Saturday, November 1, 2014

November 2014

Awards & Accomplishments


Professor Rich Lee received a Presidential Citation from American Psychological Association President Nadine Kaslow for innovative thinking in translating science into practice. Professor Lee was specifically recognized for changing the face of Asian American research in psychology through his research on the international adoption of Korean children.

Professor Traci Mann's recent study on the effect of comfort foods on our mood was discussed in the NPR article "Eating Comfort Foods May Not Be So Comforting After All".

Professor Deniz Ones commented on the increased scrutiny of workplace tests and their effectiveness in the article "Are Workplace Personality Tests Fair?" featured on the website of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology.

Assistant Professor Shmuel Lissek explains how evolution has impacted our threat response in the Washington Post article "It's highly unlikely that you'll become infected with Ebola. So what are you so afraid of?"


Research by Emeritus Professor Ellen Berscheid, Professor Mark Snyder, and former Psychology graduate student Allen Omoto on close relationships was featured on the Sept 29 episode of the CBS hit show "The Big Bang Theory". For more on how their research fit into the plot of the show, see http://bigbangtheory.wikia.com/wiki/The_First_Pitch_Insufficiency

Emeritus Professor Irv Gottesman was interviewed for an article on CLA's website titled "Causing ripples, making waves." His career and accomplishments are discussed.

Emeritus Professor Gail Peterson was presented a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Minnesota Northland Association for Behavior Analysis in recognition of his outstanding contributions to Behavior Analysis. He has taught groundbreaking classes in Applied Behavior Analysis to several thousand students, and his career has been responsible for initiating the careers of the largest number of behavior analysts in Minnesota.

Former Post-Doctoral Associate Nancy Segal - who served on Emeritus Professor Tom Bouchard's Twins Reared Apart project for many years - was featured in APA's Society for General Psychology newsletter The General Psychologist. An article starting on page 18 discusses Dr. Segal winning the 2013 William James Book Award for The Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart: The Science Behind the Fascination. Dr. Segal has now published multiple books on her experience here within the department - including Born Together: Raised Apart which staff can browse in the Central Office. The book provides an excellent summary of the early years of twin research at Minnesota.

Graduate student Emily Allen (Auditory Perception and Cognition Lab, advisor Andrew Oxenham) has been awarded a fellowship from the EU-funded Auditory Cognitive Neuroscience Network to spend 6 months in Maastricht to pursue research related to the perception and neural coding of pitch and timbre.

Graduated


Congratulations to our September 2014 Ph.D. graduates!

Jennifer Filson Moses
Area: Social
Advisors: Mark Snyder and Marti Hope Gonzales
Dissertation Title: Social Identity in Close Relationships

Eva Susanne Gabrielsen
Area: Social
Advisor: Mark Snyder
Dissertation Title: Longitudinal Intergroup Contact Model Comparison at the Multicultural High School United World College Red Cross Nordic

Michal Reifen Tagar
Area: Social
Advisors: Eugene Borgida and Christopher Federico
Dissertation Title: Why Disagreement Obstructs Constructive Dialogue: The Role of Biased Attribution of Moral Motives

Sarah Ward
Area: CSPR
Advisor: William Iacono
Dissertation Title: Understanding Social Role Contributions to Antisocial Behavior in Adolescence and Adulthood: A Genetically Informed Approach

Visiting Scholars



Rui Dai, graduate student at Hangzhou Normal University in China, has been invited by Professor Sheng He to visit our Department from November 2014 - May 2015. Ms. Dai's visit aims to further her training in functional brain imaging research, with a particular focus in the area of advanced brain imaging data analysis. Her current research project is on the neural plasticity in blind participants.