Robin Akert
Sheila Brachfeld-Child
Jonathan M. Cheek
Blythe Clinchy
Tracy Gleason
Beth A. Hennessey
Elissa Koff
Margery Lucas
Annick F. Mansfield
Julie K. Norem
David B. Pillemer
R. Steven Schiavo
Paul Wink
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My current program of research falls into three categories:
- nonverbal communication and behavior
- gender stereotypes
- intimate relationships
Specifically, I am currently working on the following projects:
(1) Faceism: the tendency of the media to portray men with more close-up camera shots and women with more long-shots. I am conducting content-analyses of news photographs; advertising photographs; author book jacket photographs; television interview show camera shots; television sports interviews, etc., to determine if the faceism effect is present. In other studies, I am investigating the extent to which gender stereotyping explains the faceism effect.
(2) Skill at decoding nonverbal communication: I am investigating whether several personality variables can predict who is an accurate perceiver of nonverbal forms of communication and behavior. I am also investigating the dimensions that underlie "skill" at this task, particularly by using some new statistical and psychometric techniques.
(3) Intimate relationships: I am focusing on people's responses to the termination of romantic relationships, i.e., their behavioral, emotional, attributional, and physiological responses during the aftermath of a break-up.
(4) Head Canting: I am investigating the frequency and meaning of a specific nonverbal gesture -- the positioning of the head in a sideways tilt -- to determine if it is a gesture enacted by one sex more than the other, and to determine the meaning that perceivers attribute to this gesture (e.g., coyness, submissiveness, etc.).
(5) Touch: I am examining how the presence of touch (e.g., a casual touch on a person's forearm) changes how the toucher and the touchee are perceived (i.e., in terms of power and warmth) and how the status of the individuals affects these judgments.
Student Projects:
Students are highly involved in all aspects of my research; students have worked with me (or are working with me) on all the projects listed above. Some students work with me as 350 researchers; others as Senior Thesis (370) students. Some students are paid research assistants. Wellesley students have been my co-authors on published articles and papers presented at national and regional conferences. I am always on the lookout for interested and motivated students who want "hand-on" experience with research in experimental social psychology.
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Sheila Brachfeld-Child - Developmental Psychology
My primary research interest concerns peer interaction, with particular emphasis on peer teaching among young children. I am currently collaborating with Steven Schiavo on research supported by a Barenholtz grant exploring the methods preschoolers and kindergarten children use to teach a game to their classmates. We are planning to expand this research to include a variety of teaching tasks.
I am also completing research that explored the attitudes of high school and college students concerning the threat of nuclear war. This research was conducted using questionnaires and examined the relationship between attitudes and a variety of personality measures.
Student Projects:
I have recently supervised student research and honors projects concerning nuclear war attitudes, parent-infant interaction, and children's human figure drawings. I have also co-supervised Barenholtz Fellows working with me and Mr. Schiavo on research concerning peer interaction.
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My research activities fall into two major areas: shyness and self-concept.
Current work on shyness includes:
1. development of a new measurement model to assess the three components of shyness - physiological, behavior, and cognitive
2. investigation of degree of iris pigmentation (i.e., eye color) as a biological marker of individual differences in the physiological component of shyness
3. studies of anxious self-preoccupation as the key cognitive process involved in shyness
Current work on self-concept includes:
1. revision of my Aspects of Identity Questionnaire, which assesses the relative importance an individual places on personal and social aspects of identity
2. studies of the Self-Monitoring Scale
Student Projects:
Most of my 350 and 370 students have developed projects investigating various aspects of shyness (e.g., physical attractiveness, behavior when meeting a stranger, performance on cognitive tests, and creativity). Some others have worked with the Self-Monitoring and Identity Scales.
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Blythe Clinchy - Developmental Psychology
My current research centers on the development of "natural epistemology" -- conceptions of truth, knowledge, and value -- from early childhood into adulthood. This research has three major branches:
1. longitudinal and cross-sectional experimental studies aimed at illuminating developmental changes from early to middle childhood in (a) the kinds of evidence children use to justify and explain positions taken on issues of "fact" and "opinion," and (b) conceptions of objectivity and subjectivity;
2. longitudinal experimental studies of developmental changes in male and female undergraduates' understanding of the nature of truth and value in various domains, including science, social science, and the humanities.
3. gender differences in approaches to disagreement, especially among adults, and their implications for education, especially higher education.
Student Projects:
Many students have been involved in all branches of this research at all times, on internships or paid through grants, or as 350's or 370's. They have participated in research design, interviewed subjects, and helped to formulate and revise the coding schemes and to code and interpret interview data.
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My research focuses on the areas of creativity and intrinsic motivation as well as the relationship between these two constructs. The bulk of my work examines the effect of a variety of social and environmental classroom constaints on children's motivational orientation and performance. As an example, we have found that the expectation of a reward or an evaluation actually undermines student interest and creativity.
