P. Priscilla Lui, Ph.D.
I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Southern Methodist University (SMU). I received my B.S. in biology and psychology from the University of Washington, and M.A. in general psychology from the California State University in Los Angeles. I received my Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology and a Graduate Certificate in Psychological Statistics at the APA– and PCSAS-accredited program at Purdue University. Prior to my faculty position at SMU, I completed the APA-accredited predoctoral clinical psychology internship at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
**I will be returning to the University of Washington as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology in December 2022.**
Research Interests and Expertise
As a clinical scientist, I conduct research on minority mental health and health disparities. I am interested in how people from diverse sociocultural backgrounds make sense of the world, and how their lived experiences associated with culture, ethnicity, and race affect their psychopathology symptoms and addictive behaviors. Grounded in a social ecological framework, my research incorporates a range of designs, methodological, sampling, and analytic approaches, and focuses on:
- processes involved in intercultural contact, particularly acculturation and racial discrimination;
- cultural values, practices, and beliefs;
- romantic and marital relationships, and intergenerational conflict; and,
- personality and individual difference determinants of psychopathology and addictive behaviors.
To the extent that knowledge on the prediction and explanation of human psychology only is as good as our ability to assess these concepts, I am interested in scale development and evaluation of the quality of psychological measures. Some measures that I have developed can be found HERE.
Recently, I have been conducting metascience research to understand how psychological scholars leverage open science and culturally competent research frameworks and tools to produce credible and impactful knowledge, and to ensure an equitable and transparent scientific process. A list of my publications can be found in my NCBI bibliography or my ResearchGate.
In addition to contributing to science by producing original research, I am an associate editor for Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology. I also serve as a consulting editor on five other journal editorial boards (Assessment, Asian American Journal of Psychology, Clinical Psychological Science, Journal of Counseling Psychology, and Psychology of Addictive Behaviors) and as an ad hoc reviewer for numerous peer-reviewed journals.
In 2019, I was honored to have been named a Rising Star by the Association for Psychological Science, and selected by the Society for Clinical Psychology to receive the Samuel M. Turner Early Career Award for Distinguished Contributions to Diversity in Clinical Psychology. In 2020, I selected as recipient of the Emerging Professional Contributions to Research Award from the Society for the Psychological Study of Race, Ethnicity and Culture. In 2021, I received the Early Career Award for Distinguished Contributions to Research from the Asian American Psychological Association.
Teaching Interests
Currently, I teach undergraduate-level courses on Psychology and the Challenges of Life and Psychology of Culture, Ethnicity, and Race, Research Methods in Psychology, and a graduate-level course entitled Cultural and Individual Diversity: Principles and Best Practices in Research and Applications. I also have taught Abnormal Psychology (i.e., psychopathology). I also teach a workshop to doctoral students in psychology entitled, How to Conduct a Comprehensive Literature Review with an Eye Toward Publishing it in a Top Tier Journal.
I aim to inspire students to use psychology courses to shed light on or solve real-world problems to “give psychology away.” For example, in light of the pandemic caused by the 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), students in my Summer 2020 Psychology and the Challenges of Life created a resource list for young adults to learn about stress and coping. Additionally, students in my Psychology of Culture, Ethnicity, and Race course complete fact sheets that address cultural diversity issues in psychology. Examples of these resources can be found HERE.
I received the 2019-2020 SMU Golden Mustang Award in recognition of my contributions to teaching, student learning, and the discipline.
More information about the undergraduate curriculum in Psychology at SMU can be found on our departmental website.