Dr. Bacon's Lab- Brooke Stevenson
I
am currently involved in Dr. Amy Bacon’s research lab, which analyzes the
relationship between college students and alcohol use. Our goal is to further
understand which conditions cause
college students to engage in drinking alcohol. We began our study by compiling
questionnaires that help us better understand alcohol use among students at
Bradley. We administer these questionnaires to students throughout the year and
then use SPSS software to enter, clean, and analyze our data. Our lab also includes
an alcohol administrative study in which we design a control and experimental condition
aimed at finding a functional relationship about factors that relate to alcohol
use. As members of the lab we are trained to run the entire experiment. Additionally,
in the spring we will present our research as a Psychology poster at the
Midwestern Psychological Association (MPA). Finally, working with Dr. Bacon in
this lab has also prompted my own independent research. I was able to choose an
area of interest relative to the labs’ goals, conduct a literature review,
generate my hypothesis, administer questionnaires, and interpret my own results,
which I will present at MPA. Participating in a research lab has given me
experience in every aspect of the research process including compilation of
literature, questionnaire administration, data entry and interpretation,
experiment design and implementation, and presentation of research. A year ago,
I found the research process incredibly intimidating, but involvement in a lab was
vital to my Psychology undergraduate experience.
Dr. Hermann's Lab- Mark Lehtman
This semester, I am fortunate to be
a student in Dr. Hermann’s lab, and even more fortunate to be involved in a
thought provoking research study. The study I am currently working on, involves
looking at a personality trait (narcissism) and its relation to prayer styles
when a person is prompted to experience and feel a certain emotion. We are
testing multiple emotions, with each condition of the experiment being a
different emotion. We hypothesize that more than one feeling will hold a relationship.
Also we are looking at a variety of different prayer styles, since we have
learned through literary analysis that people pray in a variety of different
ways, for a plethora of reasons. So far results are looking promising, and
there appears to be an existing relationship in how people feel when they pray
with their individual level of trait narcissism. The task for the rest of the
semester is to collaborate as a group and brainstorm about the specifications
of the relationship and how we can run more subjects to better support our
current findings, and develop more questions to be used in future research
projects. Coming together to bounce ideas off a group is just one of the many
resources and benefits from being a part of a lab.
Dr. Huffcutt's Lab- Kaylee Moeslein
Greetings, psychology lovers!! My name is Kaylee Moeslein,
and I’m a sophomore double majoring in psychology and organizational
communication. I’m in Dr. Huffcutt’s lab (with some awesome people may I add!),
and we are currently working on two different projects-both
pertaining to the realm of executive functioning. If you don’t know, executive
functioning is the part of our mental processes that deal with decision-making.
My group within the lab is interested in the Tower of London, and no it’s not
the tower in England that you might be picturing in your head right now. In
psychology, it’s actually a mental task that assesses executive functioning. We
are looking to see if any of the 11 variations correlate with certain
personality traits or IQ measured by the Hogan’s Personality Inventory and the
Wonderlic Intelligence Test, respectively. We are
currently working on finishing up our CUHSR form to get the green light to
start our research and test participants. I’m super excited to finally begin
our study! We’re presenting at MPA this May, so hopefully we’ll have some nice
data to show off to the psychological world!!
Dr.
Montgomery’s Lab - Kristine Nichols
Inattention is a key symptom of
ADHD. Current research in our lab is examining inattention among preschoolers
as a trait-like quality, rather than a state-like quality that is variable over
time.
In order to study this, we administer a computerized task to preschoolers for
which they need press the correct button when presented with a stimulus. One
example would be pressing the button for a sun when presented with a
checkerboard. The tasks are meant to be relatively easy (and boring) so that we
can look at how a child’s reaction time changes over the course of the many
trials. Attentive children will be relatively consistent in their responding
throughout the task. For the more inattentive children, we see them cycle
between slow and fast responses as they have periods where they’re zoning out
and then regaining focus.
When we retest those same children about a week later, we anticipate a child’s
pattern of responding (consistent or not) will be similar to that of the
previous week. These patterns of inattention should also be reflected in how
accurate the child is in the task.
Dr. Schmitt's Lab- Kim O'Leary
Just a few weeks ago, I found myself
presenting a research poster in New Orleans at SPSP (The Society for
Personality and Social Psychology) conference. For the past few years, Dr.
Schmitt, Dr. Montgomery, Dr. Fuller, and I have been running a study
concentrating around inducing a state of awe and monitoring its effects. Our
main goal was to understand the relation between wonder and certain
cognitive-related traits, such as empathy or openness to experience. My poster
at SPSP was focused on a type of caveat finding: a gender difference in the
reception to awe.
Our first round of studies induced
wonder through a Carl Sagan-like video full of sweeping galactic views and great
distance traveling. The manipulation was effective, but only in males. Our
research sought to correct this gender specificity, but also to understand it.
We discussed evolutionary mechanisms as well as social reasons for this shift.
While in New Orleans, I was shocked at the number of people who were also
studying awe – at research labs, in graduate school, and around the world.
Sharing our interests – and our research – at an international venue was a
unique and irreplaceable experience, and definitely an amazing time.
