Culture, Health & Emotion Laboratory

José Soto, Ph.D.

Director

José Soto

Dr. Soto is an Associate Professor in the Clinical Science Program at the Pennsylvania State University, where he has been since 2005. He received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of California, Berkeley in 2004. He completed his internship and postdoctoral training at UCSF/San Francisco General Hospital from 2004-2005. His teaching, service and scholarship focus on advancing knowledge that is informed by diversity. In particular, his research examines the intersections of culture, health, and emotion, with an emphasis on the study of ethnic minority culture and those experiences associated with ethnic minority status (discrimination, oppression, etc.). His work has been published in Emotion, the leading journal in emotion research, and other top journals such as Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Journal of Anxiety Disorders, and Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology. He is on the editorial board of Psychological Bulletin, Emotion, and Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology. Dr. Soto has received grant funding from the NIH to support his research and his work has been featured on national public radio and other media outlets throughout the U.S. He has received numerous awards for his work on diversity within academia and is the 2012 recipient of the Charles and Shirley Thomas Award from division 45 for his “significant contributions to the education and training of students of color as well as a professional presence within ethnic minority communities.” Dr. Soto is a fierce advocate for diversity, social justice and inclusion via his teaching, research and service roles.

Graduate Students

Sara Albrecht-Soto

Sara is a first year graduate student in Dr. Soto’s lab. She received her B.A. in Psychology and Spanish from Franklin and Marshall college in Lancaster, PA. She is interested in researching the concept of growth and resilience within a minority stress model specifically following experiences of racial discrimination. She is a strong advocate for equity and diversity issues within psychology and in the department.

Anna Salomaa

Anna successfully defended her dissertation in July 2020 and is now currently on a clinical internship at the Boston VA. The overarching goal of her research is to translate mapping the complexities of sexuality to the improvement of sexual minority health. Her primary areas of focus include issues in measuring sexual orientation in clinical and research settings and mechanisms behind and interventions against binegative attitudes among lesbian, gay, and heterosexual individuals that contribute to health disparities in bisexual people. In 2019, she received the Pennsylvania Psychological Foundation’s Student Multicultural Award. Anna is also the recipient of the 2018 Bisexual Issues Committee Foundation Award by APA's Division 44 (Society for the Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity) and used this grant to fund her dissertation research on bisexual prejudice and health. 

Natalia Van Doren

Natalia is a fifth year graduate student in the Clinical Psychology Ph.D. program and a former NIH / NIDA T-32 Pre-doctoral Fellow through the Prevention and Methodology Center at Penn State where she worked with Dr. Robert W. Roeser and Dr. Zita Oravecz. She received her B.A. in Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley.

Alumni

Sinhae Cho, PhD, Clinical Fellow, Department of Psychiatry, McLean Hospital

Mark R. Minnick, PhD, Clinical Psychologist, Syracuse VA Hospital