Position Title
PhD Candidate
Alexa is a fourth-year doctoral student in Social-Personality Psychology at UC Davis. She began working in the Attraction & Relationships Research Lab as an undergraduate in 2019, earned her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from UC Davis in 2020, and earned her M.A. in Psychology in 2023.
Broadly, Alexa studies the interpersonal factors that promote romantic relationship initiation and resilience. Her work attempts to conceptualize relationship outcomes (e.g. relationship satisfaction, wellbeing, and couple identity) as properties emerging between specific partners. Alexa is particularly interested in using mixed methods to study how relationship-specific norms, traditions, and narratives develop within dyads over time. One of her favorite projects integrates quantitative and qualitative data to explore how the dyadic construction of romantic couples’ relationship narratives relates to their wellbeing.
In her free time, Alexa enjoys collecting philodendrons & other aroids, tending to her succulent garden, and hiking. Her favorite place on campus is the UC Davis Botanical Conservatory.
- Romantic relationships, mixed methods, relationship narratives, self & identity, wellbeing
- Alcser-Isais, A. N., Smith, L. K., & Eastwick, P. W. (2022). Inferring one’s own attitude towards an unknown attribute: The moderating role of complexity in juice tasting. Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 21, 1368-1389.