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Michael Kraus

Professor of Psychology
Michael Kraus

Morton O. Schapiro IPR Faculty Fellow

Research Areas:
Policy Discourse and Decision Making, Race, Poverty, and Inequality

Michael Kraus is a social psychologist who specializes in understanding the psychological processes—the affective states, motivations, and relational strategies—that maintain and perpetuate or resist and dismantle dimensions of societal inequity. His research has examined this topic through a variety of research methods that involve controlled laboratory and field experiments, attitude surveys, ethological observations, psychophysiological and nonverbal assessments of group interactions, and qualitative interviews.  

Kraus is a leading expert in the social psychology of inequality and a fellow of the Society for Experimental Social Psychology, the Association for Psychological Science (APS), and the Society for Social and Personality Psychology (SPSP). He has received awards for outstanding research through the APS Rising Stars program, the SPSP Sage Young Scholars Award, and the Committee for the Study of Socioeconomic Status at the American Psychological Association. He has also received an award for outstanding mentorship in social sciences from Yale University and for service to SPSP. 

Before arriving at Northwestern, he received his bachelor's degree in psychology and sociology at The University of California, Berkeley, and later received his doctorate in social psychology. Kraus has held appointments as a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation, an associate professor in organizational behavior at Yale University, and an assistant professor of social psychology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. 

Current Research

Fostering solidarity, cooperation, and collective action across groups. When people from different social groups interact, conflict can often result. In ongoing research, Kraus is examining the psychological processes and social contexts that allow people from very different walks of life to understand their differences, not as a point of contention and competition, but as a basis for understanding, similarity, and ultimately action for the common good. Some of his research on this topic finds that understanding past experiences with discrimination allows Asian Americans to feel more solidarity and cooperation with Black Americans. 

Motivating regulation and human needs around AI. As AI technology advances rapidly, there is a growing concern that human needs will be left out of the design equation. As such, some of Kraus’ ongoing work is attempting to better understand the persuasive messages that make AI users more critical about the ways that companies are advancing and deploying this technology. Current ongoing research examines how the salience of climate and economic harms of AI can galvanize support for regulation of the technology. 

Promoting a living wage for all Americans. The federal minimum wage has not changed in decades, despite increases in cost-of-living. These conditions make obtaining a living wage a challenge for many Americans. In this research, Kraus takes a psychological approach to living wages, asking a socioeconomically diverse sample of Americans what amount of money they would need to survive, live with enough, and thrive. The answers that people give provide a foundation for understanding how progressive taxation policies might be framed to enlist those with greater resources to support families with less. Current ongoing research tests these and other strategies for developing economic policy support for a more equitable society. 

Selected Publications

Kraus, M. W., Lherisson, Q. T., Smutz, A. M., Burns, M. E., Sanji, D. J., Davis, K. M., Vinluan, A. C., & Dupree, C. H. (2026). A PUBLIC framework for the political psychology of inequality. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 26(2), 65-75.  

Vinluan, A. C., & Kraus, M. W. (2026). Asian American Worker Experiences of Remote Work, Discrimination, and Solidarity. Collabra: Psychology, 12(1), 158154. 

Burns, M. E., & Kraus, M. W. (2025). Worker-organization goal misalignment and collective action. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 25, e70044. 

Kraus, M., D. Sanji, M. Burns, I. Cha-Ju, A. da Silva Frost, A. Vinluan, L. Hollie, and C. Dupree. 2025. The psychology of inequality as domination and resistance. Nature Reviews Psychology 4: 669–79.  

Torrez, B., C. Dupree, and M. Kraus. 2024. How race influences perceptions of objectivity and hiring preferences. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 110: 104524.   

Torrez, B., C. Dupree, and M. Kraus. 2024. Objectivity interrogation of racial scholarship in psychology and management. Scientific Reports 14(1): 1–11.  

Torrez, B., L. Hollie, J. Richeson, and M. Kraus. 2024. The misperception of organizational racial progress toward diversity, equity, and inclusion. American Psychologist 79(4): 581–92.  

Park, J., M. Burns, and M. Kraus. 2023. A psychological approach to living wages. PsyArXiv. doi:10.31234/osf.io/kds9c.   

Kraus, M. and A. Vinluan. 2023. Reminders of Japanese redress increase Asian American support for Black reparations. Communications Psychology 1: 33.   

Callaghan, B., Q. Delgadillo, and M. Kraus. 2022. The influence of signs of social class on compassionate responses to people in need. Frontiers in Psychology 13: 936170.   

Park, J., P. Vani, S. Saint-Hilaire, and M. Kraus. 2022. Disadvantaged group activists’ attitudes toward advantaged group allies in social movements. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 98: 104226.