My research investigates people’s responses to challenging information pertaining to change. In particular, I examine when and how change is embraced in one’s attitude or behavior across domains of health and climate issues. Some of this research also focuses on how group and collective processes complicate change. This work centers fundamental psychological theories and holds applied policy and intervention implications:

• What is the nature of our decision-making biases towards status quo options? (5)

• How do visual aid designs influence health and risk information processing, including in emotionally salient and contentious contexts like Covid-19? (3)

• Does awareness of progress influence perceptions that change is still needed, particularly in workplace and organizational contexts? (6)

• Can short-term solutions focused on behavior, like social normative messaging, lead to long-term attitude change on contentious health issues? (4)

Other ongoing work not depicted here include research on collective goal-pursuit and motivation processes, links between emotion and climate behavior, and meta-cognitive judgements when processing belief-incongruent information. Past projects have also used non-survey approaches, including qualitative interviews (1, 2) and eye-tracking (3).

*Notes project with undergraduate or pre-doctoral mentee.