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Research Opportunities in the Psychology Department
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Why
Participate in Research?
There are several reasons why you should participate in research
activities:
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To
understand how knowledge is gained in the discipline.
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To
develop your ability to think critically and creatively which will help
regardless of what career you seek.
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To
develop your ability to conceptualize, organize and complete large
projects, also an experience that will help you in any career.
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To
develop your laboratory skills and gain experience sought after by
graduate schools if you are going on in psychology.
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To
allow your faculty a chance to know you better, which will improve
those letters of recommendation you are going to ask us to write.
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Participation
as a subject
If you are interested in being a
subject in psychological research check on the bulletin board across
from the Science Center/Goodrich lounge in the psychology
area. All studies looking for participation of college
students will post lists there.
If you need an extra credit form, pick it up here.
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Participation
as a researcher
There are several ways you can
participate in research as a researcher here at Hanover:
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In
the following classes you will work in small groups (pairs or threes)
to develop a research project: PSY220, Research Design and
Statistics; PSY 333, Cognitive Psychology; PSY 337, Learning.
Some of these projects have been presented at regional and national
conferences. Here are two recent examples (students' names
are in italics):
Sarah Blythe and Kati
Knight, (2003). The Effect of Pre-existing
Affiliation on Ingroup Bias in a State of Heightened Competition.
A poster accepted at the 4th Annual Meeting of the Society for
Personality and Social Psychologists, in L.A.
David Buck, Noelle Liwski,
Connie Wolfe, Max Somers, Katie Knight and Jennifer
Crocker. (2003). The
school competency contingency of worth as a mediator between
performance-oriented achievement goals and performance
outcomes. A poster at the 4th Annual
Meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychologists, in L.A.
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PSY309,
Research Practicum. This is a 1/4 credit course
that you can sign up for, multiple
times, to work with faculty in the department on their
research. Several of these projects have led to student
having their name on presentations. Here are a couple of
recent examples (students' names are in italics):
Patricia Callahan,
Elizabeth Spievak, Amy Kerr, Kristi
Helmkamp, Jessica Thornberry, & Shannon
Updike. (2003). What We've
Forgotten about the Day We Would Never Forget: Memories of September
11th. Poster presentation at the 15th annual
convention of the American Psychological Society, in Atlanta, GA.
Connie Wolfe, Katie Knight, David Buck, Noelle Liwski, &
Maxx Somers. (2003). Dispositional
rumination as a mediator of the negative relationship between trait
self-esteem and contingencies of worth dependent on external,
interpersonal feedback. A poster presented at the
4th Annual Meeting of the Society for Personality and Social
Psychologists, in L.A.
Sometimes this work even leads to publications:
John Krantz & Reeshad Dalal. (2000). Validity
of Web-Based Psychological Research. In M. H.
Birnbaum (Ed.), Psychological experiments on the internet (pp. 35-60).
New York: Academic Press.
If
you are interested in this opportunity, here is a list of the current
faculty members' ongoing research projects.
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Senior
project. Across your senior year you will design
and conduct a full research project (usually alone) and present it at
Butler and perhaps other research conferences such as the Midwestern
Psychological Association (MPA). Here
is a page that lists the past Butler presentations with abstracts
(usually) and PowerPoint of the presentations. Here
are recent students that have presented their work at MPA:
Jessica Thornberry
& Maggie Tate. (2003). The
Role of Social Interaction in the Development of an Abstract
Self-Understanding, and Sarah Blythe
(2003). A Mathematical Model of the Retina Capable
of Form & Color Analysis
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