Position Title
Assistant Professor
Education and Degree(s)
- PhD, University of California Riverside, 2022
- BS, University of California Riverside, 2017
About
Dr. Westberg is an Assistant Professor in the Psychology Department who specializes in the study of personality psychology particularly among individuals from racial-ethnic minority groups and other minoritized contexts. She received her PhD in Social and Personality Psychology in 2022 and her B.S. in Psychology in 2017 from the University of California, Riverside.
Dr. Westberg will be recruiting undergraduate students to join her lab to help with qualitative data analysis and other research projects in Fall 2024. She is also currently accepting applications for new graduate students for the 2024-2025 application cycle.
Research Focus
I am interested in how individuals navigate social structures and the implications of such structures for personality and identity. In my research, I examine variations in life narratives around race, ethnicity, gender, and social class, in relation to psychosocial adjustment and identity. Life narratives are the internal constructions of who the person is, was, and will become that provide one with a sense of meaning, purpose, and continuity. Through my work in this area, I aim to reveal how systems of power and oppression guide and constrain personality.
I use both qualitative and quantitative approaches to advance understanding of the person in relation to social structures. I recently examined variations in life narratives among racially and ethnically diverse young adults, finding that men told more positive stories around structural domains relative to women and participants who mentioned more structural domains across their narratives made more meaning of their experiences (see https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/tvcfz).
Selected Publications
Westberg, D. W., & Syed, M. (2024). Integrating personality psychology and intersectionality to advance diversity in the study of persons. Social and Personality Psychology Compass. https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12956
Loyd, A. B., Westberg, D. W., Williams, L., Humphries, M., Meca., A., Rodil, J. C. (2023). “I just want to be me, authentically”: Identity shifting among racially and ethnically diverse young adults. Journal of Youth and Adolescence.
Westberg, D. W. (2022). Stories off the beaten path: Exploring the content and correlates of cultural deviation narratives. Journal of Research in Personality. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2022.104266
Wilkinson, D., & Dunlop, W. L. (2020). Ethnic-racial life scripts: Relations with ethnic-racial identity and psychological health. Emerging Adulthood, 1-18. doi: 10.1177/2167696820968691
Dunlop, W. L., & Westberg, D. W. (2022). On stories, conceptual space, and physical place: An ecological approach to the study of narrative identity. Personality Science.
Dunlop, W. L., Wilkinson, D., & Harake, N. (2021). Episodic Master Narratives through time: Exploring the temporal dynamism of 2016 election night stories. European Journal of Social Psychology, 51, 1-13. doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2790
Membership and Service
Association for Research in Personality (ARP) Programming Committee Member (2023) Association for Research in Personality (ARP) Diversity and Inclusion Committee member (2020-present)
Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) member
International Society for Research on Identity (ISRI) member
Society for Research on Child Development (SRCD) member
Society for the Study of Emerging Adulthood (SSEA) member
Tags
Psychology, Personality Psychology, Identity, Life Narratives, Ethnic-Racial Identity, and Adjustment