Address book
Contacts
CATERINA SUITNER
Position
Professoressa Associata
Address
VIA VENEZIA, 8 - PADOVA
Telephone
0498276362
Caterina Suitner is currently a social psychology associate professor at the University of Padova where she teaches the master's degree courses "Social influence and persuasion" and "Social Network Analyses", and the bachelor's degree course "Work and Organizational Psychology". In 2018 she was a visiting scholar at New York University. In 2017 she visited The New School for Social Research (NY) where she taught Psychology and Social Policy; in 2007, she visited for one year the University of Melbourne collaborating with prof. Yoshi Kashima and prof. Nick Haslam. She obtained her Ph.D. in 2009 and her doctoral dissertation was awarded the national prize as the best dissertation in Social Psychology by the Italian Association of Psychology (AIP). In 2012 she taught Communication and Persuasion (undergraduate level) at the University of Padova. She has supervised several under- and post-graduate students, Ph.D. students, and post-doc researchers. She is an active member of the scientific community being a full member of the European Association of Social Psychology (EASP), and a member of several assessment committees for Ph.D. candidates in Social Psychology (at La Sapienza University, Rome; ISCTE-IUL, University of Lisbon and ISPA; University of Otago), reviewer for the top journals in her field, former editor in chief of the European Journal of Social Psychology. She was elected member of the Executive Committee of the social session of the Association of Italian Psychologists (AIP) and selected member of the Equal Opportunity Committee (Comitato Unico di Garanzia, CUG) of the University of Padova. Editor in chief for the European Journal of Psychology for the years 2011-2013. Her main research areas focus on the relation between language use and social cognition, on Trust in Science, and on the role of writing direction in social targets’ representations from an embodied perspective (i.e., Spatial Agency Bias). She is also interested in cross-cultural psychology, stereotyping, and economic inequality. Her research is published in journals such as Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Journal of Experimental Psychology, European Journal of Social Psychology, and Social Cognition. Her research has been funded by both National (Italian Ministry of education) and International (European Association of Social Psychology) organizations.
Notices
Orari di ricevimento
Il 10 febbraio 2026 il ricevimento è spostato alle ore 12.30 Mar08:3010:30Zoom: https://unipd.zoom.us/j/8495537108Il ricevimento è libero, ovvero io sarò su zoom nelle ore indicate (eventuali cambiamenti sono segnalati negli avvisi) e non serve fissare appuntamenti per parlarmi. Basta presentarsi al link di zoom. Se desiderate un appuntamento in presenza potete contattarmi via email.\nAd agosto e durante le feste il ricevimento è sospeso. A causa di imprevedibili impegni accademici contingenti, il ricevimento studenti potrebbe venire spostato. Si raccomanda di controllare la pagina degli avvisi in cui vengono pubblicate le eventuali variazioni.
Research Area
1. Body concealment\nSelf-objectification is a phenomenon by which individuals, primarily women, internalize an observer perspective towards their own bodies as an outcome of sexual objectification, and thus perceive themselves and their value through the lenses of an external, sexually objectifying gaze. Self-objectification is related to women's mental health (e.g., depression and eating disorders), body shame, sexual dysfunctions, and overall well-being (Calogero & Tantleff-Dunn, 2011). This line of research investigates the effects of self-objectification on women's attitudes towards their bodies and their clothing choices.\n\n- McKay, T. (2013). Female self-objectification: Causes, consequences and prevention. McNair Scholars Research Journal, 6(1), 7.\n- Roberts, T.-A., Calogero, R. M., & Gervais, S. J. (2018). Objectification theory: Continuing contributions to feminist psychology. In C. B. Travis, J. W. White, A. Rutherford, W. S. Williams, S.L. Cook, & K. F. Wyche (Eds.), APA handbook of the psychology of women: History, theory, and battlegrounds (pp. 249–271). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000059-013\n- Karsay, K. (2020). Objectification. In The International Encyclopedia of Media Psychology, J. Bulck (Ed.). https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119011071.iemp0141\n- Karsay, K., Knoll, J., & Matthes, J. (2018). Sexualizing Media Use and Self-Objectification: A Meta-Analysis. