A Psychologist with High Curiosity
A Psychologist with High Curiosity
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About me
About me
I am a psychologist who studies how everyday personal and relational experiences shape human flourishing. My research focuses on psychological experiences widely recognized in daily life yet insufficiently defined, measured, or examined in mainstream psychology. I am especially interested in concepts grounded in Asian societies and local cultures, and in how these concepts can contribute to psychological knowledge beyond their original cultural settings.
My research program is organized around culturally grounded everyday human flourishing. Rather than treating non-Western populations only as settings in which established theories are replicated, I seek to identify ideas, experiences, and forms of social interaction that emerge from local languages and everyday life. I then use rigorous psychometric, longitudinal, and cross-cultural methods to develop these observations into psychological constructs that can be examined systematically.
My recent work reflects three interconnected dimensions of everyday flourishing. The first concerns relational risks, including subtle manipulation, concealed competition, and insincere social behavior, as represented by my work on Green Tea Cattiness. The second examines restorative practices, particularly how people intentionally use personal time to recover, reflect, and engage in meaningful activities. The third focuses on relational resources, including warmth, care, consideration, and humanity in social relationships.
Together, these research areas form an emerging 3R Framework of Everyday Flourishing: relational risks can deplete psychological resources, restorative practices can replenish personal resources, and relational resources can provide the social conditions that support well-being.
My broader goal is to bring overlooked everyday and culturally grounded psychological experiences into international psychological science. Through construct development, psychological measurement, and cross-cultural research, I aim to connect knowledge derived from Asian contexts with wider discussions of well-being, creativity, relationships, and human flourishing.
一位充满探索欲的心理学家
一位充满探索欲的心理学家
我是一名心理学研究者，主要探讨日常生活中的个人经验与人际关系如何影响人类幸福。我的研究特别关注那些在现实生活中普遍存在，却尚未被主流心理学清楚定义、系统测量或深入研究的心理现象。我尤其重视亚洲社会与本土文化中的概念，并尝试说明这些概念如何丰富国际心理学对幸福、关系与心理适应的理解。
我的研究以“文化脉络下的日常幸福”为核心，主要涵盖三个相互关联的方向。第一是关系风险，包括隐性操控、表面友好、暗中竞争及不真诚的社会互动，例如我对“绿茶心机”构念的研究。第二是恢复性实践，关注人们如何主动运用个人时间进行休息、反思及参与有意义的活动，这也是“Me Time投入”研究的重点。第三是关系资源，包括人际关系中的温暖、关怀、互助与人情味。
我将这三个方向整合为“日常幸福的3R框架”：关系风险可能消耗心理资源，恢复性实践帮助个体补充资源，而关系资源则提供支持幸福发展的社会条件。
我主要采用心理测量、纵向研究及跨文化研究方法，将日常经验转化为定义清楚、可以检验的心理构念。我的长期目标，是让源自亚洲与本土文化的心理知识进入国际心理科学，并推动更具文化包容性的幸福研究。
Research Interests
Research Interests
Creativity
I investigate interventions and mechanisms that enhance creative performance. My Ph.D. thesis explored a hotly debated topic in the fields of cognition, emotion, and creation – what role emotion plays on creativity. I have argued that the previous approach overlooked the effect of self-appraisal and hence, fails to describe the whole picture of the relationship between emotion and creativity. Therefore, instead of examining the impact of positive and negative emotions alone, I proposed a new conceptual model to investigate the impact of self-appraisal in the emotion-creativity link. In three experiments, I found that both positive and negative emotions could improve creative performance. The facilitation effect, however, is subject to how the individual interprets the task. For instance, negative emotion is only conducive to creative performance when individuals perceived the task as important.
Scale Development and Validation
Measurements with good qualities are critical to research. I examined the psychometrics qualities of measurements that developed in other cultural backgrounds to understand if they are usable in the Malaysian context.
Positive Psychology
My interest also extends to exploring psychological factors and interventions that enhance human well-being.
Selected Award
Selected Award
2025 College of Liberal Arts (CLA) Achievement Awards for Research, Wenzhou-Kean University
Research Excellence Award 2022 (Category of Social Science, Arts, Humanities, Management and Accounting) from Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman
Top Cited Article 2019-2020 “Openness to experience enhances creativity: The mediating role of intrinsic motivation and the creative process engagement” (The Journal of Creative Behavior), April 15, 2021
Teaching Performance (scored 4.65/5) for UAPG1004 Research Methods in Behavioural Science May trimester, 2020
Top Downloaded Paper 2018-2019 “Extraversion and happiness: The mediating role of social support and hope” (PsyCH journal), April 30, 2020
KS Yang Travel Award issued by Asian Association of Social Psychology, July 2019
Top 20 most downloaded article 2017-2018 “Extraversion and happiness: The mediating role of social support and hope” (PsyCH journal), June 2019
Top 20 most downloaded recent papers “Openness to experience enhances creativity: The mediating role of intrinsic motivation and the creative process engagement” (Journal of Creative Behavior), May 2018
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