Research Interests

Gloria Wong-Padoongpatt’s research focuses on the mental health issues among marginalized individuals. Her primary line of research examines the stressful effects of microaggressions, a form of everyday discrimination. She investigates the impact, mechanisms, and individual variations in stress responses to these everyday slights and denigrations. Gloria’s research program on microaggressions addresses three major gaps: 1) experimentally tests if marginalized individuals experience stress from microaggressions, 2) examines threats to self-concepts as possible mediators of microaggression-generated stress, and 3) investigates individual differences in personality traits as moderators of the microaggression effect.  Gloria’s secondary line of research examines ethnic and gender differences in risk-factors for addictions, mainly gambling addiction. This research program has three specific aims: 1) assess the patterns of gambling behavior and the co-morbidity of gambling problems with other psychological problems among the different marginalized populations, 2) determine whether the psychosocial risk factors associated with gambling are specifically related to gambling or are generically related to any mental health disorder, and 3) examine novel and understudied risk factors for gambling.  

Gloria received her bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of California, San Diego and her doctoral degree in social/personality psychology from the University of California, Davis.