BA (Texas Tech University), PhD (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
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I am not accepting new graduate students for Fall 2026.
Research interests
Why is it that different people are perceived as more or less attractive, trustworthy, competent, or threatening? My work investigates the myriad factors that explain how perceivers form impressions of targets. This work encompasses topics such as stereotyping and discrimination, social categorization, face perception, and perceptions of bodies and clothing. I also grapple with issues of measurement and causal inference in the domain of person perception.
My research engages with key theories and models in social psychology while also integrating critical ideas from outside of psychology (e.g., intersectionality theory). In my work, I use a combination of experimental methods, secondary analysis of large datasets, simulation, and mixed methods.Ìý
Selected publications
- Hester, N.,Ìý& Hehman, E. (2023). Dress is a fundamental component of person perception. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 27,Ìý414-433.Ìý(winner of the ISCON Best Paper Award for 2023; )
- Hester, N., Axt, J. R., Siemers, N., & Hehman, E. (2023). Evaluating validity properties of 25 race-related scales. Behavior Research Methods, 55,Ìý1758-1777.
- Hester, N., Xie, S. Y., & Hehman, E. (2021). Little between-region and between-country variance when forming impressions of others. Psychological Science, 32,Ìý1907-1917.
- Hester, N., Jones, B. C., & Hehman, E. (2021). Perceived masculinity and femininity contribute independently to facial impressions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 150,Ìý1147-1164.
- Hester, N., Payne, K., Brown-Iannuzzi, J., & Gray, K. (2020). On intersectionality: How complex patterns of discrimination emerge from simple stereotypes. Psychological Science, 31,Ìý1013-1024.
- Hester, N., & Gray, K. (2020). The moral psychology of raceless, genderless strangers. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 15, 216-230.
- Hester, N. (2019). Perceived negative emotion in neutral faces: Gender-dependent effects on attractiveness and threat. Emotion, 19, 1490–1494.
- Hester, N. & Gray, K. (2018). For Black men, being tall increases threat stereotyping and police stops. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115,Ìý2711-2715.