Mentor: Dr. Spike W. S. Lee
Associate Professor, Management and Psychology (Cross-Appointed)
Project Description
Politics has become increasingly toxic. And polarization is hurting democracies around the world. What are the psychological drivers underlying these phenomena? _x000D_
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To tackle this broad problem, we are doing a variety of specific projects, from which you are free to choose. For example, one project is examining how liberals and conservatives differ in their moral intuitions—in ways that challenge an influential framework called moral foundations theory. Another project is seeking to leverage social relations to help partisans talk across the aisle. Yet another project is using large language models to accomplish the same goal. Still another project involves text analysis of millions of news articles to see what textual features predict the ideological leaning and extremity of the news outlet and the degree to which the news outlet publishes fake news. More projects are being pursued. _x000D_
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Whichever project you choose to work on, you’ll be involved in developing your own hypotheses, crafting studies to test them, coordinating data collection, analyzing data, and writing them up for conference presentation or journal publication or both._x000D_
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For further information on what our lab is currently investigating, be sure to check out_x000D_
https://mindandbodylab.wixsite.com/mindandbodylab/research (specific research questions) and_x000D_
https://mindandbodylab.wixsite.com/mindandbodylab (broad overview).
Does this project require the SROP Student to be in-person or remote? Either one
Mentorship Statement
I love mentoring students. I find tremendous meaning and fulfillment in it. I had great mentors_x000D_
throughout my own undergraduate and graduate training. Being able to cultivate students as they explore their goals and interests and experience doing scientific thinking and work is a big part of why I love my job. I’ve mentored a large number of students from diverse backgrounds–ethnic, linguistic, and socioeconomic. I’m proud of their successes in numerous areas of work and life (https://mindandbodylab.wixsite.com/mindandbodylab/news)._x000D_
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If you join our lab, the first thing we’ll discuss is what your fundamental values and long-term_x000D_
aspirations are. From there, we’ll identify specific goals and concrete tasks we want to accomplish within a feasible timeframe during summer._x000D_
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I was lucky to have benefited from similar opportunities to this when I was a student. I look forward to supporting you as a budding scholar and scientist.