Jessica Trickey
Jessica Trickey is a 3rd year PhD candidate in Social Psychology at the University of Waterloo, supervised by Dr. Hilary Bergsieker. Her doctoral research delves into the influence of perceived psychological standing to confront discrimination as a function of group membership. Traditionally, psychological standing is viewed as a singular construct; however, Jessica’s research is pioneering in its examination of standing as comprising two related but distinct constructs: relevance to the issue and responsibility to challenge the issue. Her work finds that these components, though positively correlated, have differential effects on expected backlash for challenging discrimination, posing a potential mechanism for allyship behaviour.
Jessica's M.A. research focused on the impact of company inclusion cues, including leader profiles, diversity statements, and external employee reviews, promoting allyship and advocacy against discrimination. Her findings demonstrated that inclusive cues significantly enhance intentions to act as allies and advocates for individuals higher in conservative political identification, thereby fostering a more supportive and proactive community against bias.
Jessica's subsequent studies will explore the link between perceived standing and allyship behaviour intentions as well as understanding perceptions of who is most appropriate to confront discrimination. Through her program of research, Jessica aims to understand and catalyze allyship behaviour from privileged group members to build a more inclusive environment for marginalized group members.
Throughout her graduate career, Jessica has been an active member of the Engendering Success in STEM (ESS) research consortium. In this role, she has contributed to the development and analysis of interventions aimed at increasing allyship behaviour and improving fit and inclusion within STEM organizations. The ESS project has involved active collaboration with several organizations to conduct longitudinal field studies that apply existing social psychological theory to applied organizational settings. Findings from this research program include the potential for inclusion workshops, relative to STEM-typical leadership skills workshops, to increase allyship behaviour and the recognition of gender bias, as well as the unique positive impacts of allyship from men for women’s outcomes (e.g., fit and engagement) in STEM.
Jessica has also served as Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) manager for the University of Waterloo Alternative Fuels Team (UWAFT), a student design team in the Faculty of Engineering. Her role has involved data analysis, designing and implementing initiatives to promote EDI, and creating plans for outreach with Indigenous communities, including the Six Nations of the Grand River. Additionally, she has served as the social area’s Brown Bag coordinator and the social area representative for the Graduate Association for Students in Psychology (GASP).
Jessica's dedication to her field is evident through her awards and recognitions, such as the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Master’s Award, the Ontario Graduate Scholarship, and the Mark Zanna Graduate Scholarship. Her scholarly contributions are also marked by a range of presentations at prestigious conferences, including the Network Gender and STEM in Heidelberg, Germany, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology in the United States, and the Canadian Psychology Association.
Looking ahead, Jessica aims to continue integrating her research with practical applications, contributing to the academic community and beyond by fostering environments that challenge discrimination and support diverse group dynamics. Her rigorous training and innovative approach to research have equipped her to make significant contributions to both the academic and applied aspects of social psychology.
Check out some of Jessica’s research and service work:
Diversity and Intergroup Relations Lab
University of Waterloo Alternative Fuels Team
Amy Minnikin
Amy is a 4th year Ph.D. candidate in the Industrial-Organizational area supervised by Dr. James Beck. Amy’s research focuses on feedback in the workplace. Specifically, Amy is interested in the contributions and perspective of the feedback source to feedback processes. Feedback has been linked to many positive outcomes, such as improved performance, greater well-being, and higher job satisfaction. However, providing detailed, specific, and sensitively delivered feedback requires managers to allocate a great deal of time, energy, and attention. Managers tend to face many competing demands on these resources, and thus, providing feedback to subordinates sometimes falls by the wayside.
Additionally, interpersonal factors also influence managers’ feedback behaviour. Providing feedback, particularly negative feedback, can be awkward and uncomfortable. As a result, managers sometimes avoid providing negative feedback, even though the would-be recipient could benefit from hearing it. If managers don’t put in the effort needed to providing feedback, many stakeholders lose out on the associated benefits of high-quality feedback.
Amy’s dissertation focuses on identifying one potential roadblock that prevents managers from putting sufficient effort into providing their subordinates with feedback: manager perceptions of subordinate mental health. That is, managers may not allocate as many resources to providing feedback to subordinates whom they perceive to have poor mental health for two reasons. First, managers may have a lower perceived likelihood that the subordinate will be able to make performance improvements. Second, managers may have a higher perceived likelihood that the subordinate will have emotional reactions to the feedback received.
She continued her 5-year streak of presenting at the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology Annual Conference this year by presenting a poster providing support for the above predictions. Amy published her Master’s thesis in the Journal of Buisness and Psychology, and has received support from both SSHRC and OGS. This year, she received the Industrial-Organizational Psychology Award at UW.
Amy chose to pursue her Master’s degree in I-O at UW because she was interested in a career in which she could apply psychological concepts to real-world problems. At the end of her master’s, she felt she still had more to accomplish, and much more to learn from her supervisor. Thus, although not initially her plan, she decided to stay for her Ph.D. Amy is grateful to her supervisor, James, for his support over these many years. She is particularly thankful for his ability to teach whole courses worth of complex statistical concepts in a one-hour meeting. She would also like to thank the other faculty in the I-O division for their willingness to help and provide constructive feedback!