Chuyi Yang

Graduate Student

Advisor

Research Area

Social Psychology

Biography

Chuyi Yang received his B.A. in Psychology from Stanford University in 2020. Shortly after graduating, he worked as a preschool teacher at Stanford’s laboratory nursery school supporting children’s social, emotional and cognitive development. Chuyi began his doctoral studies at UCSB’s Psychological and Brain Sciences department in 2022 under the mentorship of Dr. Zoe Liberman. In his free time he enjoys cooking, golfing and playing fantasy football.

Research

At a young age, children understand and generate nuanced relationships that help inform their interactions with other people. Concepts like best friendship, mentorship and kinship add increasingly complex layers to children’s social cognition, requiring them to frequently test and modify their previous understandings. I am greatly interested in these nuances and how children interpret and utilize these conceptualizations to interact with those in their social world. I am also interested in the cues and contexts that shape this understanding and how this understanding may change over time.