Congratulations to Reiner Ng Wei Jie on his B.Soc.Sci. (highest distinction) and M.Soc.Sci. degrees! For his thesis research titled, "When objective ambivalence leads to subjective ambivalence for health behaviors: An affect-cognition matching perspective", he examined the effects of message matching on subjective ambivalence. His research demonstrated that the simultaneous existence of positive and negative reactions are more likely to manifest as the subjective experience of ambivalence, when people receive a message that matches the affective-cognitive orientation of a topic. Moreover, this occurs especially among people for whom the message is counter-attitudinal. This work is important in identifying novel antecedents to subjective ambivalence, which has been shown to have adaptive social functions and has implications for the ability of attitudes to predict behavior. We congratulate Reiner on accomplishing this interesting research that advances our understanding of ambivalence!

Congratulations to Rachel Sng Wei Yi on her offer of admission to the Concurrent Degree Programme [B.Soc.Sci. (Hons) and M.Soc.Sci.]! Rachel has already completed an Independent Study Module in our lab, and has been assisting with various research projects for the past two semesters. For her thesis, she will conduct research on intergroup. Welcome to the lab, Rachel!

Congratulations to Wang Binhui on the acceptance of her poster submission to the upcoming Association for Psychological Science (APS) Virtual Conference in May 2021! Her poster is entitled “Disadvantaged group relations: Enhanced or backfired depending on the membership of the source highlighting shared experience of discrimination.” This research demonstrated that although heterosexual females were more positive toward gay men and lesbian women when the shared experience of discrimination was made salient than not, the positive impact of such salience only occurred when the source was a heterosexual male and not a heterosexual female. This work highlights the role of source group membership in increasing receptivity to information about shared discrimination, and has implications for our understanding of solidarity between groups. We look forward to her sharing this interesting work in the upcoming APS conference!

Congratulations to Noorfaadhilah Abdul Halil Khan who will be joining Home Team Behavioural Sciences Centre (Ministry of Home Affairs) as a research psychologist from February 2021. We are immensely proud of her, and wish her the best in this new chapter of her life!

Congratulations to Noorfaadhilah Abdul Halil Khan on her M.Soc.Sci. degree! Faadhilah is currently part of the teaching staff in the Department of Psychology at NUS. For her thesis research, she examined antecedents to people’s interest in reasoning about the censorship of hate speech and misinformation. Her research demonstrated that the more people’s attitudes serve to express their core personal values, the greater their interest in relying on their beliefs and thoughts in their opinion on censorship. This work suggests that highlighting or reinforcing personal values can enhance reasoning about censorship among both anti- and pro-censorship individuals. We congratulate Faadhilah on accomplishing this interesting research on a timely issue!

This academic year, we kickstarted our lab meeting in a different but equally engaging manner to maintain social safe distancing. Even though there are limited physical interactions, the virtual discussions continue to be fruitful with interesting perspectives shared. We are excited for the upcoming meetings and presentations ahead!

We are also very excited to welcome the new members who have joined us as part of the GPEP family!

Have a great and safe academic year ahead!

With the generous funding from the National Research Foundation Singapore under its AI Singapore Programme, I was able to attend the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) conference 2020 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Being the first international conference that I have attended, it was an eye-opener for me – being able to interact with professional social psychologists from around the world while learning about the different innovative research conducted in the social psychological field.

On the first day of the conference, there were many topic-focused pre-conferences that one can choose to attend. The “Attitudes and Social Influence” pre-conference was a clear choice for me as I wanted to learn and to be updated with the latest developments in this field. I am glad that I made this decision as the pre-conference was one of the highlights for me! I can still recall my excitement as I listened to the many presenters, including Prof. Leandre Fabrigar on how vocal pitch can influence persuasion, and from Prof. Sharon Shavitt on how cultural differences are an important consideration. The pre-conference had made it clear that being in GPEP has fostered a strong interest in attitudinal research in me!

Over the next two days, several symposiums and poster sessions were held relating to a wide range of topics presented by established social psychologists, graduate students, and undergraduate students. I was also able to present my work in one of the poster sessions that was done under the guidance of Prof. Michelle See. It was informative to see the different interesting attitudinal research, including those related to moral concerns and those that utilized a big-data approach.

Another exciting session was the SPSP presidential address which highlighted how Machine Learning can be one analysis approach to consider in future research. This made me realized the importance being updated with new cutting-edge research tools and methods to enhance the research work that we already have been doing.

Overall, SPSP 2020 was a great learning and gratifying experience. I would like to thank Prof Michelle See and the National Research Foundation Singapore again for their support!
-Reiner Ng (2020)

Note: I was not affected by the Covid-19 virus prior, during, and after the SPSP2020 conference.

Leveraging on video-communication technology, the GPEP lab have taken the necessary safety measures to ensure that the health of our lab members are not compromised while keeping to our regular lab meetings and discussions schedule amidst the Covid-19 global pandemic.

Today, our lab had our first virtual meeting via Zoom as Ann-Marie and Gareth shared with the lab on their honours thesis findings respectively. Despite being the first virtual lab meeting, the process was fun with many insightful questions and clarifications made.

The lab will continue to adopt measures to ensure that knowledge sharing can continue to happen while maintaining the health and the safety of our lab members and the community.

Congratulations to Reiner for the acceptance of his SPSP submission! He will be presenting on preliminary findings about ambivalence toward health behaviors in New Orleans, Louisiana in 2020!

We are excited to share news about our forthcoming paper in Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology on “Values Predict Willingness to Interact with Immigrants: The Role of Cultural Ideology and Multicultural Acquisition”!
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This work examines how and among whom values predict acceptance of immigrants, with implications for understanding the motivational underpinnings of values, as well as how the cultural context matters for predicting acceptance of immigrants. Pre-print of abstract can be found here: