All of us have parts of ourselves that we hide from other people, and it’s hard to know who we can safely share this personal information with. In psychology, this decision-making process is known as visibility management, and understanding how visibility management affects our relationships can help create stronger and safer bonds with our friends, family, and loved ones. Rebecca Munnell McHugh holds a Masters of Science and Ph.D. in Applied Developmental Psychology, and has been with Pitt-Bradford since 2016. She teaches Introduction to Psychology as well as an array of developmental psychology courses. Since 2001, she has been involved in a wide variety of research projects ranging from surveys to programmatic evaluations, clinical studies, meta-analyses, instrument development, and interview studies. She is passionate about teaching and student engagement in research and works collaboratively with students and alumni on a number of projects. Some of these overlap with her developmental training (for example, analyzing facial characteristics for gender markers in children’s cartoon characters) while some align with her work with stigmatized communities. Her research primarily focuses on the pressures and coping mechanisms of members of microcommunities through a process called Visibility Management, a decision-making process for dealing with stigma and interpersonal relationships. By exploring this process in a number of different communities she has the opportunity to meet and work with people in many different walks of life, and to explore many different cultures and experiences. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx
