Zhaoquan (Harold) Wang
Graduate Student
Advisor
Heejung KimResearch Area
Social Psychology
Biography
Zhaoquan received his bachelor’s degrees with honors in Psychology and Economics from Boston College in 2025. As an undergraduate, he worked with Dr. Liane Young and Dr. Regan Bernhard at Boston College and spent the summer of 2024 working with Dr. Laura Niemi and Dr. John Doris at Cornell University. Before joining UCSB, he worked with Dr. Stylianos Syropoulos at Arizona State University. When not doing research, he enjoys playing board games, watching soccer, and scrolling on his phone a lot.
Research
Right is good and wrong is bad. That much is easy. What is far less obvious is which acts belong in which category. To some, blowing the whistle upholds justice; to others, it betrays loyalty. To some, revenge only compounds harm; to others, it delivers the punishment that justice demands. My interest is on how cultural context shapes individuals moral cognition. Specifically how the social environments people are raised in and the values those environments instill give rise to these disagreements and shape people's social perception, judgment, and decision-making.
