This month, we are pleased to introduce Dr. Cynthia Xinran Guo, a Post-doctoral fellow working with Dr. Daniel D. Dilks at the Department of Psychology, Emory University.
1. Can you write a couple sentences on some aspect of your career development: feel free to pick one or any other related question among these: a) what drew you to do work on Asians, Asian American children and youth, or another topic that is important to you now? b) who was an important mentor to you in this work, or an influential particular study in the field or in a related field? c) any particular advice or tips to someone starting out in the field who is doing work in your area?
When I was an undergraduate at UCLA, I worked in a cognitive neuroscience lab using functional neuroimaging method to study memory in the aging brain. My interests later shifted towards early development, and I pursued a Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology at Emory University. In particular, I studied lying and deception in young children using primarily behavioral methods. As a postdoc, I am combining my interests in moral development with neuroimaging techniques to explore how morality develops.
My advice to students, and to myself, is to never put yourself in a box. At different points in my career, I’ve had the thought that “this is how things work in my field” or “we always do it this way.” Almost every time, I’ve had to go back and revise my schema. For example, when I started graduate school, I imagined running a behavioral lab; now I’m doing resting-state fMRI work. The way I approach questions has changed a lot, but the question I’m interested in remains the same: How does morality develop? This is both very exciting and comforting. At a time when a lot of things seem uncertain, my curiosity about the question and excitement to learn new things keep me going.
2. A short paragraph describing a particular recent finding, current study, or recent publication and what makes you excited about it. Feel free to describe its importance from any one or more of these lenses: a) research contribution; b) our knowledge about Asian or Asian American populations; c) our knowledge about other [understudied?] populations; d) practice or policy relevance.
My PhD advisor Philippe Rochat and I published a paper early this year where we studied the motivation behind deception in children between 2.5 and 5 years old. We assigned children to one of three experimental conditions: baseline, self-motivated, and other-motivated, and then measured how likely they were to deceive. We discovered a developmental shift in what motivates children to lie. Children from 2.5 to 4 years old lied significantly more often in the self-motivated condition. However, children who were 4 years and older lied at roughly the same rate in both the self-motivated and other-motivated conditions. These results suggest that a child’s earliest lies are mostly told for self-serving reasons, such as to avoid punishment or get a reward. Around the age of 4 appears to be a critical transitional period when children begin to lie for both themselves and others.
References
Guo, C. X., & Rochat, P. (2025). What motivates early lies? Deception in 2½-to 5-year-olds. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 249, 106079.
3. Your reflections on your interactions with the Asian Caucus would be highly appreciated. Please feel free to share your thoughts, whether it’s a simple message for the Caucus community or more.
I started following the SRCD Asian Caucus as a first-year Ph.D. student. It has been truly encouraging to see other researchers and scholars in the Asian community pursuing careers in Child Development research. I look forward to getting connected to other members, either virtually or at conferences!
4. Any upcoming talks or presentations we should know about?
N/A (still discussing with PI about which ones to attend since I just joined a new lab)!
5. What is your preferred contact email?
xguo47@emory.edu
6. A weblink you prefer to share?
N/A (again, I am in a transition phase so my new bio has not been updated yet)