Eric Shuman
Principle Invesitgator
I am currently an Assistant Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Virginia. I completed my Ph.D. at Hebrew University and the University of Groningen, and a post-doc at New York University and Harvard Business School. Broadly, I study the psychological processes underlying social change. More specifically, my research centers around three main topics: (1) the effects of different types of collective action on historically advantaged groups in society, (2) understanding and developing interventions to reduce the psychological roots of resistance to social change among advantaged groups, and (3) the psychological motivations to engage in different types of collective action. To study these topics, I integrate theory and methods from social psychology and political science, and employ a multi-method approach involving surveys, behavioral experiments, big data, and computational social science.
Wilson Berry
Wilson Berry is a doctoral student in social psychology at the University of Virginia. His research focuses on protest effectiveness and collective action, particularly on how strategies, group dynamics, and perceptions of protesters shape the ability of social movements to produce change over time. In his free time, Wilson enjoys running, watching movies, and spending time with his family.
Jackson Scharnell
Jackson is a first-year Ph.D. student in the Social Psychology program at the University of Virginia. He graduated from the University of California, Irvine in 2025 with a B.A. in Psychological Science. Under the mentorship of Paul Piff, he completed an honors thesis that developed a novel experimental paradigm to examine how experiencing unearned privilege influences prosocial behavior, redistribution preferences, and perceptions of inequality. He has also contributed to research on awe and social connection, including projects featured in the documentary Beyond Awestruck. Jackson's research seeks to understand the psychological mechanisms that perpetuate extreme economic inequality. He is particularly interested in how members of advantaged groups respond to evidence of unearned privilege, as well as how different forms of collective action can most effectively achieve social and political goals. He is also interested in the moral foundations of political polarization and the ways that "hot" cognition can deepen divisions between political outgroups. Outside of research, Jackson enjoys being in nature, reading Murakami novels, creating endless Spotify playlists, and spending time with friends.
.jpg)
CJ Ackerman-Garvin, Lab Manager
CJ is a fourth-year undergraduate double majoring in Psychology and English with a concentration in literary prose and minoring in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. They are interested in both quantitative and qualitative research on LGBTQ+ populations and LGBTQ+ rights, especially relating to queer and trans youth. Outside of the lab, they are the president of UVA’s Queer Student Union, a staff writer for Iris Magazine through the UVA Women's Center, a facilitator for Hoos Connected, a research assistant in UVA's Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department for a project on police brutality against LGBTQ+ individuals, and a Lawn resident. In their free time, they enjoy perusing the fiction, horror, and graphic novel sections of used bookstores, playing the oboe, and purchasing fun earrings.
.jpeg)
Isabella Sun
Isabella is a fourth-year undergraduate in the College of Arts and Sciences, double-majoring in Chinese and Psychology. She has spent her summers studying at NCCU in Taipei and ECNU in Shanghai, and most recently assisted in research under Yuji Naya and Cen Yang at Peking University. She is excited to bring her cross-cultural experiences to the research at the SPARC Lab. Outside of academics, she enjoys video games, junk journalling, and literature. In the future, she hopes to pursue forensic psychology.