Brandon Ng | University of Virginia (original) (raw)

I am a PhD student in the Department of Psychology at the University of Virginia (UVA), concentrating in Social, Affective, and Cultural Neuroscience. My research interests as a cultural neuroscientist, broadly defined, include the neural basis of culture and emotion, Asian American identity, intergroup relations and prejudice, social exclusion, and subjective well-being.

With advisors Jamie Morris, Shige Oishi, and Sophie Trawalter, I am investigating the effects of identity threat on social perception in Asian Americans, as well as predictors of subjective well-being and happiness. Before coming directly into UVA, I was an undergraduate at Northwestern University, where I worked with Joan Chiao and Wendi Gardner. As a member of their labs, I researched culture and the neural basis of emotion, loneliness and emotional mimicry, and how cultural values affect emotional perception and prosocial behavior. My honors thesis investigated the effects of priming cultural values on emotional memory biases.

At Northwestern I also completed a second honors thesis in the Department of English Literature under the direction of Emily Rohrbach and Christopher Lane, where I engaged in a comprehensive analysis of Romantic and neo-Romantic poetry through the lens of human mortality. Specifically, I analyzed Dylan Thomas's identity as a Neo-Romantic poet through his conceptualization of death in contrast to other Romantics, such as Wordsworth, Keats, and Shelley.

Through my research, I hope to shed light on the dynamic effects of cultural values and why they came to be, using social neuroscience methodologies, as well as applying these principles to public policy and social justice issues. As a social psychologist, my primary goal is always to understand human behavior, and how these behaviors are shaped by such factors as the identities we hold, cultural values and practices, and our underlying biological proclivities.
Supervisors: James P. Morris, Joan Y. Chiao, Sophie Trawalter, Shigehiro Oishi, and Wendi L. Gardner

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