A Snapshot of Other BHS Lab Projects

Research projects in the Detweiler-Bedells' BHS Lab represent the intersection of their research interests: the overlap of clinical and health psychology for Jerusha, a clinical psychologist, and the interrelationship between emotion, judgement and decision making, and a social interaction for Brian, a social psychologist. The common denominator is the role of emotion in behavioral decision making, a theme identifiable in their research on journal writing about traumatic events and their other current lab projects.

Emotional Intelligence and Social Dilemmas

Team members: April Lapôtre ’04, Abby Hazlett ’05, Mihana Diaz ’06

The prisoner’s dilemma—a classic puzzle in which two prisoners are separated and urged to confess and testify against their silent accomplice—is commonly used to illustrate the problem of cooperation versus conflict in groups. In one of the lab’s more involved projects, students are helping Brian and Jerusha use the prisoner’s dilemma to study the link between small-group cooperation and emotional intelligence, which is defined as the ability to recognize and effectively manage your own feelings and those of others.

The Effect of Mood on Cognitive Dissonance

Team members: Chris Murray ’03 (honors thesis student), Zoey Cronin ’05

Should Lewis & Clark College raise tuition rates? Most students would say no. So asking them to write an argument in favor of a tuition hike creates cognitive dissonance, a distressing mental state in which people find themselves doing things or holding opinions that are in conflict with what they know or believe. Cognitive dissonance creates emotional tension that researchers have found can be lessened, in this case, by the participant’s becoming more sympathetic to a tuition increase. This project explores whether you can enhance participants’ sympathy toward a rival argument by darkening their mood even more.

Inoculation Against Numerical Anchoring

Team members: Devon D’Ewart ’04, Liesl Beecher-Flad ’05, Nabiha Parvez ’06

Did Canada become an independent country before or after 1680? What is your best estimate of the actual answer? In this question, 1680 is what psychologists call a numerical anchor. Numerical anchors strongly influence future numerical judgments. This project investigates whether giving people an implausible numerical anchor—if the year in the above example was 1980, for instance—“inoculates” them against the persuasive qualities of subsequent numerical anchors.

The Role of Anticipatory Emotions in Behavioral Decision Making

Alexa Reynolds ’03 (honors thesis student)

When making a decision, to what extent do a person’s emotions—both those present at the time of the decision and those anticipated as a consequence of that decision—play a role? That’s the essential question of this project, explored through two studies in which participants choose between a desirable but risky outcome and a safe but less attractive outcome. Reynolds and the Detweiler-Bedells predict that when participants focus on the vividness of a negative outcome, they will be more likely to choose the safe alternative. If, however, they are told that the probability of a negative outcome is very low, an immediate sense of relief may influence them to take the risk.

A New View of Human Emotion

Team members: Lisa Williams ’04, Elena Welsh ’05

This project tests some of the more interesting predictions of a new theory that Brian has put forth—focusing on emotion, motivation, and behavioral decision making—that would distinguish the theory from others and help clarify the relationship between emotion and cognition. Brian’s model says the self attempts to pursue two competing goals: to increase its own complexity and to maintain sufficient organizational control over this complexity. The fundamental tension between these goals leads to pursuing one over the other, and results in a dynamic system of emotional experience and motivation that may account for a wide range of psychological phenomena.