RELATIONSHIP PROBLEMS
In 2014, relationship problems were the 4th leading cause of stress in the U.S. (behind job concerns, money, and health). More than half of people attributed their stress to fighting with people close to them. Approximately 3 out of 4 people reported psychological and physical symptoms of their stress.
I started researching resentment because it may be what makes relationship problems so toxic. So I focus on understanding resentment as one of the mechanisms through which everyday relationship problems affect health and quality of life.
Current Projects
The Forgiveness Study: Part 2 (2022 - Current)
The best way to counteract resentment is through forgiveness, but forgiveness is easier said than done. And it's really not even that easily said. In Part 1 of this study, I collaborated with researchers from Appalachian State University, and used classic experimental paradigms to explain the effects of perspective-taking on forgiveness. The findings suggested perspective-taking interventions may help victims forgive their offenders by helping them empathize with the offender. However, these findings contradicted another dissonance-based theory, which suggested perspective-taking interventions facilitate forgiveness because they create feelings of hypocrisy for victims, who resent the offensive behavior, but simultaneously remember instances of their own offensive behavior, by taking the offender's perspective. From this point of view, it makes sense that our own sense of hypocrisy (not empathy) might explain forgiveness toward others. As such, the community of peer experts is not convinced that empathy was the sole reason for forgiveness. So we replicated the findings from Part 1 in another sample.
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Opportunities for Student Researchers
We are conducting a follow-up study to replicate the findings from Part 1. The protocol is similar to the first study: an online survey (30-minutes or less). Unlike the first study, this study will ask participants about real relationship problems that happened to them, instead of asking them about a hypothetical scenario.
If interested, this project includes opportunities for students at all levels of experience (i.e., freshmen to seniors), such as:
(1) Survey programming - writing questions and testing surveys in Qualtrics. These skills are useful for research, graduate school, and a variety of industries, including data analytics, consumer behavior, and marketing.
(2) Data management - student researchers can be trained to export and organize data in SPSS (a software package that is similar to Excel).
(3) Data Analysis - students who have taken Psychological Statistics can help conduct analyses to test our hypotheses and report results.
(4) Professional Conference Presentations - once data are collected and analyzed, the team will put together an abstract to present the results at a conference. This will include some exposure to literature reviews, scientific writing, and, of course, practice presenting scientific findings.