Professional Bio

Brian Xu is a first-year graduate student in Penn State’s Social Psychology program primarily working with Dr. Reg Adams. He received his Bachelor of Science in Psychology and Health Science at Gettysburg College with departmental honors. Brian’s research focuses on how humans perceive and interpret facial expressions and body postures of others in social context, as well as how different expressions and postures might affect our own cognitive or behavioral outcome. His current research topics include how defensive postures might affect subjective perception of physical stimuli (amplitude of sound, magnitude of size); how people would differ in interpretation on expression of smile following mood inductions.