Greg MurrayGraduate Student

• Ed.M. in Human Development and Psychology, Harvard University
• B.A. in Sociology, University of Pennsylvania

• Social Psychology, Emotions, Mental Health, Status and Stigma, Human Development and Education

   

My research focuses on social and developmental psychological processes and their impacts on mental health and wellbeing. My 3-paper dissertation centers on meaning-making processes of self and other and the degree to which mental health is both a factor in and an outcome of those processes. The first paper is a vignette experiment examining the effects of both information on mental illness and mental health (i.e., flourishing/languishing) on perceptions of status and stigma. Including mental health contributes to our understanding of status and stigma processes associated with mental illness. The second paper leverages affect control theory to home in on how identity is reconstructed as people seek relief from the psychological distress of spousal bereavement and divorce. The final paper investigates the effects of Cognitively Based Compassion Training on educators' teaching practice and sense of self.  

Two other papers in process include an analysis of covid-related mental health burdens in the US and Japan, and an exploratory investigation of the metacognitive mechanisms underlying contemplative practice and how they support stage-development in adulthood. 

I am also a founding member of the Social Empathy Lab at the Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture where we work together to explore empathy from an interdisciplinary, social, and embodied perspective.