Dr Ng Da Xuan completed his PhD in Psychology at the Singapore campus of James Cook University (JCU Singapore) in 2024. He was one of 13 recipients who received the 2025 Dean’s Award for Higher Degree by Research Excellence, amongst 110 JCU research higher degree candidates who completed their PhDs that year.His doctoral thesis, Finding the facet-structure and facet of openness that best predict prejudice and social tolerance: An investigation of predictive utilities and cross-cultural stability, looked into how different facets of openness to experience influence group attitudes.

“I was curious to understand how counsellors, who enter the profession with a strong motivation to help others, can sometimes be hindered by their own prejudices,” he says.

“My work focuses on exploring the personality traits that predispose individuals towards prejudice or tolerance. By identifying these roots, I hope to eventually develop training approaches to enhance counsellors’ ability to empathise with clients from diverse backgrounds,” he adds.

Today, social psychologists are using his findings to enhance understanding of prejudice and social tolerance.

Advancing counselling for a fair, diverse and inclusive world
Dr Ng is currently a Lecturer in Counselling at JCU Singapore. He is also a research psychologist who specialises in personality and social psychology, as well as quantitative research methods.

One of his interests includes improving pedagogical approaches for mental health professionals working in the tropics. “I want to better understand the key ingredients of counselling and bring those elements into the current curriculum through a more streamlined approach, using deliberate practice methods tailored to the Asian context,” he explains.

Dr Ng is also passionate about researching how cultural differences influence counselling practices and how clients and counsellors experience prejudice or tolerance during therapy. He aims to better understand these factors to improve counselling for people from all backgrounds.

“My research has shown that counsellors who exhibit certain personality traits – especially facets of openness such as variety-seeking and comfort with diverse beliefs and lifestyles – are better equipped to empathise with clients from various backgrounds, as they are more likely to embrace and appreciate diversity,” he explains.

“I hope that future mental health professionals will understand the importance of such personality traits,” he adds.

A strong advocate for social justice and appreciation for cultural diversity, Dr Ng is particularly committed to embedding antiracist pedagogy into counsellor education. He also champions open access in research – a practice that seeks to remove barriers such as paywalls to academic information so that anyone, regardless of their background, can access and benefit from scholarly knowledge.

“I believe that anyone working for the betterment of humanity should have access to resources and shouldn't be discriminated against based on geography or institutional affiliation,” he explains.

Reflections
Looking back on his PhD journey, Dr Ng credits his advisory team – his primary advisor Dr Jonathan Ramsay, secondary advisor Dr Patrick Lin, and advisor mentor Professor Nigel Marsh.

“I am deeply grateful for their invaluable guidance and support throughout my research journey,” he says.

Dr Lin shared, “Da Xuan has been an excellent PhD student – self-motivated and highly resourceful. Throughout his PhD, he independently found most of the relevant research articles. I actually learned a lot from him on the topic of openness. His article on the association between openness, prejudice, and tolerance – partly based on his PhD thesis –was published in Frontiers in Psychology and received significant attention even before he completed his PhD. I truly wish I had more PhD students like him.”

Undertaking a PhD is more like undertaking a marathon than a sprint, or even a middle-distance event. Successful completion of a PhD requires not only intellectual ability and hard work; it also requires tenacity. Da Xuan displayed all three of these characteristics in his PhD journey, which I enjoyed being a part of. Da Xuan didn’t shy away from embracing the more complex aspects of his topic as he clearly understood that advances in developing theory are essential to producing results with real-world applications,” adds Professor Marsh.  

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Contacts

Associate Professor Denise Dillon: [email protected]

Media: Ms Pinky Sibal [email protected] / Ms Hoe Shu Rin [email protected]