Yuerui (Julia) Wu is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at NYU Shanghai. She completed her Ph.D. in Psychology at the University of California, Davis, and earned her bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Economics from the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on cognition, emotions, and trauma, with a special interest in legal applications. She provides explanations for psychologically crucial and legally relevant phenomena by investigating how past experiences shape memories through the gateway of emotions, how thoughts about events may alter emotional experiences, and how cognition and emotions can both contribute to decision-making within social contexts. Her independent and collaborative work has been published in top psychology journals, such as Child Maltreatment, Child Abuse and Neglect, and Clinical Psychological Science.
Wu is a recipient of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) Young Scientist Grant, California Professional Society on the Abuse of Children (CAPSAC) Paul Crissey Award, and the American Psychological Foundation Elizabeth Munsterberg Koppitz
Select Publications
- Wu, Y., Hartman, D. T., Kramer, M., Mitchell, C., Moriarty, N., Xiong, J., & Goodman, G. S. (2026). Interpersonal familiarity affects children’s reports of alleged transgressions: Children’s eyewitness memory. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1561(1), e70341.
- Wu, Y., Enriquez, R., Hartman, D. T., Brown, L. F., Kramer, M., Grandchamp, J., Moriarty, N., & Goodman, G. S. (2026). Caregiver familiarity and children’s eyewitness memory: A pilot study. Journal of Interpersonal Violence. Advance online publication.
- Wu, Y., Goodman, G. S., Goldfarb, D., Hartman, D. T., Qin, J., & Eisen, M. L. (2025). Long-term memory and subjective forgetting: A longitudinal study. Child Abuse & Neglect, 169, 107726.
- Wu, Y., Hartman, D. T., Wang, Y., Goldfarb, D., & Goodman, G. S. (2024). Suppression and memory for childhood traumatic events: Trauma symptoms and non-disclosure. Topics in Cognitive Science, 16(4), 718-730.
- Wu, Y., Hartman, D. T., Brown, L. F., Wang, Y., Vidales, D., Grandchamp, J., Enriquez, R., Moriarty, N., Goldfarb, D., & Goodman, G. S. (2024). Collective trauma: Childhood abuse, perceived discrimination, and Covid-19. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 16(S1), S115–S124.
Education
- PhD, Psychology
University of California, Davis - BA, Psychology
University of California, Berkeley BA, Economics
University of California, Berkeley
Research Interests
- Eyewitness Memory and Disclosure
- Trauma
- Social Cognition
Self-Conscious Emotions


