Four students recently attended New Majors Orientation where they were able to sign their names onto the psychology board and learn about different opportunities available as a psychology major.
The orientation was led by Dr. Powell, who will be leading another orientation on April 5th at 5:00 pm in LS 502.
New majors are required to attend orientation, so if you recently declared a major in psychology, please sign-up for the final orientation through SONA!
Do you want to get ahead, catch up, or just want to take an interesting course over the summer?
Then consider signing up for psychology summer courses!
Three 300-level courses will be offered, including History of Psychology, which is a requirement for psychology majors, Abnormal Psychology, IO Psychology, and Drugs & Behavior. In addition to the 300-level courses, the psychology department will also be offering a 260 INQ course taught by Dr. Whitson that will also count towards a major in psychology.
If interested, please talk to your advisor(s) and sign-up through Webadvisor while spots remain!
Students who declared a psychology major recently, including those who declared last semester but were unable to attend, are required to attend the New Majors’ Orientation on either Monday, March 26th from 5:30 – 6:30 pm or Thursday, April 5th from 5:00 – 6:00 pm in Life Science 502.
You only need to attend one session, so pick whichever date works best for you and sign up here through SONA.
The first weekend of spring break, Drs. Buchholz, Osterman, Carter, and Findley-Van Nostrand, in addition to several students, traveled to Atlanta to present their studies at the 2018 Society for Personality and Social Psychology Conference.
The students in attendance included:
Cody is a psychology major and biology minor.
He is also a student assistant and works in Dr. Buchholz’s lab.
Cody Dillon-Owens ’19, who presented on “Understanding moral decision making using self-driving cars.” This study was supervised by Dr. Buchholz and included several other students, including Megan Miller ’18, Allison Smith, Lauren Powell ’21, and Seth Poore ’20. They found that participants generally thought positively of self-driving cars. Faced with a moral dilemma on who to save during an impending crash, the participants were generally more likely to save themselves and their mothers over anyone else. Participants were also more likely to save “significant” individuals rather than strangers.
To learn more about the study, please contact Dr. Buchholz at buchholz@roanoke.edu.
Nicole Moughrabi ’19 and Lauren Furlow ’19
Their dabbing is impeccable.
Lauren Furlow ’19 and Nicole Moughrabi ’19 presented on the “Allocation of Mate Budgets as Function of Environmental Threat and Life History Strategy.” From Dr. Osterman’s lab, Furlow and Moughrabi added to further research to the field discussing how “women’s mating psychologies shift as a function of early environment and current environment demands.”
To learn more about this study, email Dr. Osterman at osterman@roanoke.edu.
Sabrina McAllister ’18 presents her findings.
Sabrina McAllister ’18, a member of Dr. Nichols’s lab, discussed the results of her study titled “Time Perspective as a State-Based Measure.” To learn more about her study, follow this link. (If you have any questions, please contact Dr. Nichols at dnichols@roanoke.edu.)
Lauren Powell ’21
Dr. Buchholz
Lauren Powell ’21 and Dr. Buchholz with their poster.
Lauren Powell ’21, also a member of Dr. Buchholz’s lab, discussed the study titled “The moral dilemma of self-driving cars.” As this study was conducted alongside the first discussed study, the same researchers also worked on this inquiry. The main goal in this study was to see how gender and empathy would affect how the participants answered the moral dilemmas. However, the results showed that neither gender nor empathy predicted the answers, but that there was a “three-way interaction between gender, cognitive empathy, and affective resonance.” They also found that men possessed significantly more positive attitudes towards self-driving cars than women.
Dr. O giving a “thumbs-up”
Dr. Osterman
In addition, Drs. Osterman and Findley-Van Nostrand also presented their research. Specifically, Dr. O presented findings found in conjunction with Dr. Gornick of the Virginia Military Institute, Mr. Brian Matera, and Mr. Alexander Carr, titled “Trait Empathy Moderates Belief Bias in Emotionally-Evocative Reasoning Tasks.” To learn more, please contact Dr. Osterman at the above mentioned email address.
Dr. Findley-Van Nostrand presents at SPSP 2018
She is otherwise known as Dr. FVN.
Dr. Findley-Van Nostrand’s study was titled: “Sense of Belonging Drives Intentions to Leave STEM in Undergraduate Students: Mediated and Short-Term Longitudinal Association.” She worked alongside Drs. Sophie Kuchynka, Jennifer Bosson, and Richard Pollenz, all from the University of South Florida. If you are curious about the study and want to learn more, Dr. FVN can be contacted at findley@roanoke.edu.
Dr. Carter and Lauren Furlow ’19
Courtesy of Dr. O’s editing skills.
Finally, the day before the official SPSP conference began, Dr. Carter presented his study on “The Effect of the American Flag on Political Attitudes Has Declined Over Time: A Case Study of the Effect of Historical Context on Priming Effects,” at the JDM preconference.
