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Sonia Pan

Postdoctoral Associate
Psychology & Neuroscience

Selected Publications


A tale of self-transcendence: awe fosters optimism

Journal Article Journal of Positive Psychology · January 1, 2025 Optimism, a positive mindset towards the future, serves various adaptive functions. While its significance has been acknowledged in the literature, the role of self-transcendence in fostering optimism remains underexplored. The present research contributes ... Full text Cite

A balanced mind: Awe fosters equanimity via temporal distancing.

Journal Article Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · December 2024 Full text Open Access Cite

Are we braver in cyberspace? Social media anonymity enhances moral courage

Journal Article Computers in Human Behavior · November 1, 2023 The literature has established accumulated evidence on the negative consequences of social media anonymity on behaviors online (e.g., cyber-aggression). Yet the potential benefits of social media anonymity have been largely overlooked, especially when it c ... Full text Cite

Awe fosters global self-continuity: The mediating effect of global processing and narrative.

Journal Article Emotion (Washington, D.C.) · September 2023 Awe is a self-relevant emotion, but whether and how awe impacts global self-continuity (GSC), a sense of connectedness among past, present, and future selves, has never been investigated. In six studies (N = 1,384), we examined the relationship betw ... Full text Cite

Remembering online and offline: the effects of retrieval contexts, cues, and intervals on autobiographical memory.

Journal Article Memory (Hove, England) · April 2022 The current study examined the impact of social media as a retrieval context (in contrast to private recall) on the retention of autobiographical memory. At session 1, participants (N = 177) generated recent life events in response to cue words and ... Full text Cite