Research

• How is status construed by everyday individuals? How do they make status judgments?

  • Past research commonly investigated status taking a top-down approach (i.e., using researchers' preconceived notions of status). In these projects, I leverage a bottom-up approach to probe how everyday people organically, naturally define what status is judge others' status. I use qualitative and quantitative method designs (within- and between-subjects), employing appropriate statistical analyses (e.g., NLP, multi-level modeling). 

  • Fang, W.M., and Zayas, V. (in prep). 

• How stable are perceptions of status across social interactions?

  • Some literature suggests that perceptions of status are likely stable, unchanging across social interaction partners and anchored to the perceiver; meanwhile, other theories suggest that status will fluctuate across interactions partners. Using the Social Relations Model, I examine and ultimately provide insight how status perceptions are constructed within a dyadic interaction. 

  • Fang, W.M., and Zayas, V. (in prep). 

• How are differences in well-being between low- and high-SES students' related to their social networks?

  • Low-socioeconomic status (SES) students disproportionately reported poorer well-being. Some literature suggests that social network connections can mitigate these "well-being gaps," and this work suggests one's subjective perception of social connection (e.g., the number of peers one nominates as a friend) plays a critical role in these gaps, even beyond the number of peers who nominate them. To analyze large, social network data (N > 1000), I used social network analysis, mediation analysis, and multiple linear regression. 

Fang, W. M., Courtney, A., Jackson, M. O., & Zaki, J. (2025). Differences in perceived social connection help explain SES-based gaps in well-being. Social Networks, 82, 55-64

Courtney, A. L., Baltiansky, D., Fang, W. M., Roshanaei, M., Aybas, Y. C., Samuels, N. A., ... & Zaki, J. (2024). Social microclimates and well-being. Emotion, 24(3), 836.