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VIRGINIA
KWAN
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley,
2002 |
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| CASE
STUDY |
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| CONTACT
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T:
E:
Green Hall
Psychology Department
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ 08540
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| RESEARCH
SUMMARY |
My general area of interest
is social perception. I study social perception at multiple
levels: self-perception, interpersonal perception, and group
perception. In my view, even self-perception is an inherently
social phenomenon. It cannot be studied in isolation from two
facts about interpersonal perception: the individual always
acts as a perceiver and is always a target of perception. I
have taken seriously this interplay of self-perception and interpersonal
perception and applied my multi-level approach of social perception
to some longstanding issues in the field. For example, I have
examined whether self-perceptions are basically accurate or
they are characterized by positive illusions, and, whether accurate
self-perceptions or positive illusions are related to mental
health. Additionally, I have taken a cultural perspective to
examine whether the notion of self differs across individualistic
and collectivist cultures. For example, "Do positive illusions
of self have the same impact on mental health in collectivist
cultures as in Western individualistic cultures?" Furthermore,
I have also applied this multi-level approach of social perception
to examine the link between the diversity of a group and group
performance. To address the link between diversity and group
performance, I focus on self-perception processes and individuation.
I argue that self-verification and individuation are necessary
conditions for capitalizing the value of diversity on group
performance.
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