Social Judgment Research Team (Research Team 11)

In fall of 2012, we are (from L to R): top row: Julian Bevan, Ben Heisler, Miranda Gehris, Prof. Leigh Ann Vaughn, Samantha Towle, Chinny Udokwu, and Jesse Held; bottom row: Katrina Vega, Eileen Grandel, and Kailyn Mooney

This is not a typical kind of course. In many courses, students sit and listen to lectures and are tested with exams. Classmates compete against each other and can sit through an entire semester without saying anything. This couldn’t be farther from what we do in research team. The experience in this team can be summarized with a few words: Passion for learning. Mentorship. Research experience. Interaction. Taking calculated risks together.

In this research team we spend three semesters together taking an intensive, social-personality psychological approach to studying how people make sense of their internal states, and how that process affects their motivation and social judgments. For example, we have studied

• how people's information processing styles affect their psychological well-being
• how people decide how much they trust another person
• how people become mentally transported and persuaded by narratives
• when people will accept apologies and be willing to forgive
• when people will correct their judgments for bias
• how people form first impressions of another person
• how people form judgments of groups with more or less social power
• predictors and effects of mindfulness and emotional intelligence

In research team, students do many things:

• actively engage in mentoring each other, and in being mentored by their fellow students and Professor Vaughn
• read, write analytically and integratively about, and discuss current research in the field
• collaborate in designing and running studies, interpreting results, and writing APA-style reports about our research
• work together to present our research at conferences (if anything works out!)