2006 Student Research Award Winners

Taylor L. Poling

Does the Composition of Team Members' Personality and Values Impact Perceptual Agreement Regarding Team Processes?

Taylor L. Poling, University of Tennessee

Our study addresses the impact of team composition with respect to personality traits, values, and preference for teamwork on team member agreement regarding team processes. The results indicated that both the mean level and the amount of diversity with respect to a number of deep-level composition attributes influenced the degree of agreement attained with respect to perceptions of team process.
Andre Kehn

Working Memory Capacity Moderates the Speed of Accurate Eyewitness Identifications

Andre Kehn, University of Wyoming

Research indicates that accurate eyewitnesses tend to identify perpetrators quickly, compared to inaccurate eyewitnesses. No research has examined why accurate eyewitnesses are faster than inaccurate eyewitnesses. We examined if individuals who are high in working memory are faster at making accurate identifications. The results support this prediction.
Jay Van Bavel

Erasing Racism: Shifting In-Group Favoritism Using Arbitrary Groups

Jay Van Bavel, University of Toronto

We explored whether putatively stable implicit racial biases could be eliminated by shifting categorization to arbitrary mixed-race groups. We found that the mere act of categorizing individuals as in-group members lead to an implicit preference for the in-group and eliminated implicit bias against the racial out-group.
Marjorie Rhodes

Gender Influences the Motivational Consequences of Social Comparisons in Early Childhood

Marjorie Rhodes, University of Michigan

We hypothesized that gender influences effort in early childhood by impacting the motivational consequences of social comparisons. After completing a brief task, preschool children received either same-gender, opposite-gender, or no upward comparison information. Children in the opposite-gender condition had lower subsequent motivation than children in the same-gender or control conditions.