My name is Yuchen Tian (田雨晨). I am a PhD candidate in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Born and raised in China, I completed my B.A. in North China Electric Power University, where I was trained as an English-Chinese translator and interpreter. During my undergrad, I have translated a novel and worked as interpreter for multiple academic conferences. In my junior year, I discovered my passion in developmental psychology and then applied to work with Dr. Qi Wang and Dr. Lin Bian as a Master’s student at Cornell University. In 2021, I became a PhD student working with Dr. Tara Mandalaywala at UMass Amherst.
I study how people think about social sturctures, with an emphasis on leadership and socieoeconomic inequalities. My research focuses particularly on children’s reasoning about leadership, social status and soical mobility (the change of people’s social status). In asking these questions, I pay particular attention to how culture (U.S. vs. China) shapes differences in children’s social thinking.
I plan to graduate in 2025 summer and I am actively looking for faculty and post-doctoral position in developmental psychology and social psychology.
Photo on this page is credit to Hongmei Zheng (my mom:)