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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
