Brett Grant 6th Year Graduate Student M.S. from the University of Alabama, 2015
Brett is a sixth-year student working in the Experimental Social program. A Texas native, he received his B.S. in Psychology (minor: Neuroscience & English) from Texas A&M University and his M.S. in Experimental Psychology from The University of Alabama. His research interests center around examining motivational states within emotion, self-regulation of empathy, and social-cognition broadly. He uses a variety of neurophysiological techniques, including EEG frequency and event-related potentials, and behavioral measures.
Callie Gibson 4th Year Graduate Student M.S. from Georgia Southern University, 2014
I am a fourth year doctoral candidate, pursuing my PhD in Experimental Psychology with a dual concentration in Developmental Science and Social Psychology. Broadly, I study factors that influence interpersonal relationships. Mainly, I study peer relations in adolescence, specifically responses to peer rejection and provocation. My recent projects have included adolescents’ endorsement of revenge goals after rejection and college students’ empathic responses after rejection. My dissertation is examining adolescents’ empathic responses after rejection, both experimentally manipulated and chronic experiences. OSF: https://osf.io/msjng/
Alex McDiarmid 3rd Year Graduate Student B.A. from Gonzaga University, 2009 Alex is a 3rd year student working with Dr. Alexa Tullett. His research covers topics such as: biases in the degree to which people are persuaded by scientific evidence, and intergroup conflict associated with religious belief and disbelief.
Zachary L. Mensch 3rd Year Graduate Student B.A. from the University of Arkansas, 2015
Zachary received a B.A. in Psychology with Honors and a B.A. in German from the University of Arkansas in 2015. He is interested in how people perceive reality and how that perception influences actions and decisions. His current research examines perceived bias and perceived bias preventability.
Cassie M. Whitt 1st Year Graduate Student M.S. from Eastern Kentucky University, 2016
As a child, my parents let me read whatever I wanted. So, of course, I read epic trilogies full of religious allegories. In one of those, I encountered the following passage, "…good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are…People are too complicated to have simple labels."* I did not have an immediate desire to be a psychologist, but from that point on, I knew that humans were the most interesting subjects in the world.
My research interests include both visual and cognitive perspective-taking ability and how they can be used to increase empathy.