Center for Healthy Minds

Pelin is a social psychologist interested in the study of happiness and virtue. The ultimate goal of her research is to gain insights into the bidirectional relationship between virtue and happiness while discovering ways to encourage virtuous cycles in people.

She's also interested in existential psychology, and particularly in how the human awareness of mortality affects various psychological dynamics. Combining positive psychology and existential psychology, Pelin studies the ways in which virtue can buffer the destructive effects of death anxiety.

Her work so far has focused on the role of self-transcendent virtues such as humility in mollifying anxiety and fostering existential well-being. Currently, she is working on developing implicit, indirect measures for virtues, which can then be used to assess the effectiveness of well-being interventions.