Jieni Zhou graduated from Bryn Mawr College with a major in Psychology and a minor in Education. She received her master’s degree in Developmental Psychology from Cornell University. She is currently a graduate student pursuing a Ph.D. in Social Psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She studies the intersectionality of positive emotion and social relationships. Inspired by Fredrickson’s “Broaden-and-Build Theory”, she studies the individual, relational and community level benefits of positive affect sharing in people's daily interactions especially with romantic partners and strangers. Her research also expands on conducive factors such as vantage resources and socio-ecological environment that lead to more frequent moments of co-experienced positive emotions in social encounters.