Makyla Burson

Makyla Burson is a 4th year Psychology Major and Chicano/a Studies minor at UCLA. She presently serves as the supervisor to the Academic Advancement Program (AAP)’s English Composition Discipline Peer Learning Unit and act as a member of their Student Staff Advisory Committee. As she pursues her last year of university, she has taken on an honors thesis as a member of UCLA’s Psychology Departmental Honors Program under the mentorship of Dr. Efren Pérez, with a concentration in both Political and Social Psychology. Having been presented with a research scholarship under UCLA’s Keck Humanistic Inquiry Research Award, she is pleased to soon be able to fund a majority of my research project and gain additional support as a Keck Fellow through the program. Her project focuses on the concept of political polarization and its effect on mixed-race individuals’ identity formation and well-being. The levels of polarization within these individuals’ political ideologies are to be measured according to their scores on the American National Election Studies (ANES) Survey, while identity formation and well-being are measured using the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI) and Assessment of Identity Development in Adolescence (AIDA) surveys. Her goal is to obtain a better understanding of the unique challenges that multiracial individuals’ face in today’s sociopolitical climate, and to validate these experiences while offering possible strategies for navigating America’s politically polarized environment. In her analysis, she aims to promote social cohesion, inclusivity, and psychological health, especially as societies become increasingly diverse, both racially and politically.