The preconferences are one-day, mini conferences that allow for colleagues to gather to discuss their specific areas of interest. For Dr. Carter, this was to discuss the changes since the first study he and his fellow researchers had conducted in 2011, wherein his research revealed that using the American flag as a primer has become less effective in shifting participants towards more politically conservative attitudes and beliefs. The effect is shown to be roughly zero at present. To learn more, please contact Dr. Carter at tjcarter@roanoke.edu.
(Unfortunately, no pictures were taken of Dr. Carter while he was presenting at the JDM preconference. Instead, Dr. O provided a dramatic reenactment via hard work and editing skills.)
A group photo at SPSP 2018
Drinking coffee and working.
Behind the scenes
Celebrating a successful conference
Dr. Buchholz and Dr. FVN
When asked about the experience, Dr. Osterman said…
We had a fantastic time at SPSP, and all of our student presenters did a wonderful job of talking about their research with other scholars. They represented the college and department exceedingly well.
Cody seconded this, saying:
SPSP went really well! It was a wonderful opportunity to present research to a large body of our peers in psychology, as well as learn about a lot of the exciting new research that’s being conducted in the field. I definitely look forward to attending my next conference!
Congratulations to our students and professors for their successful SPSP conference!
On March 13th, 2018, the psychology department held their Psi Chi Induction Ceremony. Thirty-four students were inducted this semester into Psi Chi, the international honor society for psychology and one of the largest honor societies in the United States.
Following lunch, Dr. Findley-Van Nostrand began the ceremony by making the opening remarks. Students were then given their certificates and the nominations for the new executive board for Psi Chi were held. Dr. Osterman ended the ceremony by leading the recognition of the outgoing and incoming executive boards.
Pictures of the new members of Psi Chi followed the conclusion of the ceremony, including:
Jillian R. Barnard
Cristoni R. Couvrette
Rachel N. Dix
Casey J. Gough
Rachel L. Harmon
Rebecca L. Horton
Crysta D. Isom
Emily L. Jones
Riker F. Lawrence
Alina V. Marino
Erin E. McDonnell
Nicole Y. Moughrabi
Hayley J. Mulford
Monica N. Nixon
Caitlyn R. O’Sullivan
Ruth E. Schultz
Marcus T. Stewart
Bailey H. Wilburn
Emily A. Wright
Students who were not able to attend the ceremony but are new members of Psi Chi are as follows:
Ciprianna O. Azar
Alexander J. Glando
Elizabeth Q. Helminski
Jeanette L. Kurtic
Logan E. Miner
Hannah Pfeffer
Jeanne M. Skulstad
Natalie M. Slemp
Allison L. Smith
Thomas E. Thomas
Kestrel Thorne-Kaunelis
Caroline G. Wagoner
Taylor C. Ward
Griffith E. Wood
Emily A. Wright
In order to be accepted to Psi Chi as an undergraduate student, one must:
be enrolled as a major or minor in a psychology program or a program psychological in nature
have completed at least 3 semesters or equivalent of full-time college coursework
have completed at least 9 semester credit hours or equivalent of psychology courses
have earned a cumulative GPA that is in the top 35% of their class (sophomore, junior, or senior) compared to their classmates across the entire university or the college that houses psychology (minimum GPA of 3.0 on a 4-point scale)3
have a minimum 3.0 GPA average for psychology courses
Some of the benefits include:
International recognition for academic excellence in psychology.
Distinguished members can be found here, including Albert Bandura, B. F. Skinner, and Philip G. Zimbardo.
Over $400,000 are available annually in awards and grants.
Psi Chi’s Career Center
Free access to three publications:
Psi Chi Journal of Psychological Research
Eye on Psi Chi
Psi Chi Digest
For more information, follow this link to the official Psi Chi website.
Congratulations again to our new members of Psi Chi! They’ve worked hard and we look forward to seeing what they will do in the future.
Congratulations to Molly Zydel ’19 for being awarded the Mamie Phipps Clark Diversity Research Grant!
Zydel will use this grant towards funding her Distinction Project, titled “Perceptions of Foster Care Youth’s Academic Identity: Comparing Reports from Foster Parents and Former Foster Care Youth.” Specifically, she will be using the grant in order to offset the costs of compensating participants for their time.
She has been a member of Dr. Powell’s research lab since fall 2016.
Zydel also went to Thailand as part of Dr. Powell’s May Term last summer. You can read about the trip here.
The Mamie Phipps Clark Diversity Research Grant was founded in honor of Mamie Phipps Clark. Graduating in 1943, Clark was the first African American woman to earn a Ph.D. in psychology from Columbia University.
As such, this grant is awarded to Psi Chi students and faculty advisors who are seeking to study diverse populations and issues.
For more information about the research grant, click here.
Congratulations again to Molly Zydel! We’re proud of you and look forward to learning about the results of your Distinction Project!
