JONATHAN DORISCAR

Hi, I’m Jonathan Doriscar. I’m a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in Social Psychology and a master’s student in Statistics and Data Science at Northwestern University. I am advised by Sylvia Perry and Wendi Gardner, and work closely with Tessa Charlesworth and William Brady at the Kellogg School of Management. Before Northwestern, I earned my B.A. in Psychology with a minor in Composition & Rhetoric from Knox College.

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My research examines how people respond when they confront evidence about bias and inequality—especially when that evidence challenges their sense of integrity at personal, relational, and collective levels. When individuals encounter information suggesting that they, their relationships, or the broader systems they belong to may not be as fair as assumed, they face a choice in how to respond. Some acknowledge the implication and revise their understanding. Others defend, justify, or reinterpret the information to preserve integrity.

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I study what happens after that moment. How do these responses take shape internally? How are they expressed in conversation? Which reactions become common, rewarded, or contagious? And how do they shape whether social change advances, stabilizes, or stalls?

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Across projects spanning bias feedback, public responses to police violence, and debates about demographic change, I combine experimental methods with large-scale computational analyses of online discourse. By tracing how acknowledgment and defensiveness emerge, interact, and spread, my work bridges psychology and data science to understand how societies confront—or resist—moral disruption.