Culture, Diversity, and Reasoning Research Lab

Culture, Diversity, and Reasoning Research Lab at California State University San Marcos

The CDR Lab adopts an experimental social psychology approach to investigate social and behavioral phenomena around the topics of social change, culture and diversity, as well as psychological reasoning processes. The lab is located in the Social and Behavioral Sciences building at California State University, San Marcos and is headed by Dr. Alex Huynh. For inquiries about research or opportunities to join the lab, please see the contact us page.

Lab Research Topics

The following three areas highlight the cornerstone research topics in the Huynh lab, but the lab's research is constantly evolving and novel social questions are always being pursued! If you're interested in additional details and ongoing research, please see the research page for further information.

Culture, Diversity, & Social Change

The world is constantly changing. Countries are becoming more diverse, wealthier, and more urbanized. The consequences of these large-scale changes is that our cultural values, behavioral patterns, and cognition are changing along with it. In what way are our cultural values shifting? What are these changes in response to and how is this cultural change affecting the way people choose to live their lives and interact with one another?

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Reasoning and Humility

The world today is filled with an array of polarizing social issues, interpersonal and intergroup conflicts, and personal dilemmas. Although people often strive to be humble and reason rationally over these social conflicts, they often struggle to do so. What pitfalls prevent people from being able to do so? What individual differences and social contexts encourage adaptive, rational, and humble forms of reasoning?

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Inequality and Social Class

Socioeconomic status (SES) shapes our values, habits, customs, and preferences. It shapes the way we see the world, and the way the world sees us. How do the differences across SES groups affect the way people interact with the world? How do first-generation vs. continuing generation college students manage different situations? What are the implications of these differences for understanding inequality?

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