Mentor: Dr. Becca Neel
Assistant Professor
Project Description
What factors predict prejudice? Scientists have long investigated this question, discovering that preference for hierarchy between groups, intergroup contact, social identification, and many other variables contribute to prejudice. Overall, what do psychological scientists as a field believe are the most important predictors of prejudice? Do different groups of scientists have different beliefs? Are there factors that may be likely to predict prejudice, but that we as a field tend to overlook?x000D
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This project will use an existing dataset from a survey of psychological scientists. The survey asked over 700 scientists what factors most strongly predict prejudice. Participants both nominated the variables they thought were most important, and rated variables that we presented to them. Based on your interests, we will develop and test a research question like: What demographic factors (e.g., age, gender, race, location) do scientists think are most important for predicting prejudice? How often do scientists mention structural vs. personal variables as predictors? Do scientists nominate different variables if they have been working in psychology for a long time, vs. just starting graduate school? These are only possibilities – we will work together to develop a research question of interest to you.x000D
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You will get experience working with both open-ended and scale-response data, quantitative analysis comparing groups (e.g., ANOVA) and computing correlations, data visualization, and open science practices.
Mentorship Statement
My mentorship is geared towards helping students to hone their own ideas and hypotheses, and to develop their skills at how to empirically test those ideas, using best practices to create transparent and replicable science. You and I will meet weekly to discuss your project, there will also be occasional lab meetings with my research group. Our early one-on-one meetings will focus on discussing your research interests and developing your research questions. Later meetings will focus on examining, analyzing, and visualizing the data. x000D
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One of the greatest joys of my job is to help students to build their skills and discover their own path in research. I’m excited to have this opportunity to work with you and be a part of SROP.