One possible explanation for this effect is that at a very early age we learn to label activities accompanied by a reward or an evaluation as "work," while activities without these associations are viewed as "play." And it is with a playful attitude that we are most likely to maintain intrinsic interest in a task and achieve creative solutions.
In an attempt to examine this hypothesis, some of my current projects looks at preschoolers' conceptions of work and play. In another series of investigations, I examined the effect of reward, evaluation, and restricted choice on children's creativity while using a computer. And a third series of investigations with which I am concerned involve an attempt to actually "train" children to maintain intrinsic interest in the face of classroom constraints. We have, in fact, been able to "immunize" our young subjects against the deleterious effects of reward and evaluation so that the creativity of their performance will not suffer the usual negative consequences.
Student Projects:
Most of my 350 and 370 students have been involved with projects designed to investigate the effect of various social environmental constraints on children's motivation and artistic and verbal creativity. One former 370 student explored the use of videotapes in a program designed to "immunize" elementary school students against the usual negative effects of reward. Another honors candidate explored the issue of math anxiety and hypothesized that there may exist important differences in attitude between women attending single-sex vs. co-ed institutions.
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My research interests fall into two major areas: neuropsychology and adolescent psychology
Current projects in neuropsychology include:
1. the role of the right hemisphere of the brain in the communication of emotions via facial expression.
2. communication of emotion in patients with Alzheimer's Disease.
Current projects in adolescent psychology include:
1. an ongoing study of normal adolescent development in girls, with particular focus on personal and interpersonal consequences of the timing of puberty.
2. etiology of disturbed eating attitudes and behaviors
3. Body image disturbance
Student Projects:
Students have been involved in almost all aspects of my research, and have been co-authors on several papers presented at scientific meetings and on several journal articles.
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Margery Lucas - Psychology of Language
My current research interests are in the general area of language comprehension with a particular interest in the processes involved in retrieving word meanings, making inferences, and constructing conceptual representations during language comprehension. The specific goals are to determine how word meanings are accessed, selected, and integrated with context and to evaluate the contribution of semantic and pragmatic factors to both lexical processing and the inferential processing that is necessary for constructing a representation of a discourse. The focus of the research is on examining how these lexical and inferential processes change over time and on determining which levels of representation (linguistic or conceptual) are involved at different stages.
Present research efforts include the following. Students have been part of these efforts in the form of paid research assistants, 350 students, and honors students.
- A study to determine the nature of the representation of concepts by tapping into native speaker intuitions about the features of those concepts. Later, this information will be used to determine which aspects of those representations are retrieved when sentences referring to those concepts are comprehended; how the representations change when combined with other concepts; and when they are integrated with a representation of the current discourse.
- An investigation of the kind of representation underlying the use of spatial prepositions (over, in, out, etc.) and how that use is affected by context. This is a collaborative project with Andrea Levitt (French) and Annette Herskovits (Computer Science).
- A review of reference theories of meaning and a critique of their suggested applications in psychological models of word and sentence meaning.
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I am fascinated by the related questions of (1) how is knowledge acquired at different stages of development, and (2) is it represented and organized in memory differently at different points in the life cycle. My research has approached these questions from a number of directions:
1. I have looked at young children's acquisition of word meanings and the extent to which families of words sharing core features of meaning (e.g., terms referring to orientation in space, temporal order, causation or intention) are acquired in synchrony.
2. I have studied what appears to be a developmental shift in the early school years from reliance on co-occurrence as the key principle for organizing world knowledge to increasing emphasis on similarity and contrast. I have used a number of techniques ranging from structured interviews to measurement of reaction time in formal laboratory tasks to track children's understanding of the notion of opposite.
3. Most recently Blythe Clinchy and I have been involved in a major research project on developmental changes in individuals' sources of knowledge and criteria for distinguishing true from false. In particular, we are looking at the extent to which, and the circumstances under which, children of different ages (and young adults) rely on their own observations, the dictates of authority figures, and/or logical inferences from known facts in building their models of the world. We are also concerned with children's and adolescents' "discovery of the knower in the known," i.e., their growing awareness of the subjective component in even the most "objective" gathering of data.
Student Projects:
Students have been involved in all the above projects, sometimes as research assistants, and sometimes as primary investigators of their own independent study projects.
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My research interests focus on the strategies individuals develop to deal with anxiety, on the motivational implications of different kinds of self-knowledge (especially negative self-knowledge and actual-ideal discrepancy), and on the ways in which people adapt, change or discard their goals over time. As a result of my interest in self-knowledge generally, I've also developed an interest in the relationship between self-concept, body image and eating and exercise behaviors.
