Visiting Scholar
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Hyungsoo Kim, Ph.D.
Economics of Aging: Financial and Health Security in Retirement.
More information is available at his home webpage at the University of Kentucky.
Post Doctoral
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Baruch Eitam
My research is in the tradition of "Social Cognition" basically meaning that I take ideas, methods, paradigms and measures from hardcore cognitive psychology and apply them to topics that, historically, lie out of cognitive psychology such as motivation, attitudes, nonconscious processes and psychopathology.
I am currently engaged in about seven different projects ranging from the relationship between motivation and selective attention to nonconscious influences on how we interpret our world. Other projects include testing a new theoretical framework (called ROAR) that Tory and I have developed for explaining how "relevance" affects cognition, exploring nonconscious problem solving, a motivational perspective on post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and a few others.
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David Miele, Ph.D.
My research examines how motivational orientations (e.g., being in a promotion- or prevention-focus) and motivationally-relevant beliefs (e.g., holding an entity or incremental theory of intelligence) influence the metacognitive processes (e.g., assessments of how well one understands a text) that people rely on to regulate their own learning (e.g., to decide which text to study next or when to stop studying).
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Alexander G. Santelli, Ph.D.
I am interested in exploring the role of self-regulation (e.g., regulatory focus, regulatory mode, and other motivational forces) in interpersonal relationships (coworkers, friends, intimates, etc.), the positive and negative effect of such forces on these relationships and how, following interpersonal conflict and transgression, the forgiveness process is influenced by these forces.
More information and a list of publications can be found on his CV.
Graduate Students
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Kerry Milch, 6th Year PhD
One of my primary research interests is how people think about themselves over time and how they make decisions to invest in their future. I am interested in the extent to which people view a temporally removed self (a past self, a future self) as an extension of the current self and the extent to which they view that other self as a distinct entity from the current self (more like a friend or relative). Currently I am investigating how the way people think about their future selves affects their decisions to set aside resources for future use. In another project I am looking at how feeling close to a former self affects evaluations of current skills and traits.
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Becca Franks, 5th Year PhD
I am interested in exploring how motivational tendencies to focus on gains (promotion focus) vs. losses (prevention focus) determine resource use, environmental needs, and overall health. Combining current social psychology theories from our lab with animal behavior and neuroendocrinology at the Champagne Lab, I hope to build on our understanding of what it means to *feel healthy* (opposed to being in a state of straighforward biological health) in both humans and nonhuman animals.
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Abel Rodriguez, 5th Year PhD
My general research interests pertain to the influence different motivational states have on cognition and self-regulation. My primary current research involves examining how regulatory focus, reference points, and past performance interact to influence self-regulation. In another line of research, I am investigating how regulatory focus can influence memory and transfer.
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Sylvia Rodriguez , 4th Year PhD
My research interests include motivation, and how it ties into aspects of the self and culture. I am particularly interested in understanding factors that may promote learning and engagement vs. those that may not, and the contexts under which individuals are motivated in educational environments.
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Steen Sehnert, 4th Year PhD
I'm steen and I am primarily interested in this popular notion of success defined by a life of sacrifice and servitude in exchange for excessive amounts of money. Maybe we assume that any paid activity must be miserable, or we exaggerate our misery to promote an image of toughness or to convince ourselves/others we deserve the money, reducing guilt about class and pay discrepancies and all that unfairness. Either way, I think this idea that 'work sucks' is really bad for us. I also want to know what 'networking' is doing to our concept of friendship, and why people are so awkward about money, a symbol that seems to ruin our lives. When I am not thinking about what I should be doing and meticulously planning out how I will do it by making huge lists, I like to read non-science. Books have become the most recent outlet for my pack rat tendencies because they make me feel smart -- which I have found to be more than half the battle -- I would be confident that they have made me smart if I could remember anything about the few I've actually finished.
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Shu Zhang, 3rd Year PhD
I am interested in the ways that personality and situation jointly determine individual behaviors. For example, we found that individuals respond differently to interpersonal behaviors, and as a result they vary in the tendency to perpetuate these behaviors. Another project along this line explores the role of individual difference in coping with adversities(e.g., performance failure, job insecurity), in terms of the strategies used for coping and the effectiveness of these strategies.
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Julie Smith, 2nd Year PhD
Broadly speaking, my research interests within the Higgins lab include decision-making, negotiation, and shared reality.
More specifically, I am interested in the underlying motivational processes that impact both group and individual decisions.
In regards to shared reality? I pursue research that explores the role of interpersonal communications in the creation of a shared reality, particularly within negotiations.
The research I am currently conducting within CRED examines decision-making in a risky or uncertain environment. I am particularly interested in how these decision-making processes influence conflict resolution and negotiation as pertaining to a group?s ability to come to a lasting consensus.
- Collaborations: CRED, PAM lab
- Likes surfing, but not Sundays.
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James Cornwell , 1st Year PhD
My primary research interest in the Higgins lab is investigating the motivational processes that underlie our moral judgments and ethical decision-making in an attempt to clarify how we make those decisions and what goals are being met when we make them. Additionally, I'm pursuing research to investigate how shared reality contributes to constructing a moral universe, and how it influences the way we interact with those who either do or do not share that same constructed universe.
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Honors Students
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Caitlin Stachon, Senior
I am interested in how cognitive representations of eating-related conflicts affect the experience and resolution of these conflicts in restrained eaters.
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Kira Boesch, Junior
I am generally interested in how both chronic and induced regulatory focus interact with the experience of successes and failures. I would also like to look at the role of regulatory fit and how it may mediate different reactions to success and failure.
