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.
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
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
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.
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.
