Nicole Tausch is a social psychologist broadly interested in intergroup relations and conflict, prejudice and discrimination, and social perception. She has in the past investigated the effects of cross-community contact in Northern Ireland and India, the importance of different types of threat in shaping intergroup attitudes, the role of cognitive and motivational factors in trait attribution (in particular the attribution of warmth and competence to other people and groups), and the effects of ideological orientation and cognitive preferences on stereotype maintenance.

Her current lines of research include (1) factors influencing willingness to participate in normative and non-normative political action, in particular injustice and efficacy appraisals and group-based emotions (anger and contempt), (2) psychological consequences of participating in normative and non-normative collective action, and (3) the potential counter-productive effects of intergroup contact in achieving social change towards group equality.

She was recently funded by the British Academy and the Economic and Social Research Council (jointly with Russell Spears at Cardiff University) to investigate the roles of social context, injustice appraisals and group-based emotions in predicting different forms of political participation and support for political violence.