Jessie Sun

Assistant Professor of Psychological & Brain Sciences
Ph.D. University of California, Davis
B.A. University of Melbourne
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    Jessie Sun's research examines two fundamental aspects of the good life—well-being and morality—in real-world contexts.

    Sun's research aims to understand how people can balance the pursuit of personal well-being with broader moral concerns. Towards this end, she has three main lines of research. First, she examines which kinds of social interactions matter for well-being, and whether different people benefit more from different kinds of social interactions. Second, she studies the causes and consequences of moral improvement. Third, she investigates the psychological connections and tradeoffs between well-being and morality. She uses a range of naturalistic methods to study people in real-world contexts, including experience sampling, audio recordings of people’s everyday conversations, informant reports, and daily life interventions.

    Selected Publications

    1. Sun, J., Neufeld, B., Snelgrove, P., & Vazire, S. (in press). Personality evaluated: What do people most like and dislike about themselves and their friends? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. https://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000388

    2. Sun, J., Rhemtulla, M., & Vazire, S. (2020). Eavesdropping on missing data: What are university students doing when they miss experience sampling reports? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 47(11), 1535–1549. https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0146167220964639

    3. Sun, J., Harris, K., & Vazire, S. (2020). Is well-being associated with the quantity and quality of social interactions? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 119(6), 1478–1496. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000272
    4. Sun, J., & Goodwin, G. P. (2020). Do people want to be more moral? Psychological Science, 30(3), 243–257. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797619893078
    5. Sun, J., Schwartz, H. A., Son, Y., Kern, M. L., & Vazire, S. (2020). The language of well-being: Tracking fluctuations in emotion experience through everyday speech. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 118(2), 364–387. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000244
    6. Sun, J., & Vazire, S. (2019). Do people know what they’re like in the moment? Psychological Science, 30(3), 405–414. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797618818476
    7. Jacques-Hamilton, R., Sun, J., & Smillie, L. D. (2019). Costs and benefits of acting more extraverted: A randomized controlled trial. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 148(9), 1538–1556. http://doi.org/ 10.1037/xge0000516