Four Mount St. Joseph University Psychology Seniors Were Accepted into the Spring 2022 Southwestern Psychology Association Conference.
Here at Mount St. Joseph University we have an incredible Psychology Department. This year we were fortunate enough to have four of our Psychology Senior Thesis Projects accepted into the Southwestern Psychology Association Conference. The four Psychology seniors that attended the Psychology Conference in April were Zenbech “Zen” Seifu, Kamryn Magee, Amber Reinert, and Leah Falco. In addition to the huge accomplishment of these four seniors being accepted to present at the Psychology Conference, Zen Seifu was nominated as a SWPA Student Research Competition Finalist. Kamryn Magee won a Psi Chi Regional Research Award (these awards are extremely competitive; out of hundreds of undergraduate students who submit projects to the conference, only 16 of these awards are handed out). Continue reading to learn more about these four standout Psychology seniors and their conference presentations!
Zenbech “Zen” Seifu is a senior at the Mount who will be graduating in May 2022 with a Bachelor’s of Science in Psychology.
1.Please share what your senior thesis project topic is and some details about your research project.
“My abstract titled “Effect of Social Proof and Information about the Benefits of Donating on Amount Pledged to a Nonprofit” examined the impact of social proof and information about the effect of prosocial spending on donors’ likelihood of making a one-time donation. Participants (N=80) from a convenience sample of college students (from the Mount) were assigned to one of four conditions: they read that either 10% or 70% of other Mount students had already donated. Additionally, participants were either given no information about research on the effect of making donations on personal happiness or they were told that making donations increases one’s own happiness. Following the presentation, participants were asked to indicate how many canned goods they would donate to a local foodbank.
Furthermore, the results of this study were consistent with my hypothesis and previous research (Anik, Norton, & Ariely, 2014; Gerber & Rogers, 2020; Savary & Goldsmith, 2020; Wiepking & Heijnen, 2011), participants pledged fewer canned goods in the 10% social proof condition compared to the 70% social proof condition. However, when participants were provided prosocial-benefit information, they did not agree to donate significantly more than they would if they were provided no information. It appears that social-proof information is a powerful tool that nonprofit organizations could use to increase donations and help the clients they serve.”
2.What does being accepted into the Southwestern Psychology Association Conference mean to you?
“Being accepted into the Southwestern Psychological Association Conference is an honor. Aside from being nominated for an award, attending this conference presents the opportunity to broaden my skill set, present and receive feedback on research projects, to forge collaborations, and to network. Additionally, conferences such as this one is a great place to get exposure to material that is rare, such as workshops dedicated to advanced statistical methods and new research techniques.”
3.What are your post-graduation plans?
“At this time, I am still deciding my post-graduation plans. My areas of interest include research, medicine, and business.”
Kamryn Magee is a senior at the Mount who will be graduating in May 2022 with a Bachelor’s of Science in Psychology.
1.Please share what your senior thesis project topic is and some details about your research project.
“The type of music a person listens to is believed to be correlated with the person’s self-expression and identity. The topic of my senior thesis project was to study the Effect of Preferred Music Genres and Race on Perceptions of a Listener’s Big Five Personality Traits. In my study, participants were individually shown different photographs of a black and white male, and a description of whether he has a music preference for rap and hip-hop, rock and heavy metal, or country and pop, and then asked to rate each of the Big Five personality traits of the man, as well as aggressiveness.”
2.What does being accepted into the Southwestern Psychology Association Conference mean to you?
“Being accepted and recognized by the Southwestern Psychological Association with the Psi Chi Regional Research Award means so much to me. Not only does it show me that I should be proud of the time and effort that I have put into my research, but it also gives me motivation for my future, and how high I can reach with my goals and aspirations.”
3.What are your post-graduation plans?
“After my time is complete at the Mount, it is my goal to further my education in graduate school to become a School Psychologist. I enjoy working with children with behavioral and learning disabilities, and I want to make a difference in the lives of the youth. I have been accepted into the Specialist in Education (School Psychology Licensure) program at The Ohio State University.”
Amber Reinert is a senior at the Mount who will be graduating in May 2022 with a Bachelor’s of Science in Psychology and a minor in Sociology.
