About

Haewon Kim is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Education at the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education, University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research examines critical approaches to Korean language teaching in heritage and foreign language contexts, with a focus on the socioemotional dimensions of learning, such as ethnic identity development and learner agency. Her current work concentrates on developing online Korean language courses that are interactive, collaborative, and critically informed.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Social psychology
• Psychology

Selected publications

• A tale of two belongings: social and academic belonging differentially shape academic and psychological outcomes among university students

  Frontiers in Psychology · 2025-02-12 · 6 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  The benefits of belonging in academic settings are well established; however, past empirical research has for the most part conflated academic and social belonging. This study utilized latent class analysis (LCA) with a sample of undergraduates ( N = 837) to determine whether distinct classes or profiles of belonging exist on a college campus and whether class membership predicts academic and psychological outcomes. Four distinct belonging classes emerged: High Social , High Academic belonging (35%), Low Social , High Academic belonging (15%), High Social , Low Academic belonging (38%), and Low Social , Low Academic belonging (12%). The results show that belonging classes play different roles. For academic outcomes (GPA), academic belonging was important, but not social belonging. For psychological outcomes (stress and self-esteem), both academic and social belonging mattered but academic belonging mattered more. These findings demonstrate that investigating the distinctive roles of academic and social belonging is a fruitful theoretical and applied endeavor.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Feeling seen matters: how organization-based self-esteem mediates the relationship between university students’ coping resources and thriving in Germany, Indonesia, and the United Arab Emirates

  Frontiers in Psychology · 2025-09-10 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  Introduction While there is substantial evidence on the negative repercussions of study-related stressors on university students’ mental health and well-being, comparably less is known about a specific adaptive response to stressors in higher education: students’ thriving, that is, the experience of vitality and learning under challenging circumstances. Given the lack of comparative research on students’ adaptive outcomes in diverse cultural contexts, we examined coping resources (i.e., academic self-efficacy, ASE; social belonging, SB) as predictors of female and male students’ thriving in an individualistic culture (i.e., Germany, n = 259), and compared it to two collectivistic cultures (i.e., Indonesia, n = 839; United Arab Emirates, UAE, n = 230). We further investigated the role of organization-based self-esteem (OBSE) as a potential mediator between students’ coping resources and thriving. Methods and Results Multiple-group moderated mediation analyses showed that OBSE served as a mediator between SB and thriving in all three countries, irrespective of students’ gender. ASE directly catalyzed thriving among female and male students in Indonesia, only among female students in the UAE, but not in Germany. SB directly contributed to female and male students’ thriving in Germany and Indonesia. Discussion Our findings point to the universal decisive role of OBSE in enabling students in different cultures to transform coping resources into experiences of thriving when facing study-related stressors.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Culture and the Social Clock: Cultural Differences in the Optimal Timing of Life

  Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin · 2025-09-01 · 4 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  People typically hold personal views regarding the appropriate age ranges for significant life events, such as starting college, getting married, or having kids. Such socially prescribed timetables have been termed the social clock. In this paper, we investigate how and why the rigidity (or flexibility) of the social clock may vary across cultures. In three studies (two preregistered), participants from China and the United States were asked to provide the earliest and the latest ages they think appropriate for engaging in several life events. We operationalized the social clock's rigidity as the width of the time windows for these life events. We found notable cultural differences: The social clock was more rigid in China than in the United States, and filial piety beliefs are likely explanations for these differences. We further assessed the anticipated negative self-conscious emotions associated with deviation from the social clocks. Societal implications and future directions were discussed.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Emotional Acculturation: Emotions as a Pathway to Social Integration

  Current Directions in Psychological Science · 2025-07-24 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This article reviews recent research that examines how emotional processes change in response to exposure to new cultures and how successful changes in emotional processes play crucial roles in immigration outcomes. Social-psychology research has shown that emotional fit (i.e., having the "right" emotions in a given social context) is a pathway to social integration. Combining these findings with research on the crucial role of culture in shaping emotional experiences, this article aims to advance understanding of psychological adaptation processes among immigrants, cultural minorities, and cultural majorities, focusing on how they develop new emotional patterns to become calibrated to their cultural surroundings, a process termed "emotional acculturation." We also discuss the antecedents and consequences of adaptive emotional acculturation. We hope to generate interest in future research on acculturation that fully incorporates the cultural foundations of psychological processes.

  PublisherDOI

• The most difficult thing in the world: a sociocultural perspective on putting pro-environmental thoughts into action

  Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences · 2024-12-13 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Why do I act for the environment? Socioeconomic status moderates the relationship between climate change beliefs and sustainable actions.

  Motivation Science · 2024-05-30 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Effectively responding to climate change requires the participation of all people across a diverse sociocultural spectrum who vary in their psychological processes. Previous research shows that socioeconomic status (SES) influences how strongly individuals’ climate change beliefs are associated with their willingness to support pro-environmental actions. The present research examined the same phenomenon with people’s actual engagement in pro-environmental actions. Two studies tested the hypothesis that the link between climate change beliefs and people’s pro-environmental actions would be stronger among higher SES individuals than lower SES individuals. Study 1 (N= 414) is an online study conducted in the United States where people had to decide whether and how much they would play a game to raise funds for a pro-environmental organization. Study 2 (N= 783) is a field study where consumers’ actual grocery purchases in the United Kingdom were analyzed. In both studies, participants indicated their beliefs about climate change and their income and education level. In both studies, participants’ education level, but not income, moderated the belief and action associations as predicted. This research underscores the importance of considering sociocultural diversity in psychology in making consequential progress in pro-environmental efforts.

