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Research

As a psychologist specializing in intervention science, resilience, and well-being, I’m deeply interested in how people think, what shapes their mindset and behavior, and how we can meaningfully improve their lives. My work explores how to design effective and scalable psychological interventions that help individuals thrive—especially in high-stress or challenging environments.

Research Areas

Intervention Science

I develop and evaluate psychological interventions aimed at enhancing resilience, motivation, and mental health. My approach integrates social, developmental and organizational psychology to understand how people navigate stress and adversity.

Psychology of Peak Performance

Why do individuals choke under pressure? Drawing from my own background as a former professional athlete, I examine the paradox of performance: how high achievement contexts may actually heighten psychological vulnerability. My research explores how interventions can buffer against these effects and enhance resilience and performance in various contexts.

Digital Tools for Personalization

I am particularly interested in leveraging Large Language Models to make psychological interventions more targeted, tailored, and timely (Cohen et al., 2017). This includes using AI to adapt delivery formats, language, and timing of messages to individual users' needs.

Featured Publications

Improving social belonging, meaning and mental health during COVID-19

During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, we tested two psychological interventions rooted in values-affirmation theory across the United States and Italy. These interventions helped individuals maintain a connection to their core values, acting as buffers against the psychological toll of the pandemic.

Key Findings:

Immediate improvements in social belonging and mental health.
Long-term benefits on social belonging were primarily observed in men, whom we found to have experienced poorer psychological outcomes as the pandemic progressed.
The interventions particularly benefited the social belonging of participants from lower socioeconomic statuses.
Surprisingly consistent effects across cultural and risk factor subgroups.

Our results suggest that socially psychologically informed interventions, such as those centered on our values, can serve as effective tools for psychological support in the face of acute stressors.

Tay, I. Q., & Cohen, G. L. (2025). Improving social belonging, meaning, and mental health during COVID-19: A self-affirmation approach. Emotion. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0001498

Mindset among Athletes

Spontaneous use of mental contrasting—a self-regulation strategy—predicted superior performance among elite DanceSport athletes. This study bridges mindset theory with real-world sport psychology, offering insights into the psychology of champions.

Tay, I. Q., Valshtein, T. J., Krott, N. R., & Oettingen, G. (2019). Mental contrasting in DanceSport: The champion’s mindset. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 45, Article 101511. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2019.04.001

Ongoing & In-Review Research

In Education

Scaling Values-Affirmation Interventions in U.S. Colleges

This project explores how a digital values-affirmation can support college students’ success—especially during identity-relevant transitions. In collaboration with a research team at Stanford University, and led by the Behavioral Change For Good team at the University of Pennsylvania, we are adapting and delivering values-affirmation exercises digitally as part of a nationwide educational mega-study in the United States. Preliminary work is underway, with large-scale implementation and evaluation planned in partnership with school districts across the country.

In Elite Athletics

Designing Values-Affirmation-Based Interventions to Support Elite Athletes

How can athletes stay resilient and grounded under pressure? This ongoing research project explores a novel Resilience Training + Affirmation (RTA) program designed to help elite DanceSport athletes manage stress, build confidence, and stay connected to their identity and purpose in sport.

The study involved 155 athletes from 15 countries, with materials delivered in 8 languages around a major international event. Preliminary analyses suggest promising effects on psychological resilience, including reduced stress and improved self-efficacy and well-being. While the study is currently under review, the RTA approach shows potential as a scalable, psychologically grounded strategy for supporting elite athletes—and possibly individuals in other high-pressure environments.

In Education

Understanding Bias in Educational Decision-Making

In collaboration with a team of researchers, I’m contributing to a study that investigates how intuitive thinking and cognitive biases may affect how educational programs are judged and adopted. The project explores why people sometimes favor familiar-sounding solutions over those with strong scientific support, and whether subtle interventions can promote more evidence-informed decisions in policy and practice.

This work is currently under peer review. I contributed to the project as a co-author.