and Meaning Change Lab (DEMC). Check out our website (link above) for more info.