Background

Jessica is a doctoral student and Institute of Education Sciences (IES) Fellow in Developmental Psychology working with Katherine Kinzler and Susan Levine. She graduated in 2021 with a B.A. in Psychology from the University of California, Davis with Highest Honors. For her honors thesis, Jessica examined how general mindsets (Dweck, 1999) and stress mindsets (Crum et al., 2013) relate to college students’ experiences of stress and academic burnout during the COVID-19 pandemic under the supervision of Yuko Munakata. During her time at Davis she worked as a research assistant in the Social Environment and Stress Lab of Dr. Camelia Hostinar, and the Cognition in Context Lab of Dr. Yuko Munakata. She also completed an NSF funded CSLI summer Internship at Stanford University in 2020 working with Dr. Ellen Markman and a graduate student, in which they examined helicopter parenting practices and beliefs.

Research Interests

Broadly, Jessica’s interests include 1) understanding what shapes our conception of our cognitive abilities and how this influences our behaviors; 2) investigating how this knowledge can bolster interventions in education, industry, policy, and medical fields.