Current Students
Amabel (Youngbin) Jeon
Amabel (she/her) is a sixth-year PhD candidate in social psychology working with Dr. Daphna Oyserman. Amabel received her B.A. in Psychology with a minor in East Asian Studies from Wesleyan University in 2019. Her current research interests broadly focus on applying a cognitive frame to understand how culture shapes decision-making in ambiguous contexts.
Andrew Gorenz
Drew is a fifth-year PhD candidate in social psychology working with Dr. Norbert Schwarz. Drew received his B.A. from Northwestern University in 2016 with a double major in Psychology and Statistics. After receiving his BA, he worked for three years at a digital advertising agency exploring interests in attitude and behavior change with advertising messaging. His current research interests include the situational factors that influence judgement and decision making, humor, and how we use our feelings as information to guide our judgments.
Kevin Choi
Kevin is a fourth-year PhD student in social psychology working with Dr. Daphna Oyserman. Kevin’s current research focuses on (1) how time perception influences motivation, goal pursuit, and decision-making, and (2) how people’s interpretations of difficulty shape goal perseverance and disengagement. He received his B.A. in psychology with a dual in economics at Claremont McKenna College in 2021.
Onyul Haque
Ony is a fourth-year PhD student in social psychology working with Dr. Daphna Oyserman. Ony received his B.A. in Psychology from the University of Michigan (Go Blue!). As an undergraduate, he did research on two topics: how do people assess their expertise and why do people decide to trust others? He is currently interested in identity and how it affects motivation.
Steve Carney
Steve is a fourth-year PhD candidate studying consumer behavior working with faculty in the Marshall School and Dr. Norbert Schwarz. Prior to joining USC, Steve received his MSc in Consumer Psychology from Queen’s University in Canada in 2018 and his BS in Marketing and Accounting from Northeastern University’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business in 2016. He studies how consumer behavior changes when we recruit others and utilize technology to make decisions.
Maansi Dalmia
Maansi is a third-year PhD student in behavioral marketing working with faculty at Marshall and Dr. Nobert Schwarz. Maansi received her BBA from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan in 2021. Her current research interests are in consumer privacy and corporate social activism.
Recent Alumni
Pragya Arya
Pragya received their PhD in Social Psychology in 2024. Their work with Norbert Schwarz focused on how contextual factors, mixed feelings, and metacognitive experiences guide judgement and decision-making, particularly perceptions of socio-political issues and truth beliefs. They are currently a user experience researcher at Coinbase.
Ian Anderson
Ian (he/they) is a Postdoctoral scholar in social and computational neuroscience at Caltech, working with Dr. Dean Mobbs. He completed his Ph.D. in 2024 under Dr. Wendy Wood and Dr. Norbert Schwarz at USC. Ian has an M.S. in Marketing Science and Consumer Psychology (2018) from INSEAD and a B.A. from Swarthmore College (2013). His current research focuses on how habits and reward learning impact social media and technology use and the societal and individual consequences of building strong technology habits. His methodological approaches include experimental studies, field studies, archival/behavioral trace data analysis, the use of large language models (LLMs), and fMRI.
Alysia Burbidge
Alysia received her PhD in Social Psychology in 2024. Her work with Daphna Oyserman focused on how people’s identity-based interpretations of difficulty shape downstream behavior in a variety of domains, including academics and pro-environmental action. She is currently a Research Associate at USC working on the DOE-funded project Pathways-to-Success with Daphna Oyserman and partners at the American Institutes for Research.
Andrew Dawson
Andrew received his PhD in Social Psychology in 2024. HIs work with Daphna Oyserman focused on identity based motivation, specifically the theory of dynamic construction, and how it informs interactive media, games, and user experience design. He is currently a business operations principal at Powerhouse.
Gülnaz Kiper
Gülnaz received her PhD in Social Psychology in 2023. Her work with Dr. Daphna Oyserman focused on interpretations of difficulty. Specifically, she studied the belief that difficulties can be character-building and “sanctifying” experiences, how this belief carries over to choices and behaviors in various domains, and how it can help people experience more well-being and meaning in their daily lives. She is currently an assistant professor at Istanbul Bilgi University .