Meet Dr. Ning Hsu
I grew up in Taiwan and attended Hawaii Pacific University for my undergraduate degree in Psychology. I received my doctoral training in organizational psychology at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.
The people are friendly, the weather is not too cold, the mountains are beautiful, and the hiking trails are fun to go on.
My research focuses on leadership, gender, and personality. In particular, I have focused on three sets of phenomena:
1. Female leadership advantage (and male leadership advantage)
2. Agency and Communion
3. Destructive leadership/abusive supervision
Diversity in the workplace has been an interest of mine because I have observed that individual differences (e.g., gender, race, personality) seem to relate to workplace decisions (e.g, promotion to leadership position, hiring, salary decision). I am interested in understanding the mechanisms of these phenomena, and hoping to identify and promote conditions where diversity is valued instead of a source of conflict.
My research on female (male) leadership advantage helps explain why there are more men than women in leadership positions in our society. It also potentially could explain the broader gender discrepancy in many other workplace decisions. For example, the pay discrepancy between men and women (because leadership positions usually have higher pay). Although the broader gender discrepancy in the workplace (e.g., gender makeup of the labor force) have narrowed over time, the gender discrepancies in pay, leadership roles, STEM jobs, etc. are still prevalent. It is important that we identify the factors that contribute to these phenomena, so we can understand and further address these issues.
Being the first one to know the results of our research projects, working on research projects with my collaborators and getting the papers published, and seeing that students learn from my class and/or my mentoring are the most exciting (or you could say my favorite) parts of my job.
“You want to work as fast and as hard as possible but without breaking yourself.”
During my undergraduate and graduate study. I sort of became more and more interested in science throughout my pursuit in higher education. I would like to believe that I am an empiricist (i.e., I like to see the empirical evidence before I believe something), and to me, science is about empirical evidence.
I enjoy outdoor activities like hiking, rock climbing, going to the beach, and eating great food!
Anywhere with great food!
I am a certified scuba diver.