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Shaun was a concurrent degree program student and in the lab from 2016-2018. He is now working as a Management Associate at DBS Bank. At heart, Shaun loves getting to know people and understanding what makes them tick. This love has not only led him to social psychology research, but also brought him to different countries all over the world. Shaun enjoys travelling, experiencing different cultures, and listening to people's stories from different walks of life.

Khai Qing is interested in social group memberships, intergroup processes, beliefs about change, and self-regulation. More specifically, she is interested in examining ways to improve intergroup relations and reduce social inequalities in the society.

Mike was a PhD student in our lab from 2018-2021. Mike's research focused on social and political psychology, specifically in the domains of intergroup relations, immigration, and national identity. Before pursuing his PhD, Mike was a Naval Combat Officer in the Republic of Singapore Navy (RSN), where he was busy defending the country through strategic policy planning at RSN HQ, as well as leading frontline operations on a state-of-the-art frigate. In his free time, Mike enjoys judo practice and also teaches Japanese to anyone who is interested. His favorite pastime is to get high on some bi-ru at izakayas. Mike is now Associate Director (Strategic Planning) at Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Institute of Policy Studies Social Lab.

Ismaharif is interested in how goal pursuit relates to society. For instance, how important goals shape political attitudes and behaviour. His research interests also includes group processes and intergroup relations. He hopes to pursue a multidisciplinary research that combines Communication Sciences and Psychology.

Christy is interested in studying the role of self-regulation and motivation in predicting well-being. Christy's research investigates the potential benefits of mindsets and emotion-regulation interventions to promote well-being in education and work. She likes to work with teenagers and families, and has worked as a family-child specialist and mental health counselor, providing individual counseling and facilitating group counseling for clients with mental health issues, especially education-related depression and anxiety.

Alethea is currently pursuing her PhD in cognitive and behavioral science at Kyoto University. She was a graduate from NUS and had a great time working with Dr Jia Lile as his research assistant. Her mind is constantly barraged by questions about why people feel or act the way they do, and how to better understand and help people too. Pursuing psychology became a means for her to find answers to these internal questions and her research interests lies in emotions and positive psychology with a focus on improving people's well-being.

Lisa was our Research Apprentice in 2020-2021. Lisa is interested in understanding how emotions and mental states affect attitudes and behavior, and the role of motivational processes underlying goal pursuit. Outside of work, Lisa likes to experiment with baking and cooking, and attempts to keep fit through playing the occasional netball game with friends. Lisa is now a Research Assistant at the Centre for Translational Magnetic Resonance Research, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, Multimodal Neuroimaging in Neuropsychiatric Disorders Laboratory (MNNDL).

Peiwei was a Concurrent Degree Program student from 2012-2017, supervised by Dr Jia. Her research topic focused on how Singaporeans’ basic psychological needs and their attitude towards immigrants are related. She is currently working as a psychologist and her biggest client is her husband, who suffers from the delusion that infinity stones exist and that red M&Ms are reality Stones.

I am interested in the study of goal pursuit in education, with emphasis on the interplay between sociocultural (e.g., parental attitudes), socioecological (e.g., educational inequality), and intrapersonal factors (e.g., mindsets) on motivation, passion, and academic achievement. My additional interests include topics relating to social identity, having worked on several projects in my infancy as a researcher.

Lydia is interested in how personal values and motivations affect job performance. She often motivates herself with the prospect of an ice cold beer.

As a member of the lab from 2015 to 2018, Huixiang worked with Dr Jia on the topic of inspiration. More specifically, she investigated whether locals would be inspired by immigrants, and the subsequent effects on the locals’ goal pursuit. Her research interests span from moral psychology to IO psychology. In her free time, Hui Xiang enjoys reading and dragging her friends along on food hunts with her. She is currently working on behavioural science research in DSO.

As someone who has been fortunate enough to cross paths with a slew of inspiring and nurturing teachers over the past 20 years of formal education, it is my sincerest hope to be able to pay it forward by contributing towards the field of education myself.

I have completed my PhD in Social Psychology under the guidance of Dr. Jia Lile at the National University of Singapore and am currently working as a research fellow at Singapore Management University's Center for Teaching Excellence.

Research Interests: Goal pursuit, metamotivation, interpersonal communication, psychometrics, pedagogy

Daniel is a curious inquisitive who questions the mundane to fuel his fire for investigation. When not doing research, Daniel enjoys working out at the gym, playing tabletop roleplaying or single player games, writing, music, drawing, learning new things and tweaking workflows to increase productivity.

Jethro was a member of the lab from 2016-2018. He studied the function of desirability and feasibility considerations of gatekeepers providing vicarious help seeking to persons at-risk. He is a senior researcher at the Ministry of Home Affairs, Singapore. In his free time, Jethro hunts for the infinity stones. The reality stone is currently in his possession.

While in the lab from 2015 to 2017, Peishi examined whether social connectedness induced by arbitrary group membership can positively promote self-control. In between work and social commitments, Peishi is also busy correcting misconceptions towards psychology majors (“No, we can’t read minds and I can’t offer you therapy”), inhaling food, and trying to stay out of the omnipresent sun. Pei Shi is now a research officer at the Geriatric Education & Research Institute.

GroupsAlumni

Jose is interested in a variety of topics including mating, negotiations, power, and group processes and then asking the ultimate question "why?" which Jose reckons evolutionary theory does a fairly good job addressing. Jose has an almost split-personality approach to life: on the one hand an intense antisocial hermit (which is great for research and his pursuits in art), on the other someone who's drawn to large, collective, and boisterous expressions of joie de vivre and strobe lights (read: rave parties) and leads a second life as a trance DJ in an alternate universe.

Wei Lun was a Master's student with our lab in 2019-2021. Wei Lun aspires to be a behavioural scientist. His research interests fall within four topic areas: Intergroup relations, social and person perception, need for control, and goal pursuit. Wei Lun’s empirical work thus far generally focuses on how social and cognitive processes influence one’s beliefs and attitudes. For example, during an internship with Defence Science Organisation, he investigated the influence of social norms on prosocial behaviours. His other academic works involved proposing how construal level theory can be used to mitigate intergroup bias, as well as examining shopping behaviours through the perspective of compensatory control theory. In the near future, he seeks to understand more about the processes underlying goal pursuit – specifically about why people communicate with others on their goal pursuit process. When he is not doing research, Wei Lun likes to do a variety of sports, including basketball and badminton. Wei Lun is now pursuing his PhD at NUS Business School.