About Me

I was born in Taipei, Taiwan, and spent the first three years of my life there before moving to America with my family to California in pursuit of better opportunities.

I started college at Mt. San Antonio College, my local community college in Walnut, California. Thanks to the support of numerous mentors and after earning associate degrees in psychology and political science, I transferred to the University of California, Berkeley, where I earned a bachelors degree in psychology with high distinction and completed an honors thesis.

Upon arriving in Berkeley, I began a research position in Ozlem Ayduk and Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton's Relationships and Social Cognition Lab that would last the rest of my undergraduate studies and turn into a postgraduate lab manager position. During my time as an undergraduate, I also worked closely with Joseph Campos in the Infant Studies Center, was an undergraduate research assistant in Dacher Keltner's Social Interaction Lab, and spent a summer as a research intern in New Haven at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence under Marc Brackett.

Since the summer of 2018, I have been a PhD student in Cornell University's Social and Personality Psychology graduate program. With Vivian Zayas, I am examining the psychological and behavioral consequences of ambiguous social interaction dynamics (e.g., what happens when you benefit from social preferential treatment?) and testing ways to foster social connection and mitigate social disconnection. With Tom Gilovich, I am investigating an extension to the spotlight effect that focuses on social connections, conversation and conversation dynamics, and the role of gratitude in costly prosocial actions.

In a related line of research, I am working with Ovul Sezer and Gordon Pennycook to examine whether people overestimate, underestimate, or accurately perceive the likelihood and consequences of "being canceled."

In collaboration with Vivian Zayas, Valerie Reyna, and Yuichi Shoda (University of Washington), I am examining how perceptions of research findings change depending on how they are presented. With Vivian Zayas Yuichi Shoda, I am developing methodological tools to understand the normative and idiosyncratic nature of a person’s “behavioral signatures."

In collaboration with Cindy Hazan and Vivian Zayas, I am investigating how individuals fulfill their attachment needs across different members of their social networks, while also meeting the needs of others within these networks.

Many of my research projects are possible because of my wonderful research team.

For fun, I enjoy going to concerts, eating spicy food, watching movies, and supporting the California Golden Bears and Cornell Big Red. I have a cat named Cucumber.