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 42(1), 9-28. https://doi.org/10.1177/0361684317743019\n- You can find other relevant literature here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1jF9ql2NGY-rf3TctbBgCi5wkOYtREBEa\n\n2. Fake news, Conspiracy theories, and trust in science\nSkepticism toward science is emerging in recent movements questioning vaccination safety or climate change. Often the skepticism is associated with conspiracy beliefs that undermine the trust in institutions, suggesting simple and engaging explanations of complex events. This line of research addresses the cognitive and motivational underpinnings of such beliefs and the communication strategies (e.g, false balance phenomena) that may contribute to decision making.\n\nSalvador Casara, B. G., Suitner, C., & Bettinsoli, M. L. (2019). Viral suspicions: Vaccine hesitancy in the Web 2.0. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 25(3), 354.\nDouglas, K. M., Uscinski, J. E., Sutton, R. M., Cichocka, A., Nefes, T., Ang, C. S., & Deravi, F. (2019). Understanding conspiracy theories. Political Psychology, 40, 3-35.\n\n\n3. Language and agency\n\nAgency is a core dimension of social cognition, featuring stereotype content and intergroup biases. Language can capture such dimensions in blatant (be strong!) or subtle ways. This line of research addresses the subtle expression of agency through language, for example by means of verbs, word ordering, active or passive forms.\nSuch cues of agency are investigated through a socio-cognitive lens, showing the role of language in creating maintaining and shaping social order.\n\nThis research grounds firmly in the activities of the Social Grammar Lab, where you can find further literature and information: https://gsr-lab.com/
Thesis proposals
1. Self-objectification and body attitudes
Self-objectification is a phenomenon by which individuals, primarily women, internalize an observer perspective towards their own bodies as an outcome of sexual objectification, and thus perceive themselves and their value through the lenses of an external, sexually objectifying gaze. Self-objectification is related to women's mental health (e.g., depression and eating disorders), body shame, sexual dysfunctions, and overall well-being (Calogero & Tantleff-Dunn, 2011). This line of research investigates the effects of self-objectification on women's attitudes towards their bodies and their clothing choices.
You can find relevant literature here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1jF9ql2NGY-rf3TctbBgCi5wkOYtREBEa
2. Gender discrimination in the workplace is often rooted in structural power imbalances. Building on recent research on decentralized organizations (Filippi, Peters & Suitner, 2024) and masculine organizational cultures (Berdahl et al., 2018), this research line explores whether shared decision-making is associated with lower perceptions of gender discrimination. We will examine whether employees who perceive their workplace as more decentralized also perceive it as less shaped by masculine norms and, in turn, report lower expectations of gender discrimination. By shifting attention from individual-level fixes to organizational structures, this research aims to highlight decentralization as a promising yet understudied lever for fostering more inclusive workplaces.
3. Dynamic Big Two
People make sense of the social world by assigning traits to themselves, others, and social groups. The well-established Big Two framework identifies agency (goal achievement, competition, self-interest) and communion (bonding, cooperation, trust) as the core dimensions of these trait attributions. This project takes an innovative approach by focusing on the dynamic interplay of agency and communion over time and across observations. Moving beyond static models, it adopts a complex dynamic systems perspective to capture how these dimensions shift reciprocally in response to contextual demands
Abele, A. E., Ellemers, N., Fiske, S. T., Koch, A., & Yzerbyt, V. (2021). DOI 10.1037/rev0000262
Dalege, J., Borsboom, D., Van Harreveld, F., Van den Berg, H., Conner, M., & Van der Maas, H. L. (2016). DOI 10.1037/rev0000024
Kervyn, N., Fiske, S. T., & Yzerbyt, V. (2015). DOI 10.1027/1864-9335/a000219
4. Hate Speech: The literature has tackled the issue of hate speech from different perspectives using different definitions. A thesis using the approach of the systematic review (PRISMA) is here proposed to understand the nuances of the different definitions.
Cervone, C., Augoustinos, M., & Maass, A. (2021). The language of derogation and hate: Functions, consequences, and reappropriation. Journal of language and social psychology, 40(1), 80-101.
Fasching, N., & Lelkes, Y. (2025, July). Model-Dependent Moderation: Inconsistencies in Hate Speech Detection Across LLM-based Systems. In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2025 (pp. 22271-22285).
https://www.prisma-statement.org/scoping
Please consult the field of research areas for further details and relevant references to read.
