Dr Chloe Bracegirdle
Academic and research departments
School of Psychology, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, Social Psychology Research Group.About
Biography
In December 2025, I joined the University of Surrey as a Surrey Future Fellow, where I am currently completing my British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship. My British Academy project, entitled “Breaking boundaries: Understanding the socio-psychological drivers of ethnic integration in schools”, examines the processes shaping integration in school friendship networks.
From 2024 to 2025, I held my British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of Sociology at the University of Oxford. Between 2020 and 2023, I was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Nuffield College, working on the project “Structural, cultural and social integration among youth: A multidimensional comparative project”.
I completed my DPhil in Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford in 2020. Prior to this, I received an MSc in Psychological Research from the University of Oxford in 2016 and a BSc in Psychology and Language Sciences from University College London in 2015.
ResearchResearch interests
My research examines how social networks shape individuals and societies, focusing especially on outcomes regarding intergroup relations and wellbeing. My past research has, for example, shed light on how friendship networks influence ethnic prejudice and perceptions of discrimination. I am currently working on projects that apply a social network framework to study ethnic integration, inequality, and mental health. A central strand of my research focuses on schools, where I investigate the structure and consequences of both positive relationships (e.g., friendship networks) and negative relationships (e.g., bullying networks). This work seeks to understand how social ties within educational settings shape developmental, social, and intergroup outcomes.
Research interests
My research examines how social networks shape individuals and societies, focusing especially on outcomes regarding intergroup relations and wellbeing. My past research has, for example, shed light on how friendship networks influence ethnic prejudice and perceptions of discrimination. I am currently working on projects that apply a social network framework to study ethnic integration, inequality, and mental health. A central strand of my research focuses on schools, where I investigate the structure and consequences of both positive relationships (e.g., friendship networks) and negative relationships (e.g., bullying networks). This work seeks to understand how social ties within educational settings shape developmental, social, and intergroup outcomes.
Publications
Highlights
Spiegler, O., Jonsson, J., & Bracegirdle, C. (2025). Religious development from adolescence to early adulthood among Muslim and Christian youth in Germany: A person-oriented approach. Child Development, 96(1), 141-160. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.14151
Wollast, R., Phillips, J. B., Bracegirdle, C., Spiegler, O., Sibley, C., Lacourse, E., & Sengupta, N. K. (2025). Modeling heterogeneity in the long-term trajectories of individuals’ well-being. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672251331654
Neji, S., Hewstone, M., Bracegirdle, C., & Christ, O. (2025). Perceived outgroup entitativity mediates stronger effects of intergroup contact for majority than minority status groups. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2025.104748
*Friehs, M., *Bracegirdle, C., Reimer, N., Wölfer, R., Schmidt, P., Wagner, U., & Hewstone, M. (2024). The between-person and within-person effects of intergroup contact on outgroup attitudes: A multi-context examination. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 15(2), 125-141. https://doi.org/10.1177/19485506231153017
Scharbert, J., Humberg, S., Kroencke, L., Reiter, T., Sakel, S., ter Horst, J., Utesch, K., Gosling, S., Harari, G., Matz, S., Schoedel, R., Stachl, C., Aguilar, N. M. A., Amante, D., Aquino, S. D., Bastias, F., Bornamanesh, A., Bracegirdle, C., Campos, L. . . . Back, M. D. (2024). Psychological well-being in Europe after the outbreak of war in Ukraine. Nature Communications, 15, 1202. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-44693-6
Bracegirdle, C., Reimer, N., Osborne, D., Sibley, C., Wölfer, R., & Sengupta, N. (2023). The socialization of perceived discrimination in ethnic minority groups. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 125(3), 571-589. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000426
Bracegirdle, C., Jonsson, J., & Spiegler, O. (2023). Neither friend nor foe: Ethnic segregation in school social networks. Socius, 9, 1-3. https://doi.org/10.1177/23780231231214956
Scharbert, J., Reiter, T., Sakel, S., ter Horst, J., Geukes, K., Gosling, S., Harari, G., Kroencke, L., Matz, S., Schoedel, R., Shani, M., Stachl, C., Talaifar, S., Aguilar, N., Amante, D., Aquino, S., Bastias, F., Biesanz, J. C., Bornamanesh, A., Bracegirdle, C., . . . Back, M. D. (2023). A global experience-sampling method study of well-being during times of crisis: The CoCo project. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 17(10), e12813. https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12813
Bracegirdle, C., Reimer, N., van Zalk, M., Hewstone, M., & Wölfer, R. (2022). Disentangling contact and socialization effects on outgroup attitudes in diverse friendship networks. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 122(1), 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000240
O'Donnell, A., Friehs, M., Bracegirdle, C., Zúñiga, C., Watt, S., & Barlow, F. (2021). Technological and analytical advancements in intergroup contact research. Journal of Social Issues, 77(1), 171-196. http://doi.org/10.1111/josi.12424
Plenty, S., Bracegirdle, C., Dollmann, J., & Spiegler, O. (2021). Changes in young adults' mental well-being before and during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic: Disparities between ethnic groups in Germany. Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health, 15(1), 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13034-021-00418-x
Through socialization in friendship networks, individuals' levels of prejudice become more similar to their friends' levels of prejudice over time. However, the potential consequences of socialization for prejudice in a social environment remain unknown, as research has yet to explore the size of the socialization effect. Using longitudinal social network analysis and empirically informed network simulations, the present research investigated the extent to which socialization among low-, medium-, and high-prejudice individuals relates to changes in attitudes toward ethnic and religious outgroups in school friendship networks ( = 2,484 adolescents in 10 German schools). Results from the longitudinal social network model showed that individuals' levels of prejudice became more similar to their friends' levels of prejudice over time, providing evidence of socialization. Results from the empirically informed network simulations revealed that socialization produced at most a 3% change in prejudice over 9 months, reflecting a small effect size akin to the effects of prejudice-reduction interventions. Increases, decreases, and stability in prejudice were observed in the simulations, depending on the initial levels of prejudice among individuals and their friends. Socialization was strongest among friends who held initially opposing attitudes, which led both high- and low-prejudice individuals to become more neutral over time. The findings thus suggest that socialization has a neutralizing effect, rather than a polarizing effect, on prejudice in adolescent friendship networks. This research has methodological implications for the estimation of effect sizes in psychological studies and practical implications for network interventions that aim to utilize socialization to reduce societal prejudice. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).