More about me
Start of my research journey
Before finding my passion in pedestrian and crowd research, I started my academic journey exploring different areas of psychology and human behavior. My first ever research project as a sophomore was on “relationship between psychological capital, grit, and academic outcomes” (2017-2018), with Dr. Sara Farrell as an advisor.
This work was presented as a poster on this work in 2017 at the Tri-State Undergraduate Psychology Conference (Coe College) and in 2018 at the Student Research Symposium (Coe College).
Click here to see the abstract
This study investigated the relationship between (1) psychological capital (PsyCap) and (2) grit and the following academic outcomes: academic motivation, academic engagement, agentic engagement, and academic delay of gratification. Using a Midwestern U.S. undergraduate student sample, we found that PsyCap and grit were both correlated with all of the academic outcome variables in the expected direction. Results also showed that autonomous motivation partially explains both the relationship between PsyCap and academic engagement and the relationship between grit and academic engagement, but that academic delay of gratification does not mediate these relationships. Our results are consistent with those of a previous study conducted by Datu, King, and Valdez (2016); However, we did not replicate their finding that PsyCap is positively associated with controlled motivation. One possible reason for this discrepancy could be a difference in academic motives for students in collectivist versus individualistic cultures.