Alysia Burbidge

Hello, my name is Alysia. I am a third-year Ph.D. student in Social Psychology at the University of Southern California. I work with Dr. Daphna Oyserman in the Mind and Society Center.

My research focuses on motivation, social class, and identity. I am currently looking at how we can use identity-based motivation to better understand and improve academic goal-setting and goal-attainment for minoritized and economically disenfranchised students. I am also examining how conceptual metaphors of social class and politics interplay in our perceptions of the socioeconomically disadvantaged. I use a variety of approaches, including experimental methods, multilevel modeling, text analysis, and real-world intervention work, to examine these questions.

Prior to USC, I received my Psychology B.S. from the University of California, Riverside. I am a multiracial, first-generation student and second-generation immigrant.

Have a question? Want to start a conversation? Contact me at burbidge@usc.edu

Pathways-to-Success

Leveraging the core theoretical framework of identity-based motivation theory, Pathways-to-Success is an intervention designed by Dr. Daphna Oyserman to help all students connect what they are doing in school right now to the person they expect to become one day. Through 12 brief sessions implemented during the first six weeks of the school year, students discover that now is the time to act, that school is the path to their future self, and that difficulty does not necessarilly imply impossibility.

I work alongside a team of skilled researchers to accomplish three main tasks. First, to scale-up the intervention. Second, to increase the accessibility of the intervention. Third, to test the impacts ot the intervention using sophisticated research methods.

Academic Strategy Use

Students want to succeed in school and they can describe strategies for achieving their academic goals. However, whether or not students actually use the strategies they have is sensitive to context and everyday situations. I am currently refining and validating an idiographic self-report measure of action-readiness using a variety of methods including daily diaries, day reconstruction, and short-term longitudinal methods.

Social Class Metaphors

People use concretizing metaphors to make sense of abstract concepts, including social class. The metaphors people use frame their perceptions of themselves and others. Examples of social class metaphors common in American discourse include the social ladder, social mobility, and economic growth.

I am currently conducting experimental and qualitative work evaluating these social class metaphors. Importantly, each of these metaphors carries different implications regarding evaluations of character and dispositional vs. situational inferences. This work connects many literatures, including conceptual metaphor theory, essentialism, moralization of effort, and social class stereotypes. This work has both theoretical and applied implications, especially for public policy and politics.

Service - Under construction.

Mind and Society RA Meeting Coordinator

First-Year Graduate Student Mentor

Undergraduate Student Support

CV

Nature & Wildlife

Red-Eared Slider