Lab Activity & News

2025

The lab welcomes research assistants in the AY2526 Sem 1: Elvina (returning), Emma (continuing) and Shermaine.
We have two new research students joining our lab: Nathanael as a Master's Thesis student; Shauna as a Senior Thesis student - welcome both!
Jacinth is appointed as a Member of the Review Board (Children and Young Persons Homes) with the Ministry of Social and Family Development (2025-2027).
The lab welcomes new summer research assistants: Tse Shuen (continuing), Iqbal and Emma.
Greg successfully defended his PhD dissertation proposal and is now a Doctoral Candidate!
The lab welcomes new research assistants in AY2425 Sem 2: Tse Shuen, Clara and Thalia.
Jacinth joins the Editorial Board of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

2024

Jacinth is appointed the Singapore Representative-at-Large for the Asian Association of Social Psychology.
Jacinth is named the SMU Lee Kong Chian Fellow (2024-2026).
The lab welcomes new research assistants in AY2425 Sem 1: Adela and Audrey.
The lab celebrates the completion of the Spencer project with a wrap party for the research team!
The lab welcomes new research assistants in AY2324 Sem 2: Hui Mei, Elvina, Shauna, Mei En, Josiah and Yiyang.
Greg presented a research poster at SPSP on how the influence of meta-perceptions of competence on self-esteem is moderated by subjective social class.
Jacinth gave a talk at SPSP on how socioeconomic diversity predicts differences in life satisfaction, as part of a symposium on when presence of others help or hurt well-being.

2023

The lab celebrates everyone's efforts and achievements with a pizza party!
Greg successfully defended his Master's Thesis and passed the PhD Qualifying Exams. He is now a Doctoral Candidate!
Greg received the SPSP Graduate Registration Award! This will fund his attendance at the 2024 SPSP conference.
The lab welcomes Adela, Ping Zhi and Jarrod as research assistants.
Yan Fen joins the lab as a first year PhD student - welcome!
Jacinth received the Social Science and Humanities Research Fellowship, along with a 5-year grant to study how exposure to socioeconomic diversity shapes cross-class relations.
Jacinth gave an invited seminar talk on "Socioeconomic status, social comparison, & happiness" at the Ingolstadt School of Management, Germany.
Amos successfully defends his Master's thesis and will begin a psychologist position at the Ministry of Defense.
Jacinth joins the Editorial Board of Emotion.

2022

Greg joins the lab as a second year PhD student - welcome!
Benjamin successfully defended his Senior Thesis and will join the Ministry of Finance as an Associate.
Tricia successfully defended her Master's thesis and will join the SMU College of Integrative Studies as a Research Associate.
The lab welcomes Hui Ping, Shadiccha, and Justyn as research assistants.
Faith joins as our first full-time lab manager - welcome!
Jacinth gave an invited seminar talk on "Socioeconomic inequalities in academic motivation and persistence" at the Tembusu College, Yale-NUS.
Nadya successfully defended her Master's thesis and will begin her PhD training in Quantitative Psychology at NUS Department of Psychology in the new academic year.
Bek Way successfully defended her PhD dissertation. Congratulations Dr. Tang - our very first graduating PhD student from the lab!
Faith successfully defended her senior thesis on "Moral judgments in the presence of high status versus low status other", which also won the Best Senior Thesis award!
Faith, Amos and Nadya presented their independent research projects at the 2022 SPSP Conference (virtual).

2021

Nadya's research paper on "Meta-perceptions of racial group inferiority and foreignness predict actual self-perceptions" was awarded first runner up (postgrad category) and top 3 best submissions (open category) at the Student Research Awards by the Singapore Psychological Society!
Nadya received the International Society for Self & Identity (ISSI) 2021 Mini Research Grant, a competitive grant awarded to the top 10% of research proposals on self & identity research. This grant will fund her ongoing Master's Thesis research on identity denial experiences in Singapore.
Amos received the SPSP Diversity Undergraduate Registration Award. This will fund his attendance at the 2022 SPSP conference, where he will be presenting a research poster on a meta-analysis of social status manipulations.
The lab welcomes Emma, Eunice, & Benjamin as research assistants.
Bek Wuay and Jacinth co-wrote a commentary for CNA about how teachers should not be expected to deal with burnout on their own, and that various sources of support should be provided to help them cope.
Jacinth gave an invited talk at the AASP (virtual) conference, where she shared how awareness of social class similarity vs. dissimilarity affects physiology and behaviours during a dyadic interaction.
Bek Wuay gave a talk as part of a symposium at the AASP (virtual) conference on cross-country differences in the estimations of upward social mobility.
Tricia gave a talk as part of a symposium at the AASP (virtual) conference on how social class influences social support seeking behaviors.
Prithipal successfully completed and defended her Senior Thesis, and will graduate this July. Congrats and the lab will miss you!
SHAWLab celebrated the efforts and achievements of all members in the past academic year with a bubble-tea wrap party!
Jacinth was awarded the Spencer Foundation Small Research Grant as the lead PI (with Dr. Chin Hong Tan at NTU as co-PI) to study the link between chronic stress and academic persistence among socioeconomically disadvantaged students.
Jacinth (lead PI) and Bek Wuay (collaborator) were awarded the MOE AcRF Tier 1 research grant to study how work meaning is linked to workplace burnout.
Jacinth gave an invited talk at the SPSP Happiness & Well-Being Pre-conference (virtual), where she shared her work on how subjective socioeconomic standing relates to well-being.
Nadya receives the SPSP Diversity Award and her poster on "Daily stress and optimism" is runner-up for the SPSP Student Poster Award. Congrats on this double achievement!
Jacinth joins the Editorial Board of the journal Affective Science.

2020

New paper published at Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice.
Nadya's research paper on "Dyslexia & Creativity: A meta-analysis" was awarded the Best Quantitative Research Paper (undergrad category) by Singapore Psychological Society!
Bek Wuay represents SMU as one of three finalists in the "3-Minute Thesis Singapore" competition!
Phyu and Amos join the lab as research assistants.
Nadya and Tricia join the lab as Master's Thesis students.
Prithipal joins the lab as a Senior Thesis student.
Jiaming was awarded the "Ho See Beng Excellence Award" as the top graduating student in Psychology!
Praveen and Darren join as interns of the lab's inaugural Summer Internship Program.
Jiaming and Emerlyn successfully completed and defended their senior theses. Both will be graduating as well. Congrats and you will be missed!

2019

SHAWLab celebrated the efforts and achievements of all lab members in the past semester with a chicken-pie wrap party!
Bek Wuay passed her Qualifying Examinations and is officially a Doctoral Candidate.
Emerlyn and Jasmine join the lab as research assistants.
Bek Wuay successfully defended her Master's Thesis.
Jacinth was awarded the MOE AcRF Tier 1 research grant as the lead PI to study how social class backgrounds shape relational interdependence.
Jacinth was awarded the MOE AcRF Tier 1 research grant as a co-I to study the links between socioeconomic status, cardiovascular, and brain functions. Dr. Chin Hong Tan at NTU is the lead PI on the grant.
Jacinth gave a talk at SPSP on how partner commitment is important for well-being among lower-class individuals, as part of a symposium on social class and relationships.

2018

SHAWLab celebrated the efforts and achievements of all lab members in the past semester with a pizza wrap party!
Jacinth gave a talk at the NUS Psychology Department Colloquium on studying the dynamics of cross-class interactions using a physiological linkage approach.
Jasmine and Jiaming join as undergraduate research assistants.
Bek Wuay joins the lab as a PhD student.
SHAWLab was born at the Singapore Management University, School of Social Sciences.