Curriculum Vitae

I’m a PhD candidate in Social Psychology at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB), working with Professor David Sherman in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences.

My social psychological research is empirical and quantitative. Current interests:

1. •How personal resources and values buffer the self against threats, e.g. using self-affirmation to reduce defensiveness to threatening health messages
   

1. •The effect of stress during fMRI on regional brain activation
   

1. •Causality and control: what personality and situational factors make people think one event caused another, and perceptions of randomness/chance and how they relate to a person’s sense of control over their world
   

1. •Perceptions of the contents of holy texts worldwide, and whether people respond more to the content or the source
   

Back burner:

1. •Compensatory control and meaning making models
   

1. •Behavioral economics: cognitive and motivational factors in financial perceptions and decision making
   

1. •Collective Action Problems such as climate change and individual psychology
   

1. •Spontaneous trait inferences and their relationship to stereotype formation
   

brick @ psych.ucsb.edu