Xin Yang
My research interest lies in the intersection of intergroup social cognition, cooperation, and morality. More specifically, I am interested in investigating the causes and consequences of intergroup biases, as well as how intergroup thinking interacts with moral reasoning. Ultimately, by uncovering the interplay of group, cooperative, and moral concerns, I hope to reduce prejudice, promote cooperation, and create a more just world.
Bio
About me
I was born in Henan, China, and moved to Guangdong at the age of nine. I graduated with a B.S. in psychology from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China in 2017. During my undergraduate, I explored many different subfields of psychology and also the great nature. Now I am a second-year Ph.D. student at Yale. I am always fascinated by the psychology of prejudice, discrimination, and inequality, and I strive to reduce them. Apart from research, I enjoy all kinds of outdoor activities, reading books, and making friends.
My Research
My on-going projects involve five different but interrelated topics:
Minimal groups, real groups, and origins of biases
Automatic encoding of social categories
Understanding of social structure
Cooperation and morality
Bias intervention
Do children develop weaker ingroup biases for the less meaningful groups?
Even in randomly-assigned, previously unfamiliar, and presumably meaningless groups, young children already imbue groups with rich meanings and develop strong ingroup biases. In order to truly reduce biases, one has go to great lengths, for example trying really hard to stress that the group assignment is totally arbitrary.
Automatic encoding of gender and race
We found that perceivers can automatically encode gender and race, such that they are faster and more accurate in detecting a change in facial identities that cross a category boundary compared to a change that happens within categories. We also showed that such ability can not be accounted for by lower-level perceptual differences that covary with categories.
Contact Me
Thanks for your interest in my research. Get in touch with any questions or comments regarding my work and publications. I’d love to hear from you.
2 Hillhouse Ave
New Haven, New Haven County 06511
USA
