Center for Healthy Minds | 625 W. Washington Ave., Madison, WI 53703
Pelin Kesebir
Honorary Fellow, Former Assistant Scientist, 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. Most recently, she was working on developing implicit, indirect measures for virtues, which can then be used to assess the effectiveness of well-being interventions.
Education
B.A., International Relations, B.A. Psychology, Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey, 2002
Ph.D., Social Psychology and Personality, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2009
Links
Related Studies
Cultivating Creativity and Innovation in Engineering Graduate Students
Can a mindfulness intervention impact engineering graduate students' creativity and well-being?
Developing a Program to Learn and Measure Well-Being at Scale
In collaboration with Healthy Minds Innovations, this project strives to learn how to teach and measure well-being to scale
Learning How Emotional Styles Affect Well-Being
What are your emotional styles? How does your emotional style influence your well-being?
Mapping the Interface between Meditation and Neuroscience
Center researchers and collaborators are building new approaches to understand the links between traditional contemplative perspectives and scientific theory to better study the scientific effects of meditation training on the brain, body, mind and behavior.
Center researchers are developing a program to teach scientifically-informed practices and principles that facilitate well-being.
Smiling Faces Task and Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic
Following up with past research participants about the pandemic's impact on their lives and their current psychological outlook.
Understanding the Mechanisms of Well-Being Training in Adults with and without Asthma
Center scientists and collaborators examine the impact of well-being training.