Doctoral Researcher Malin Ekelund delivered an insightful talk titled “Adjudicating Asylum Claims of Sexual or Gender Minority Applicants” at the Lunch Seminars in Minority Studies. The program took place on 15th October, 2025, at the Seminar room Camera Obscura at Åbo Akademi and was also streamed online.

Malin presents the Psych-AID

Malin Presenting the Asylum system

Audience Present at the Presentation

During her presentation, Malin highlighted some challenges with asylum adjudication, the role psychologists can play in helping to improve the system, and some research from the Psych-AID project. She concluded with a discussion of the findings from her recent experiment, in which she tested the stereotype-matching hypothesis in asylum credibility assessments. In this study, she explored how stereotypes and social perceptions shape credibility assessments in asylum cases involving sexual identity. The results showed that stereotype-congruence did not affect credibility judgments, and perceived moral character was the strongest predictor of credibility. Interestingly, competence negatively predicted credibility—possibly reflecting suspicion toward applicants seen as “too capable.” The preprint of the experiment can be found here.

The slides of the presentation can be found below