Jingyi Violet Yang

Ph.D. student, Psychology

Research Interests: Violet Yang is a Clinical Psychology PhD student at Southern Methodist University. She studies how people make meaning of their impulsive behavior in acute psychopathology, using behavioral interviews and ecological momentary assessment. Her research also draws on complex systems theory to understand the process dynamics that lead from impulsivity to the extreme decisions and actions that cause harm. She is also broadly interested in how young people relate to AI, the roles they assign to it, and how those relationships may shape mental health and suicide risk.

Road to the Moody School: Prior to SMU, Violet earned a dual major in Psychology and Criminology at UC Irvine and an MA in Clinical Psychology from Columbia University. She then spent two years as a Clinical Research Coordinator with the Accelerating Medicines Partnership® Schizophrenia at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in NYC, following individuals at clinical high risk for psychosis. There she studied suicidality, auditory hallucinations, and self-stigma using quantitative and computational methods, and developed a strong interest in the phenomenological research of psychopathology.