Welcome!

I am a sixth-year Ph.D. candidate in Psychology at the University of California, Irvine. As a social psychologist, I take ecological and evolutionary approaches to group psychology and subjective well-being, weighing the costs and benefits of group living across different ecologies. My research examines how people leverage group belonging to survive and reproduce in response to ecological pressures, and how these dynamics shape well-being. I primarily work with Dr. Oliver Sng on topics such as:

• When do people prefer inclusive versus exclusive ingroups, and why?
• When do people feel warmth or hostility toward unknown others, and why?
• Do the things that make us happy differ across ecologies?
• Do the things that happiness brings differ across ecologies?
• How does ecology shape culture?

Tracing back to the start of my academic journey, I earned my B.A. and M.A. in Psychology from Yonsei University under the advice of Dr. Eunkook Mark Suh. During my master’s degree, I studied the relationship between happiness and human prosociality from an evolutionary perspective, showing that happier people help strangers more because they perceive those strangers as more similar to their own family relatives than less happy people do.

In my free time, I love spending time in nature and sometimes going wildlife watching. I also love watching movies and nature documentaries. I especially love watching my favorite movies/documentaries multiple times!

Education

Ph.D. Candidate in Psychology (UC Irvine; 2020 - Present)
M.A. in Psychology (Yonsei University; 2016 - 2018)
B.A. in Psychology (Yonsei University; 2012 - 2016)