Broffman, Joelle (Psychology)
Faculty Research Advisor: Rena Repetti

I am planning to use my work this year in the research group as the basis for an honors thesis in psychology that I will write next year. I have continued involvement in research that uses data from the Center on the Everyday Lives of Families (CELF). The completion of an honors thesis is consistent with my plan to apply to graduate school, most likely in psychology.

Calcagno, Katie (Psychology)
Faculty Research Advisor: Rena Repetti

Part of our work at the Center on the Everyday Lives of Families is coding parent-child conversations from videotapes taken in families' homes over the course of a normal week. I have been working with the team since June 2008 to develop the methods that we are now using to reliably identify key conversation characteristics. During the Winter and Spring 2009 quarters, we will analyze conversations that focus on particular topics. For instance, we will describe how a problem with peers emerges as a topic, whether (and how) advice or help is solicited, a position or "stance" is taken, emotion is expressed, problem solving is proposed, and positive or negative consequences are mentioned. We meet weekly to review the work that has been done and to plan the next steps in the project. By continuing to work during the next two quarters, I will learn how to use the research literature to develop interesting research questions, operationalize psychological constructs with the naturalistic data available in CELF videotapes, develop a reliable coding system, and conduct analyses with the data.

Cavion, Heather (Psychology)
IRSP Graduate Student Advisor: Leslie Seay

We are currently investigating the influence of residential proximity and school diversity on cross-ethnic friendship formation. I will gain a theoretical understanding of adolescent friendship selection as well as practical research skills including transforming raw data and using statistical software packages to analyze data. I will also have the opportunity to formulate my own research question using the data and prepare a poster for submission at a research conference.

Chen, Ying (Biochemistry)
Faculty Research Advisor: Martie Haselton
IRSP Graduate Student Advisor: Kelly Gildersleeve

We study shifts in women's physical, vocal, and odor attractiveness across the ovarian cycle and individual differences in men's ability to discriminate between cues produced at high- and low-fertility. Additionally, we study women's and their male romantic partners' behaviors across the ovarian cycle, focusing on shifts in women's in-pair vs. extra-pair sexual desire/behavior and men's use of mate-retention tactics. As an intern, I will prescreen and schedule participants, run participants' appointments, and organize and enter data. Additionally, I will attend weekly lab meetings where I will offer constructive criticisms and discuss potential improvements to the current protocol.

Davis, Morgan (Psychology)
IRSP Graduate Student Advisor: Mariana Preciado

Morgan will be working on two projects. The first is a study of the relationship between sexual experience and sexual identity. For this project she will learn to run subjects and conduct rudimentary data analyses. The second is a study of her own design on the families and intimate relationships of substance abusers. For this project she will be reading literature on substance abuse and families, creating an online survey, conducting her own data analysis, and she will create a poster to present at the PURC conference.

Fitz-Gibbon, Taylor (Psychology; Anthropology minor)
IRSP Graduate Student Advisor: Megan Mulet

This project is a multi-sited ethnography examining the patterning of personal experiences in Black Rock City, Nevada - the temporary city built by Burning Man festival participants for their annual gathering. We look specifically at the transformative experiences reported by those who play on this sacred playground. Using mixed methods we are studying relationships among festival participants in order to examine the event's potential to aid in personal and social transformation. I have been assisting with the project since the beginning of the spring quarter 2008, and attended the event during the summer. I am already managing the dozen or more volunteers working on data entry. I am helping to complete the transcribing of two years of journal and interview data. I will also be analyzing my own material, as I have been recording my own experiences over the past 6 months in journals.

Hasan Alkhatib, Jasmine (Sociology)
IRSP Graduate Student Advisors: Chinyere Osuji and Sarah Schlabach

I plan to get her PhD in Sociology and hopefully become a college professor. I am interested in a wide range of social phenomena; from macro sociological topics to intimate micro interactions. In this project, I will be assisting Sarah and Chinyere in interviewing inter-racial couples. I hope to eventually develop specific research questions from the interviews, that will influence my future research.

Natwick, Alex (Psychology)
Faculty Research Advisors: Martie haselton and Anne Peplau
IRSP Graduate Student Advisor: Dave Frederick

Under the supervision of Martie Haselton, Anne Peplau and David Frederick, Alex is developing a study on positive illusions in relationships. The study is the first to examine the ways in which love may fuel positive illusions and to examine the evolved functions of attractiveness-related positive illusions in relationships.  She has already begun a literature review on positive illusions and will learn how to construct an IRB application, research experiment design, and how to draft a manuscript in APA format. Participation in this training program will aid in her preparation for graduate school. 

Parbhakar, Meera (Psychology)
Faculty Research Advisor: Ted Robles

Meera will be working on our "Family characteristics and susceptibility to upper respiratory infection" project funded by the UCLA Academic Senate and the William T. Grant Foundation. The project will examine the links between risky family settings and susceptibility to upper respiratory infections (URIs), and the biological and behavioral pathways that explain links between risky family settings and susceptibility to URIs using daily diary methods. On the project, Meera will be involved in recruitment, data collection, and maintaining contact with families. She will screen families for the study over the phone. Meera will also prepare materials for family visits to our laboratory, and she will directly interact with parents and children (8-11 years of age) including training them on completing daily diaries on paper and PDAs, assessing URI symptoms, and collecting saliva samples. Finally, Meera will maintain contact with families throughout their time in the study (two months) to answer any concerns they may have about completing the diaries and saliva samples, and to reinforce compliance with the study protocol.

Phan, Tyler (Psychology)
Faculty Research Advisor: Shelley Taylor

The project was initiated by Tyler. It involves a comparison of Asian American and European American child-rearing practices and their effects on offspring abilities to cope with social stress. He will use a dataset to examine these issues. The dataset includes 9-day daily diaries of social encounters, and psychological and biological responses to laboratory stressors (as well as assessments of the early family environment). A publishable papers may well come out of this project.

Leonid Tiokhin (Psychology)
Faculty Research Advisor: Daniel Fessler

I will be assisting in several projects. The first centers on the factors that influence the believability of interpersonal communication; specifically, we will explore whether recipients of information are more credulous when messages describe hazards in the environment than when they describe opportunities. The second project asks whether the nature of a dyadic relationship influences the perception of the richness of available resources; specifically, we will explore whether food resources are perceived as more abundant (and hence more readily divided) when friends are present compared to the perception of the same resource in the presence of a stranger. My participation in this research will provide me with valuable experience in research design, experimental methods, and data management in interdisciplinary evolutionary behavioral science.