Elizabeth N. Trinh

Elizabeth’s research examines how the strategies people use to protect and sustain themselves at work can become self-limiting. People often make consequential choices without knowing how those choices will unfold: whether to keep working or rest, disclose or withhold, approach or avoid, or remain in an interaction or move on. Although these choices may protect well-being in the moment, they can also prevent people from discovering that an alternative would have been more rewarding. Her research explains how these protective choices become self-reinforcing—and how organizations can interrupt that cycle.

Across two connected streams, Elizabeth studies how people sustain the self at work and how expectations shape opportunities for connection. The first stream examines everyday self-regulation: why people adopt strategies such as self-imposed busyness, what psychological benefits those strategies provide, and when their immediate benefits produce downstream costs. This work shows that voluntarily remaining busy can generate feelings of productivity and self-worth that support thriving and resilience, even as busyness may make people appear unavailable to those around them. Her research also examines how disclosure, responses to self-doubt, and other regulatory choices shape well-being, meaningfulness, and relationships over time.

The second stream examines why people avoid, constrain, or prematurely end social experiences that would have gone better than expected. Elizabeth studies how people misforecast conversations, awkward interactions, self-disclosure, self-promotion, and networking encounters—and how the resulting choices prevent them from gaining the experiences that could revise their expectations. She also tests how organizations can build connection into the structure of work, making psychological and relational resources more accessible even when people would not anticipate their value or initiate the interaction themselves.

Together, these streams show that self-regulation and social connection are intertwined: efforts to manage one’s own psychological state can alter the social environment for both the actor and others. Elizabeth’s broader aim is to explain how, when, and why self-protection becomes self-limiting—and how work can be designed so that people are better able to access its psychological and relational rewards.

Her research has appeared in leading journals, including the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Academy of Management Annals, and Emotion. It has also been featured in global media outlets, including Harvard Business Review, TIME Magazine, NBC News, The Guardian, The Times of London, NPR, and SiriusXM Radio.