Emma Yu

Graduate Student

Advisor

Research Area

Developmental and Evolutionary Psychology

Biography

Emma Yu received her B.A. in Psychology from Boston University in 2023. As an undergrad, Emma was a research assistant in Dr. Lindsey Powell's lab at UC San Diego and completed a senior thesis with Dr. Peter Blake at BU. After graduating, Emma worked as a lab manager at Dr. Ashley Thomas's lab at Harvard University for 2 years. Emma will begin her doctoral studies at UCSB in 2025 at Dr. Brandon Woo's lab. In her free time, Emma enjoys bullet journaling, crocheting, watching sports, and tap dancing!

Research

Despite coming from diverse backgrounds, all children enter the world having to navigate complex social environments in their daily lives, and they pick up a remarkable amount of social cues without explicit instruction. Broadly, my research interests lie in the origins of social cognition and prosocial behavior. In my senior thesis at Boston University, I examined whether children's understanding of emotions impacted their perceptions of fairness. As a lab manager at Harvard University, I was involved in numerous projects testing infants' and children's understanding of social relationships. During my Ph.D. at UCSB, I hope to investigate how infants and children use cues about social relationships and mental states (particularly emotions) to inform their social expectations and promote their prosocial behaviors.

Keywords: social cognitive development ; prosocial behavior ; social relationships ; mental state reasoning