Research

People pursue multiple goals at work and in life. These goals can compete for attention and resources, but they can also support one another. We study how people perceive and manage these relationships, including the preferences and strategies that shape how they pursue multiple goals.

Our research challenges the assumption that pursuing one goal necessarily comes at the expense of another. We developed a framework that identifies five strategies for managing multiple goals: choosing, prioritizing, compromising, integrating, and avoiding. Our ongoing studies examine how these strategies relate to goal progress and well-being. In published research, we also found that preferences for multitasking and sequential tasking are distinct, and that these preferences help explain people's experiences of task switching without necessarily reflecting their abilities.

Building on this work, we examine how people perceive relationships among organizational goals, how different tasks may support one another, and how people navigate competing demands across work, family, and personal life. We are also interested in exploring the role of AI in multiple goal management.

Disagreements are a natural part of working and living with others. When people's interests or views differ, how they approach these differences can shape their conversations, relationships, and ability to work together. We study how people reason about disagreements and what helps them communicate constructively, even when they do not reach agreement.

A central focus of our research is wise reasoning: recognizing the limits of one's knowledge, considering others' perspectives, taking an observer's viewpoint, acknowledging that situations can change, and seeking compromise. Our published review brings together evidence linking wise reasoning to greater cooperation, less polarized intergroup attitudes, and more respectful disagreements.

Our ongoing research examines wise reasoning in business negotiations and conversations about sociopolitical disagreements. Across these contexts, greater wise reasoning has been associated with more positive experiences of conflict communication, more generous perceptions of others, and greater willingness to interact again. Building on these findings, we are interested in how people can navigate disagreements while maintaining constructive relationships, how conflict may contribute to personal growth and well-being, and how AI may change the ways people approach disagreements.

As researchers and technology developers increasingly explore how to make AI more human-like, we ask a different question: What happens when people are perceived and treated as less than human? We study how intergroup bias and prejudice shape minoritized workers' experiences, with a particular focus on Asian and Asian American workers and mechanistic dehumanization—being perceived or treated as robotic or machine-like.

Our research examines both how Asian workers are perceived by others and how they experience dehumanizing treatment themselves. Drawing on interviews with 33 Asian and Asian American workers, we identified seven dimensions of mechanistic dehumanization, including being treated as tools, reduced to technical abilities, or denied individuality, agency, emotions, social connection, and dignity. Our ongoing studies examine how these experiences relate to workers' well-being and career development. We also investigate social pain minimization—when people's interpersonal hurt is overlooked or downplayed—as a potential contributor to dehumanization.

Beyond this work, we study LGBTQ+ employees' experiences of microaggressions and silence, employees' cultural mindsets, and how workplace practices can be understood through different cultural perspectives. Together, these projects aim to better understand the experiences of minoritized workers and identify ways to foster more inclusive and humanizing workplaces.