Research Projects

*Wordcloud generated from thesis projects and conferences

Perception of Meaning and Happiness

• What is a meaningful life? Is a meaningful life the same as a happy life? We examined the role of benefits to society and benefits to oneself in people’s intuitions of meaning and happiness. We found that people emphasized benefits to society when making judgments about meaning, but consider benefits to society and benefits to oneself equally important when making judgments about happiness.
• Master Thesis (Manuscript in production)

How Do People Regulate Their Guilt?

• Guilt has been proven to motivate reparative behaviors. However, guilt decreases over time and what cognitive process is involved is unknown. Thus, the present study examined two possible cognitive strategies (rationalization and social norm) that people use to reduce the feeling of guilt. Though there was no significant difference between these two strategies, we found that the level of guilt was positively correlated with people's willingness towards prosocial behaviors.
• Honors Thesis

Social Comparison and Academic Self-Concept

• This honors course project sought to assess whether the direction of social comparison (i.e. upward/downward) and type of social comparison (i.e. comparing similarities/comparing differences) influenced the academic self-concept (Wigfield & Karpathian, 1991) of college undergraduate students.
• Psychology Honors Conference Poster