Derek Mingda Xu

My Name is Derek Mingda Xu (or Derek M.X.). I was born in San Diego, California, but later moved to Pennsylvania, and afterwards Beijing, China.

Now, I’m back in San Diego as an undergraduate student at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) double majoring in Cognitive Neuroscience (B.S.) and Social Psychology (B.S.) with a minor in Political Science.

In my rapidly decreasing amount of free time, I enjoy watching TV shows and reconnecting with the city I was born in, either through community-based volunteering or just walking around during the weekends.

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My main focus is on the psychology of political partisanship, specifically how and why people identifying with one party come to form opinions of, understand, and interact with people of an opposing party. Answering this question requires perspectives involving morality/ethics, emotion, empathy (or lack thereof), social decision-making, and perception of (mis)information, just to name a few.

Furthermore, given my ongoing training in cognitive neuroscience methods (neuroimaging, EEG, eye-tracking, etc.), I’m also excited about exploring an emerging field called political neuroscience, particularly trends within it that investigate the neurobiological basis of differences between conservatives and liberals.

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Some of the completed research projects I’ve been involved in are showcased on the Research page.

My current roles and ongoing projects are in the Current Development page. They include my participation in research labs as well as independent research I am working on.

The Intellectual Journey page goes more in-depth regarding my path to discovering my interests in political psychology. It also documents my experience during undergrad.

Finally, I’ve also included two non-research-related pages, which are Non-Research Articles and Favorite Shows/Books. These are just brief windows into some of the topics I’m interested in outside of formal academia.

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