The PACT (Politics, Activism, Culture, & Threat) Lab is always looking for people to get involved in student-led research. You can get involved either with course credit or on a volunteer basis (it is up to you!). Together, you and I identify a project I am currently working on the first semester that is particularly interesting to you.

This means you get full control of the project! While I have the outline of how it’ll look, you will have the opportunity to create the experiment, collect the data, analyze it, and write up the results. Of course, I will be at your side at every step, and together, we will learn what research is like! After we get our feet wet in what research feels like, we can move towards exploring your own research questions in the following semesters. Below is a list of projects the lab is currently working on that I need your help on! You are also welcome to propose your own idea if you are particularly passionate about something that is not listed below.

Union Research

Our lab is particularly interested in unionization, and we have plans for a variety of projects right now on this topic. I have had students receive funding to do summer research with me on this topic.

Current and future questions on this topic include:

How does individual support for unions differ from the abstract (“Do you support unions?”) to the concrete (“Your workplace is organizing, are you in?”), and how does that differ based on specific individual difference measures?
- Student need: Currently being worked on. Please reach out if interested.
How do these results that we would see above differ between the public and individuals whose career paths may be more likely to lead them towards unions?
- Student need: Currently being worked on. Please reach out if interested.
How does the public discuss issues of labor actions when it directly affects their lives? How are unions discussed? What meanings are being generated?
- Student need: Currently being worked on. Please reach out if interested.
How do organizers negotiate their roles in their workplace, and how do they navigate the potential interpersonal consequences of losing friendships or being marked a ‘rabble-rouser’?
- Student need: Interest in gaining qualitative interview experience / learning how to do interviews. Due to need to collect more data, student should be interested in a multi-semester independent study.
How does union support relate to sports fans and their support for players ‘holding out’ on contracts, not taking ‘team-friendly’ deals, or other collective actions (strikes / lockouts)?
- Student need: General interest in this kind of question and ideas of how to examine it.
How do adolescents (14 - 17 years old) understand the role of unions in their lives?
- Future work: If interested, reach out 6+ months ahead of time.
How can state law be informed to better suit the needs of workers?
- Future work: If interested, reach out in Spring/Summer, ideal for multi-semester directed studies.
- Student need: Particular interest for political science or public policy students.

Collective Memories, Memorials, & Reanactments

Part of this research line is receiving support and funding from Division 48 (Peace and Conflict). We are particularly interested in thinking about how objects and events (memorials, reenactments) help change not only how we remember the past but also how they inform our understanding of the present and change our imagination of the future as a group.

How do reenactments - battles, historical, or even dark reenactments - influence how we understand real-world issues such as racial equality?
- Student need: Currently being worked on.
How do individuals make sense of memorials - and how does that differ based on how they are engaged with (in-person or a virtual tour)?
- Student need: Interest in learning qualitative methods; interest in coding interviews (already transcribed).
How do individuals make sense of different kinds of memorials, and how does this differ based on their status as a tourist or a local?
- Student need: Interest in learning R; interest in big data.

Political Divides

Interactions are built not simply on how we perceive others, but also how we perceive others perceives us - our meta-perception of the Other. These meta-perceptions are highly inaccurate and lead to further dehumanization and prejudice. If a Democrat believes “All Republicans think Democrats want to steal their guns”, and then they are presented with someone who says “I am a Republican and I strongly disagree that Democrats want to steal our guns” -- what do we think about this person, compared to individuals who strongly agree?

We had planned some intended follow-up research to prior lab work during the election year, but we put that project on hold due to the change in political candidates.

Still, if you’d like to think more about relationships between political parties, reach out!

Policy-Focused Project #1: Cultural Contact Solutions

There’s a lot of ways in which psychologists think about cultural contact - how two different groups 'get along’ and interact. You might have read/heard of some of them throughout your life - multiculturalism and assimilation are two of the main ideas. There are some ideas - such as ‘color-blindness’ - that continue to be promoted in Psychology. These racist ideas constantly need to be reminded that they are not solving any problem - and we need to stop suggesting them as possible solutions. This is another literature-review heavy project looking at various ways in which people have discussed some of these cultural contact ideas, and pointing out why color-blind theories are terrible.

Historical Project: G. Stanley Hall

G. Stanley Hall was the first President of the American Psychological Association and was a professor at Clark University from 1894-1925. What were his students studying - and how can we apply what they learned so many years ago to today?

Student need: Ideally, a rising sophomore. Clinical psychology programs tend to value a “History and Systems” kind of course, which assisting in this project could give you a unique perspective. Or, a History/Philosophy student would also fit well here.

Car availability is preferred but not required, any travel associated with the project would be reimbursed by the lab (potential travel to Worcester, MA). This project aims to become an edited book eventually with authors from around the world, and you would assist in inviting the authors and crafting the organization of the book.

Independent Studies: Cultural Psychology

A journal I edit (Culture & Psychology) is a theoretically focused journal that thinks a lot about how do we, as individuals, make sense of our world. This leads to a lot of people discussing a lot of really cool ideas, but they tend to not do as much literature review on what others have said as we would expect.

The journal has created one small way to fix this problem — you! We welcome short (2,500 word) articles, written by undergraduate (or Master’s) level students who want to try and explain how 6 to 8 of the articles published in Culture & Psychology speak to something ‘larger’. So, if you would like, there is always an opportunity for you to spend the semester reading articles in our journal about a topic of particular interest to you, and then together, we would work to write a paper where you tell the community what they say “together”.

As the Editor, I have identified some areas that I think the journal needs synthesized, including:

How do people adapt to new cultures — that is, how do they acculturate / (experience proculturation) to the new culture?
How do individuals understand borders - both lived (borders of countries), but also psychological (tension, trauma, ambivalence)?
What does the journal say about the idea of aesthetics, and how do they challenge standard cultural narratives?
How do individuals imagine the notion of ‘freedom’ and ‘agency’ especially in relation to thinking about issues of forced migration?
There is this very clinical psychology notion of a ‘dialogical self’ — I have always found it interesting, but struggle to see where people have ‘taken it further’. Is there new futures in this concept we can use, or will it forever sit as something that exists, but has no additional value?

Have you ever seen how absent-minded I look in class, and thought, jeeze, I could really help that guy out? This might be for you! The journal I edit is always looking for an Editorial Assistant to help keep the Editor-In-Chief (that’s me) and our wonderful Associate Editors (from around the world) on task. This is a relatively low-key volunteer position that should take a few hours a week of your time, ensuring that manuscripts are moving through the system on time, sending gentle reminders to the Editors when they are not, and when manuscripts get accepted, that they are prepared for publication. We keep track of what manuscripts are awaiting publication. I would help you out throughout this, with many instruction docs and questions to field. You get a fancy name, your name in the journal and on the website, and some great experience working for a journal.

Student Need: This is particularly helpful if you are interested in any editing or writing-based experience or a unique experience for those interested in adding one more thing for graduate school applications.

Editorial Assistant for Culture & Psycholgy

Social Media Editorial Manager of Culture & Psychology

Our journal hosts a social media editorial manager. In this role, you can do many things. One undergraduate Social Media Editorial Manager started a Zoom interview series you can find here that I’d love to continue. You can come up with your own ideas too. You can also just be the more general social media manager of our Twitter (X) and Facebook, posting about articles as they get published. The (social media) world is your oyster!