Growing up in a favela in the northeast of Brazil, I was aware of deep social inequalities from a very young age. This awareness fueled my desire to understand the underlying mechanisms of social structures that sustain and perpetuate these injustices. It was precisely the interplay between the individual and society that ultimately drew me to personality and social psychology. I wanted to explore not just the “what,” but also the “why” and the “how” behind behaviors and attitudes that systematically disadvantage low-status groups, particularly in contexts as critical as healthcare. Through this field, I’ve been able to delve into these questions, contributing to research that seeks to understand and improve health outcomes for minoritized individuals. Beyond research, I have also had the opportunity to teach courses on social psychology, psychological assessment, health disparities, and advanced quantitative and qualitative methods. In these courses, I strive to equip students with the theoretical and methodological tools to critically examine social inequalities and their psychological consequences. Additionally, I have been actively engaged in outreach initiatives aimed at bridging the gap between academia and the communities most affected by systemic inequities. By combining rigorous research, teaching, and community engagement, I am committed to using psychology as a tool for social transformation.

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I hold a five-year Bachelor’s degree in Clinical Psychology from the Federal University of Campina Grande (UFCG, Brazil), followed by a Master’s degree in Social Psychology from the Federal University of Paraíba (UFPB, Brazil), recognized by both the University of Minho (UMinho, Portugal) and ISCTE - University Institute of Lisbon (ISCTE-IUL, Portugal). I earned my PhD in Social Psychology at the Faculty of Psychology, University of Lisbon (FP-ULisbon, Portugal), in collaboration with the Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon (ICS-UL, Portugal), and the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU, USA). During my PhD, I served as a Visiting Researcher at the Discrimination and Health Research Lab at VCU and participated in two summer schools organized by the European Association of Social Psychology (EASP): one at the University of Surrey (UNIS, England) and another the Uniwersytet SWPS (SWPS, Poland). Additionally, I took part in three Erasmus+ programs (QHelp – Higher Learning Education for Quantitative Thinking) at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven, Belgium), Università Degli Studi di Padova (UniPd, Italy) and at the University of Lisbon (ULisbon, Portugal). I completed my postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Public Health Sciences at the School of Medicine, University of Virginia (UVA, USA). Currently, I am a Junior Researcher at ISCTE-IUL and an Associated Researcher at ICS-UL.

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My doctoral research investigated the impact of patients’ skin color on providers’ time investment in medical decision-making, an unobtrusive discriminatory behavior known as the Intergroup Time Bias (ITB) effect. Specifically, my studies conducted in Brazil, Portugal, and the USA consistently found that White providers invested more time in White patients than in Black patients. More importantly, we found that this time investment bias adversely affects the quality of diagnoses, clinical recommendations, and communication provided to patients. This line of research highlights time as a crucial factor in the context of healthcare disparities and has earned significant recognition, including a Summa Cum Laude distinction from the FP-UL, as well as the 2024 Social Personality and Health Network Outstanding Dissertation Award and the 2024 Social Issues Dissertation Award from the Social Personality and Health Network and the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (APA - Division 9).

 

My postdoctoral work, centered on developing and testing interventions aimed at reducing implicit racial biases among healthcare providers. Currently, as a Junior Researcher at ISCTE-IUL and an Associate Researcher at ICS-UL, I build on this foundation by applying social psychological theories and innovative methods—such as virtual reality and physiological measures—to identify and address inequalities. My work examines, in a cross-cultural way, both the oppressor perspective, investigating the psychosocial mechanisms of negative attitudes and discriminatory behaviors, and the oppressed perspective, exploring how systemic biases affect the mental health of minoritized individuals.[1]

 

[1] The terms oppressor and oppressed reflect Paulo Freire’s framework on systemic power imbalances.