1.Please share what your senior thesis project topic is and some details about your research project.
“For my senior thesis project, I researched the effects of a 5-minute mindfulness meditation on college students' exam scores and anxiety levels. The topic of meditation interests me as I have participated in it regularly and utilized group meditation during my job as a group leader at the Cincinnati Recreation Commission summer camp.
Students participated in my study 10 minutes before a regular, course exam. Participants then rated their anxiety levels through a series of questions. Half of the participants proceeded to sit in the hallway, while the other half participated in the meditation. After this, they filled out the same questions and took their exams. Once students received their grades, they wrote them on the questionnaires and handed them back to me. I then calculated the data and found a statistically significant decrease in anxiety for those who meditated. There was a slight increase in exam scores, but it was statistically insignificant. Overall this supports my hypothesis that a mindfulness meditation decreases students' anxiety levels.”
2.What does being accepted into the Southwestern Psychology Association Conference mean to you?
“Being accepted to present at the SWPA Conference is a huge honor for me. Thinking back to freshman year when I started my psychology major, it is mind-blowing to think that I have completed my senior thesis and will get to share my findings at a conference. I am very excited to be able to meet with other psychology students from different programs. From interacting and networking with other students, I will be able to build upon my research skills and learn different perspectives. This will be an amazing opportunity to engage with other psychology students.”
3.What are your post-graduation plans?
“Upon graduating from the Mount this May, I will be attending a PsyD program for clinical psychology at the University of Indianapolis. With this degree, I am hoping to work in a private practice setting with children and adolescents with developmental disabilities.”
Leah Falco is a senior at the Mount who will be graduating in May 2022 with a Bachelor’s of Science in Psychology.
1.Please share what your senior thesis project topic is and some details about your research project.
“My senior thesis project was about how the level of information given to participants about a particular disorder, in this case misophonia, effected how they perceived the described individual and how likely they would be to form a friendship with that person. Misophonia is a neurological disorder in which specific sounds trigger emotional or physiological responses that some might perceive as unreasonable given the circumstance. Misophonia causes someone to enter Fight or Flight mode when they are triggered, and it can lead to the affected person becoming irritated, enraged, or even panicked when they hear a trigger sound. My experiment consisted of participants completing a questionnaire about how likely they were to pursue a friendship with someone with misophonia. Each questionnaire included the same scenario of a classmate reaching out and asking to have lunch with the reader, and at lunch they disclosed information about a neurological condition they have, misophonia. After reading the scenario, participants then had to rank the likelihood of pursuing a friendship with the classmate on a scale from 1-5, with 1 being very unlikely and 5 being very likely. The questionnaire had three different versions that were randomly given to participating students: the first version was the control where a brief description of misophonia was given but did not mention the term misophonia, the second had the same description along with it being labeled as misophonia, and the third had a description and label for misophonia in addition to a personal account from someone about their experience with the disorder.”
2.What does being accepted into the Southwestern Psychology Association Conference mean to you?
“I had convinced myself that I wouldn’t be accepted into the conference when I applied because I had experimented with a condition that is relatively unheard of, and my results were not statistically significant, so when I got the news that I had been accepted to present my senior thesis poster in Baton Rouge, it was an incredible feeling of validation for my project. I am so proud that I get to not only represent Cincinnati and Mount St. Joseph University, but also those like me who have had to live with misophonia for years with almost no hope of finding adequate treatments. I’m glad that I can not only share my experiment with others, but also the knowledge about misophonia that I have accumulated over a decade of personal research and talking to others who live with it. I hope that above all else, I can get others interested in researching this condition and finding those treatments that people who suffer from misophonia desperately deserve.”
3.What are your post-graduation plans?
“I am going to be taking a gap year or two before going to graduate school and pursuing my Ph.D. in experimental psychology. I plan on researching anxiety and trauma-and-stressor disorders, with a focus on misophonia, in the hopes of not only deepening our knowledge of the disorders, but also developing new treatments that can be accessible to everyone, regardless their socioeconomic status. I would also like to work on reducing the amount of stigma that surrounds mental illness, but that will probably have to be a team effort among other psychologists and dedicated individuals.”
Congratulations to our Psychology Department and our standout psychology seniors who participated in the conference!
