Virginia Kwan

Institution Princeton University Current Position Assistant Professor of Psychology Highest Degree Ph.D. in Psychology from University of California, Berkeley, 2002 Research Interests Culture/Ethnicity Interpersonal Processes Person Perception Personality Self/Identity Social Cognition Courses Taught Cultural Psychology Personality Social Cognition   Virginia Kwan Department of Psychology 2-N-8 Green Hall Princeton University Princeton, New Jersey 08540 U.S.A. Home Page Phone: (609) 258-7464 My general area of interest is social perception. I study social perception at multiple levels: self-perception, interpersonal perception, and group perception. In my view, even self-perception is an inherently social phenomenon. It cannot be studied in isolation from two facts about interpersonal perception: the individual always acts as a perceiver and is always a target of perception. I have taken seriously this interplay of self-perception and interpersonal perception and applied my multi-level approach of social perception to some longstanding issues in the field. For example, I have examined whether self-perceptions are basically accurate or they are characterized by positive illusions, and, whether accurate self-perceptions or positive illusions are related to mental health. Additionally, I have taken a cultural perspective to examine whether the notion of self differs across individualistic and collectivist cultures. For example, "Do positive illusions of self have the same impact on mental health in collectivist cultures as in Western individualistic cultures?" Furthermore, I have also applied this multi-level approach of social perception to examine the link between the diversity of a group and group performance. To address the link between diversity and group performance, I focus on self-perception processes and individuation. I argue that self-verification and individuation are necessary conditions for capitalizing the value of diversity on group performance. Journal Articles: Gosling, S. D., Kwan, V. S. Y., & John, O. P. (2003). A dog’s got personality: A cross-species comparative approach to personality judgments in dogs and humans. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 1161-1169. Helson, R., Kwan, V. S. Y., John, O. P., & Jones, C. (2002). The growing evidence for personality change in adulthood: Findings from research with personality inventories. Journal of Research in Personality, 36, 287-306. Kwan, V. S. Y., Bond, M. H., Boucher, H. C., Maslach, C., & Gan, Y. Q. (2002). The construct of individuation: More complex in collectivist than in individualist cultures? Personality and Social Psychological Bulletin, 28, 300-310. Kwan, V. S. Y., Bond, M. H., & Singelis, T. S. (1997). Pancultural explanations for life satisfaction: Adding relationship harmony to self-esteem. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73, 1038-1051. Kwan, V. S. Y., John, O. P., Kenny, D. A., Bond, M. H., & Robins, R. W. (2004). Reconceptualizing individual differences in self-enhancement bias: An interpersonal approach. Psychological Review, 111, 94-111. Swann, W. B. Jr., Kwan, V. S. Y., Polzer, J. T., & Milton, L. P. (2003). Capturing the elusive "value in diversity" effect: Individuation, self-verification and performance in small groups. Personality and Social Psychological Bulletin, 29, 1396-1406.

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