I’m currently a fifth-year PhD candidate at UCSD, working at the intersection between decision-making, social inferences, self-control, second-order preferneces, and causal reasoning.
2020-Present: PhD candidate McKenzie Lab, UCSD La Jolla, CA
Advisor: Craig McKenzie
Second-order preferences: undesirable desires and unachieved aspirations
(with Craig McKenzie, Shlomi Sher, & Piotr Winkielman)
Sometimes, we have conflicts between what we prefer (first-order preferences) and what we prefer to prefer (second-order preferences). What are the different types of second-order preferences that different philosophers talk about? Do people have a lay intuition of second-order preference conflicts, and distinguish them from self-control conflicts? When we have second-order preferences for having different core preferences that shape who we are, how should we act? I’m currently working on answering these questions. Read more!
Who accepts Description Invariance?
(with Craig McKenzie and Shlomi Sher)
Should we prefer 80%-lean beef to 20%-fat beef even if they’re the same thing? Framing effects are considered irrational because it violates the normative principle of Description Invariance. However, alternative normative accounts have been proposed that Description Invariance may not apply to framing effects. Is Description Invariance a normative criteria for assessing the rationality of framing effects? Leveraging the understanding/acceptance principle–which says that if a normative principle is true, then deeper understanding of it would lead to its acceptance–we test whether participants accept Description Invariance more after reading arguments for and against it (deeper understanding of it). We did not find evidence that deeper understanding of Description Invariance lead to its acceptance. Read more!
When default options explain away preferences: a causal reasoning account of preference inferences
(with Adena Schachner and Craig McKenzie)
We sometimes infer that people who actively switch away from a default option have stronger preferences than those who passively accept it. We propose a causal reasoning account to explain this asymmetric preference inference: while choice is often explained by preference, default options can sometimes provide alternative explanations for choice other than preference, weakening the interpretation that choices reflect preferences. Our account prediccts assymetric inferences in adults, but not in 7-8yr-old children. We are currently running new studies to expand the account and explore why children behave differently. Read more!
Self-nudges in the classroom
(with Celest Pilegard and Craig McKenzie)
Expanidng on pilot experiments on self-nudges (see below, I wanted to test the effectiveness of self-nudges in the real world–to see whether psychology students at UCSD can self-nudge by setting default options for themselves to successfully facilitate attending review sessions.
(with Lim Leong & Craig McKenzie)
Nudges are simple behavioral interventions that successfully change people’s behavior. However, nudges have been criticized to infringe upon people’s autonomy. Self-nudges, where people nudge themselves. Can people effectively nudge themselves? I found preliminary evidence that self-nudges–nudges implemented by oneself on oneself–are more effective than traditional nudges in facilitating self-control. Read more!
2020-2021: Graduate researcher at University of Edinburgh Edinburgh, UK
Advisors: René Mõttus and Billy Lee
I made use of a cross-cultural large personality dataset to compare the link between perceived control and well-being across cultures (with René Mõttus). I found that agentic control (taking action to change the environment) predicts well-being better in individualist cultures than in collectivist cultures at the country level, but adaptive control (adapting to the environment) predicts well-being better in individualist cultures than in collectivist cultures at the individual level.
2019: Grantee for Rosen Travel Grant Pomona College Claremont, CA
During my study abroad in France, I interviewed French strikers about their sense of conformity and group identity. I then conducted quantitative and qualitative analyses on how culture, conformity, and group identity motivate French and American strikers differently.
2017: Psychology research Intern at Mend Santa Monica, CA
Mend is an app that helps its users recover from relationship breakups through blogs and audio trainings. I conducted research on people’s psychological process when healing from a relationship breakup, and transformed my research into blogs, offering users behavioral advice to recover from relationship breakups.
2017: Research Assistant at Neural and Cultural Lab Pomona College Claremont, CA
I helped tested people’s reaction to social norm violations in different cultures.