  PublisherDOI

• The role of emotional similarity and emotional accuracy in belonging and stress among first-generation and continuing-generation students

  Frontiers in Psychology · 2024-02-14 · 5 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Extensive research has documented the psychological, social, and academic predicament of first-generation college students. However, basic psychological mechanisms underlying the challenges experienced by these students have been understudied. Taking a cultural psychology perspective, the present research considers the role of emotional (mis)match as a key mechanism for explaining first-generation students’ lowered well-being. A sample of 344 American undergraduate students completed a survey designed to measure two aspects of emotional processing: (1) Emotional Accuracy – how accurately students perceive emotional reactions of majority-culture students (continuing-generation junior and senior students who have been socialized into college culture), and (2) Emotional Similarity –how similar students’ emotions are to the emotions experienced by majority-culture students. Emotional Accuracy predicted positive outcomes, in general, but was lower among first-generation students. Unexpectedly, Emotional Similarity predicted negative student outcomes. As one of the first studies addressing basic psychological mechanisms in college adjustment, these findings underscore the importance of understanding the roles that specific emotional processes play in social adjustment.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Where you come from matters: familial class background plays a greater role for status-related judgements in France than in the United States ( <i>Tu procedencia importa: la clase social familiar de pertenencia tiene más peso en los juicios sobre el estatus social en Francia que en Estados Unidos</i> )

  International Journal of Social Psychology Revista de Psicología Social · 2023-09-21 · 3 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  The present research investigated to what extent two Western cultures, France and the United States, differed in making status-related judgements based on a person’s familial class background. Consistent with the eco-historical origins of French and American status beliefs, Study 1 ( N = 77) showed that French more than American participants perceived an unknown community member with higher (compared to lower) familial class background to have greater status-related characteristics. Study 2 ( N = 213) showed that French more than American participants also expected a job candidate with higher (compared to lower) familial class background to attain higher status in the workplace. Study 3 ( N = 231) experimentally manipulated upward mobility beliefs in a monocultural sample of American participants. Results showed that when participants were made to believe that upward mobility in society was low (but not when high), information about a person’s familial class background was the basis of status-related judgements. Our findings speak to the importance that sociocultural contexts play for the understanding of different aspects of social class.

  PublisherDOI

• Who needs control? A cultural perspective on the process of compensatory control

  Social and Personality Psychology Compass · 2022-12-16 · 14 citations

  articleOpen accessCorresponding

  Abstract Compensatory control theory (CCT) provides a framework for understanding the mechanisms at play when one's personal control is challenged. The model suggests that believing the world is a structured and predictable place is fundamental, insofar as it provides the foundation upon which people can believe they are able to exert control over their environment and act agentically towards goals. Because of this, CCT suggests, when personal control is threatened people try to reaffirm the more foundational belief in structure/predictability in the world, so that they then have a strong foundation to reestablish feelings of personal control and pursue their goals. This review seeks to understand how the basic assumptions of these compensatory control processes unfold in different cultural contexts. Drawing on research and theorizing from cultural psychology, we propose that cultural models of self and agency, culturally prevalent modes of control, and culture‐specific motivations all have implications for compensatory control processes. Culture determines, in part, whether or not personal control deprivation is experienced as a threat to perceiving an orderly world, how/whether individuals respond to low personal control, and the function that responses to restore a sense of order in the world serve. A theoretical model of compensatory control processes across cultures is proposed that has implications for how people cope with a wide range of personal and societal events that potentially threaten their personal control.

  PublisherDOI

• Individual costs and community benefits: Collectivism and individuals’ compliance with public health interventions

  PLoS ONE · 2022-11-03 · 47 citations

  articleOpen access

  Differences in national responses to COVID-19 have been associated with the cultural value of collectivism. The present research builds on these findings by examining the relationship between collectivism at the individual level and adherence to public health recommendations to combat COVID-19 during the pre-vaccination stage of the pandemic, and examines different characteristics of collectivism (i.e., concern for community, trust in institutions, perceived social norms) as potential psychological mechanisms that could explain greater compliance. A study with a cross-section of American participants (N = 530) examined the relationship between collectivism and opting-in to digital contact tracing (DCT) and wearing face coverings in the general population. More collectivistic individuals were more likely to comply with public health interventions than less collectivistic individuals. While collectivism was positively associated with the three potential psychological mechanisms, only perceived social norms about the proportion of people performing the public health interventions explained the relationship between collectivism and compliance with both public health interventions. This research identifies specific pathways by which collectivism can lead to compliance with community-benefiting public health behaviors to combat contagious diseases and highlights the role of cultural orientation in shaping individuals' decisions that involve a tension between individual cost and community benefit.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• DHB:Collaborative Research: Cultural and Genetic Basis of Social Support Use

  NSF · $600k · 2008–2012

• RAPID: The Psychology of Fear: Cultural Orientation and Response to Ebola Threat

  NSF · $128k · 2014–2016

• Oxytocin and Socio-Emotional Sensitivity: Mechanisms of Gene-Culture Interaction

  NSF · $450k · 2011–2015

Frequent coauthors

• David K. Sherman

  39 shared

• Joni Y. Sasaki

  University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

  16 shared

• Kimin Eom

  14 shared

• Taraneh Mojaverian

  University of California, Santa Barbara

  12 shared

• Shelley E. Taylor

  General Electric (United States)

  12 shared

• Keiko Ishii

  Nagoya University

  6 shared

• Zoe Kinias

  5 shared

• John A. Updegraff

  Kent State University

  5 shared