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Spring Breakers Beware: Psychological Science Explores Excess Drinking
South Beach, Cancun, and other warm destinations are beckoning many college students as spring break descends across the United States and Canada. The annual trek to sunny beaches offers a change of pace from students’ academic lives, but it also tempts many freshly minted adults to engage in alcohol-fueled hedonism. Researchers have a long history of examining both the psychological lure and effects of binge drinking. They’ve found that the science of drinking is highly complex, with a mix of genetic and situational influences driving behavioral outcomes.
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Kristiina Kompus
University of Bergen, Norway www.uib.no/persons/Kristiina.Kompus What does your research focus on? Involuntary cognition, that is: complex mental acts which occur without volition or intention to perform them. For instance, involuntary retrieval of episodic memories, having a song “stuck” in your head, auditory hallucinations. Thus, such experiences range from benign features of everyday life to symptoms of psychiatric disorders, which is apparently determined by how much cognitive control you are able to exert over the experience once you become conscious of it.
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Joshua Jackson
Washington University in St. Louis http://pages.wustl.edu/personality What does your research focus on? My research is in the field of personality development. In general, I am interested in examining how personality changes across the lifespan and what experiences shape personality. To answer these research questions, it is important to identify the most effective ways to measure personality and personality change. Given this, a large amount of my work also examines different methods of assessing personality, as well as the structure of personality. Ultimately, I hope to identify the processes that lead to personality stability and personality change.
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David Frederick
Chapman University sites.google.com/site/davidfrederickpsychology/ What does your research focus on? I am fascinated by the tremendous variation in sexuality that is observed across the world, across historical time, within each sex, and even within a given individual over time. My work is part of a broader interdisciplinary attempt to understand the ways that evolved physiological and psychological systems interact with social influences to shape behavior and preferences. My research examines questions such as: How did evolutionary processes shape the human body and mind? How have shifting gender roles changed the nature of romantic relationships?
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Chad E. Forbes
University of Delaware https://sites.google.com/site/chadeforbes/ What does your research focus on? As a social neuroscientist, my research utilizes cognitive neuroscience methodologies such as electroencephalography (EEG), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and traumatic brain injury (TBI) studies to investigate how different contexts affect the way we attend to and interpret information. My research program revolves around two primary topics: 1) How negatively stereotyped targets’ (e.g., women in math or ethnic minorities in academics) motivation, attention, and memory are affected by situations that prime negative group relevant stereotypes both in the moment and over time.
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Emily Falk
University of Michigan cn.isr.umich.edu What does your research focus on? What makes ideas successful in persuading individuals and in affecting larger populations? Sometimes we don’t even realize that an idea has embedded itself in our mind and is influencing our behavior. In my lab, we use tools from social psychology, communication studies, and neuroscience to understand social influence and successful communication more broadly. At present, much of our research focuses on health communication, and topics relevant to the design of better interventions, programs, and policies.
