In Conversation With Professor Belinda Campos, UCSB Psychological & Brain Sciences Alumna And Engage 2026 Keynote Speaker.

Belinda Campos is a Professor in the Department of Chicano/Latino Studies at the University of California, Irvine. She is also a faculty member in the Program in Medical Education for the Latino Community (PRIME-LC) in the School of Medicine and has a courtesy appointment in the Department of Psychological Sciences. She received her B.A. in psychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara and her Ph.D. in Social-Personality Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley. She was also a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles.  

Dr. Campos studies factors that promote high quality relationships, with a particular focus on understanding how sociocultural context shapes relationship experience in ways that benefit health. The findings of her work show that sociocultural contexts that emphasize prioritizing others before the self can be beneficial for relationships and protective of health.

Prof. Campos was keynote speaker at our 2026 ENGAGE event. Inside Psychology interviewed Prof. Campos to learn more about her work and her  time at UCSB.

How would you characterize your path from UCSB to your current role at UC Irvine?

I would characterize it as a path that might look winding, and improbable, but that makes a great deal of sense when you have the inside view. At UCSB, I learned that psychology had many different branches and paths, found mine in social psychology, and received an education that prepared me to pursue a Ph.D. and career as a psychological scientist. Today at UCI, I am a professor who is a psychological scientist.

Were there specific research experiences or mentors at UCSB that shaped your trajectory?

By the time I graduated, I had worked in the labs of multiple faculty, with two standing out in shaping my trajectory. First, Professor Diane Mackie. In her social psychology lab class, I learned what it meant to design studies that can test how individuals are influenced by their social worlds – that was so exciting! She encouraged me to challenge myself with an honors thesis, to pursue graduate studies, and to think that becoming a professor was an attainable goal. Second, Professor Daphne Bugental. In her laboratory, I learned to consider that individuals’ social worlds are primarily comprised of their important relationships and that one’s relationships can shape our feelings and life outcomes. She gave me her time, nominated me for awards, and gave patient consideration to my many questions (I am a person of a lot of questions!). All together, these experiences set my feet on the path toward the Ph.D. and to be a psychological scientist who studies culture, relationships, and health.    

What initially drew you to psychology, and how did that evolve into a focus on relationships and health?

Like a lot of students who start college as psychology majors, I was interested in understanding people. As an undergraduate, I so appreciated that the UCSB undergraduate major was broad and exposed students to the many branches of the field of psychology. Later, when I was starting graduate school, I thought about all I had learned, but also, all that seemed missing. It seemed to me that relationships and health were central to people’s lives, but also, that the ways of approaching relationships and health that I had grown up with, and saw all around me as the child of Mexican immigrants, was not visible in what I had learned and was learning. 

At what point did culture become central to your research questions?

Culture is like the air you breathe. You are immersed in it and don’t notice it until something changes… like the elevation you are in, and it is only then that you start to see the many ways in which the air shapes your experience! For me, as I started thinking about relationships and health through the Latino, mostly Mexican, viewpoint that I had grown up with, I started to see that it likely changed psychological processes that were understood in terms of the very culturally independent worldview that is dominant it the United States. So I wanted culture to be central to the research questions I studied. And once the studies started getting done and the data started coming in, it became clear that culture mattered. And then I started thinking, and still do, that culture is central to all research questions, but some of us are more aware of that than others of us. 

Your research highlights that prioritizing others (common in Latino and East Asian contexts) can benefit relationships and health. What are the key mechanisms behind this?

Relationships and health are deeply intertwined. People in good relationships live longer, are better able to overcome life’s hardships, are less likely to get sick and recover faster/manage better. Putting others before the self is a necessary part of cooperation and good relationships. But it comes easier to some than others, and that is where culture comes in. Cultural ideals provide a sense of how to solve the problems of who to cooperate with, in what ways, and to what extent. When we are socialized into putting others before the self, the practice of it makes it easier, the actions are rewarded, and the benefits in the sense of high-quality relationships and favorable health patterns are maximized. So the key mechanism I study is culture as a force that helps set the stage for good relationships and the health benefits that go with good relationships.

What would it look like to apply your research in real-world healthcare or policy settings?

Good question! First, I think real-world healthcare and policy settings, at least in the United States, make the most sense from a culturally independent perspective. In healthcare, the prominence of the individual is evident in how hard it is to have family included in appts, visits, and decisions (which, from a Latino point of view, strikes as unreasonable). In education settings, I think of all the times that Latino kids are told that we need to be more separate from our families in order to do well in U.S. society -- whenever I teach my Chicano/Latino Social Psychology class, I ask my students, how many of you have been told that you need to be more separate from your family in order to do well in U.S. society? As of 2020, I still get far too many people raising their hands to answer yes. If the take home messages of my research were applied to education settings, we would accept, support, and encourage people’s prioritization of family ties and relationships and let students draw strength and motivation from those sources.

You’ve worked across psychology, anthropology, and medical education. How has that shaped your approach to research?

I think it reflects my approach to research! I think it comes with being bicultural myself. I like having a foot in multiple different settings. Also, if you study culture and follow the implications of the findings, you naturally find yourself in these fields and more.

What do psychologists miss when they ignore sociocultural or structural context?

They end up overly narrow, and miss possibilities they likely can’t see because all their assumptions and thinking are grounded in their own specific air.

What skills do you prioritize most in training students (and why)?

I like to think I prioritize all of them! But maybe one that I’d like to mention here is intellectual curiosity, openness, and the ability to identify the gaps in what is known (and acknowledge that there are gaps that still escape awareness). This is critical to developing new research that can really advance the field.

What differentiates students who successfully move into research careers from those who don’t?

The skills and abilities mentioned above – intellectual curiosity, openness, and the ability to identify the gaps in what is known – along with a great deal of determination and good fortune.  

What should UCSB psychology students be doing right now if they’re interested in research or graduate school?

Take opportunities to get involved in faculty labs! You attend a research university and have a unique opportunity to learn firsthand how research is done. This is critical to gaining the experiences that will help you sharpen your skills and abilities and lead to successful applications and productive research careers.  

What keeps you motivated in your research today?

There are so many interesting questions about how human beings think, feel, and behave still to be answered! And a tremendous opportunity to better include people who have not been part of the knowledge base in the past.