Personality & social psychologist

Research interests:

• Existential psychology (meaning/purpose in life, uncertainty, existential problems and attitudes)
• Positive psychology (psychological well-being, life satisfaction, affect)
• Motivation (goals, values, motives, intrinsic & extrinsic motivation, attainment, support & conflict)
• Spirituality (afterlife belief, religion, universalism)
• Traits (the "Big Five", spirituality, intelligence, needs for cognition or closure, conservatism)
• Survey methods (construction, validation, bias identification & reduction)

• Statistics

  1. Latent factor structure
  2. Structural equation modeling
  3. Effect size estimation
  4. Longitudinal change
  5. Causality
  6. Nonparametric & robust analysis
  7. Resampling methods
• Programming (R, function writing, simulation testing)

Publications:

• Me. (2013). Personal goals, psychological well-being, and meaning in life. University of California, Riverside: Psychology.
• Steger, M. F., Pickering, N., Adams, E., Burnett, J., Shin, J. Y., Dik, B. J., & Me. (2010). The quest for meaning: Religious affiliation differences in the correlates of religious quest and search for meaning in life. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 2(4), 206-226.

Posters and presentations (PowerPoints available on my SlideShare page)

• Me & Ozer, D. J. (2012). Matching goals to values: Correlations follow semantic similarities. 92nd WPA, San Francisco.
• Me. (2012). Existential and psychological health as products of intrinsic goal attainment. Presentation, April 19, UCR.
• Me, Selvam, T., Cheong, R., & Ozer. (2011). Religious differences in the value systems of meaningful (and meaningless) lives. 2nd ARP, Riverside.
• Me & Ozer. (2011). Joint factors of spirituality and religiousness. 91st WPA, Los Angeles.
• Me & Ozer. (2011). Spiritual predictors of the search for meaning in life. 12th SPSP, San Antonio.
• Me. (2010). Current research in existential psychology. Presentation, November 4, UCR.
• Me, Boudreaux, M. J., & Ozer. (2010). Factor structure of the Values Q-Set. 118th APA, San Diego.
• Me & Ozer. (2010). The motive content of meaningful (and meaningless) lives. 15th EAPP, Brno, Czech Republic.
• Me, Stimson, T. S., & Boudreaux. (2010). The curve of the quest for a more meaningful life. 11th SPSP, Las Vegas.
• Me. (2010). The Values Q-Set. Presentation, January 21, UCR.
• Me, Stimson, Boudreaux, & Ozer. (2009). When do personality traits predict personal goals? 1st ARP, Evanston.
• Me. (2009). The factor structure of personal goals. Presentation, June 4, UCR.
• Me, Stimson, & Ozer. (2009). The factor structure of personal goals in an undergraduate population. 10th SPSP, Tampa.