My present research includes a pilot study that I hope will lead to a longitudinal study of Wellesley women, from the time they accept admission to the college, through their years in college and beyond. This project focuses on change and stability of goals and self-concept over time in relation to strategies such as illusory optimism and defensive pessimism. I am also continuing my program of experimental research on these strategies.
Student Projects: Students have been involved in almost all of my research endeavors, and have co-authored papers and conference presentations with me, as well as doing conference presentations by themselves. I have also supervised honors' theses that are related to my substantive interest in self-concept, eating disorders and body image, even though my own research has only touched on those areas.
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I am conducting research in two areas:
1. Memory in everyday contexts. This research explores how people use memory in everyday settings, rather than in laboratory contexts. Topics have included memories of learning about attacks on U.S. presidents; women's memories of menarche; memories of the first year in college; memories of a specific college course; memories of conversations; memories of experiences that influenced important educational decisions; and memory processes in preschool children.
2. Research synthesis. This work involves developing strategies for combining the results of independent research studies. The broad goal is to improve scientific literature reviews and, thereby, enhance knowledge accumulation in the social sciences.
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I am interested in attachment to the physical environment as it may be mediated by environmental resources and by characteristics of the resident (e.g., age or gender). In my early research suburban children and teenagers photographed places they were attached to in their homes or in their local neighborhoods and were interviewed about the reasons for their attachment. Age and gender differences were found. Ideas about the factors influencing attachment can be explored in other types of communities (e.g., urban, small towns) or in other settings, such as summer camps or college campuses (comparing, for example, resident students attending summer school at their home campuses with visiting students enrolled only for the summer).
I am also interested in children's housing values -- their attitudes toward various kinds of housing and what they consider to be adequate housing. For example, I have asked suburban children in single family homes to design their ideal homes and these blueprints were analyzed for a number of features. This area can be extended to other age groups or to residents of other environments (e.g., cities, apartments, trailers). Very little is known regarding factors which shape housing values or the extent to which such values are shared within various subgroups of American society. Finally, I am beginning research on children's awareness and understanding of environmental issues (e.g., pollution, green house effect) and on children's attitudes toward cities.
Student Projects:
I have been assisted by numerous students in these projects. Students have worked with me during term time, during winter session, and during summers. A number have received Wellesley Summer Research Awards and Dana Fellowships. Others have been paid from my research funds.
I have also supervised 370 and 350 projects in these areas and other areas of social psychology. For example, two Honors students have examined factors influencing a child's willingness to invade a territory being claimed by another child. A 350 examined whether architectural changes on a campus were reflected in students' cognitive representations of the campus. Another 370 examined how faculty at Wellesley decorate their offices.
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Paul Wink - adult development, narcissism and the impact of marginality on psychological adjustment
Current projects in adult development include:
1. relationship between wisdom, creativity and narcissism in adult women; and changes in wisdom from college to the 50s.
2. predicting life outcomes in women from college personality.
3. personality change in women physicians from medical student years to mid 40s.
Current projects in narcissism and psychopathology are:
1. study of implications of college narcissism for adjustment in midlife.
2. conceptual analysis of a q-sort antisocial personality prototype.
Current project on marginality and psychological adjustment include:
1. comparison of first year college adjustment among Chinese andCaucasian women.
2. study of first year college adjustment among a group of pro-life women.
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Imaginary Companions
Most of my research has been concentrated on exploring and describing the relationships that some preschool-aged children have with imaginary companions. The phenomenon of imaginary companions has not received a great deal of attention in the psychological literature and is not well understood, so one goal of my research is to provide a definitive description of pretend friends with an eye toward how they might function in development. Studying the ways in which children talk about, and sometimes interact with, imaginary companions has the potential to illuminate how young children understand and think about social relationships in particular. My hope is that by thinking about imaginary companions as relationship partners, I may be able to figure out how they function within children's social networks. Such information could lead to a better understanding of why some children create them.
Imaginary companions come in two forms, invisible companions and personified objects. Invisible companions are often friends, as opposed to infants or elders, but they need not be human. There are probably as many different kinds of invisible friends in the world as there are children, including humans, animals, monsters and the like. Personified objects are frequently stuffed animals or dolls, and children often take care of them as though they were infants, or at least younger than the child him/herself.
Peace and Rights
Along with my colleague, Dr. Peter Verbeek, I have been researching the ways in which college age students understand the concepts of peace and rights. We are curious as to how people define "peace" and "human rights", and what sorts of things they associate with these terms. Our hope is that by asking for college students' perceptions of these issues we will begin to learn about the development of these concepts, and hopefully begin to understand individual and cultural differences in peoples' understanding of these terms.
Projects with Students
I have worked with several students on
different projects related to my interests in social cognition. These
projects have included an exploration of children's theory of mind,
research on children's concepts of their relationships with their mothers,
and an analysis of the relation between temperament and popularity in
preschool-aged children.
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