I will be a first year graduate student starting in the lab this fall. My research interests center around the meta-theme of human growth and strategies for people to shift to a more fulfilling and responsible life – one of the main aspects of Dr. Crocker’s egosystem and ecosystem theory for motivation. Dr. Crocker’s research on the contingencies of self-esteem and on the ecosystem and egosystem framework interested me greatly and was the primary reason that inspired me to pursue a research internship in the lab. As a visiting scholar in the Contingencies of Self-Esteem laboratory, I am currently conducting research that deals with the connection of self-affirmation, the affirmation in a self-relevant domain, and egosystem and ecosystem motivation, respectively. We hypothesize that common used operationalizations of self-affirmation actually cause a shift into an ecosystem motivational space because they trigger strong other-directed emotions like love, feeling of connectedness, and empathy.

My future plans involve the further exploration of the psychological processes underlying self-affirmation and the exploration of the implication of egosystem and ecosystem motivation in a work context.