Blog and News

Reprinted from a post I wrote for the SciU blog at Indiana University:

Sophia Vinci-Booher is a graduating Ph.D. student and soon-to-be postdoctoral researcher in IU’s  Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. She has spent the last 5 years here completing graduate coursework and conducting research in order to earn her Ph.D, and she is now one of the leading researchers in the field of functional brain development. She says, “I’ve always been very interested in understanding different viewpoints — how I can see something one way while another person perceives the same phenomenon in a very different way. I’m particularly interested in the role of experience in the formation of these differences and how, despite these differences in perception, we’re able to communicate with each other effectively.” However, her path to this work has been a long one, and she has encountered many obstacles along the way.

In the present, Vinci-Booher’s research with Dr. Karin James is pioneering in this field, which looks at how our actions in the world change how our brains function, especially during childhood. That means she links the tasks we do when we’re younger to our brain’s development and growth. Her work so far has focused on the importance of learning handwriting, a skill many think is growing less important due to the prevalence of computers and tablets. She disagrees, and she argues that handwriting still has an important role even in a digital age.

Vinci-Booher  and her colleagues’ research has been instrumental in showing how changes in handwriting skills at young ages impact how children learn to recognize and identify individual letters in the alphabet. In other words, they study how learning to write individual letters leads to changes in brain function and distributes the workload of common tasks. This may support how people integrate the visual task of reading letters and the physical task of writing those letters.

Vinci-Booher is poised to complete her Ph.D. in the coming months and will soon begin her postdoctoral fellowship, spearheading research on how these processes can change the physical structure of the brain, pointing to a dynamic interaction between learning new skills and brain development.

However, Vinci-Booher has come a long way to get to this point. Like many college students, she was driven to learn more, but she struggled to pinpoint what she wanted to do next — an important first step in considering graduate school. She says, “as an undergraduate student, I always knew that I wanted to continue on to graduate school. I liked the environment and I liked the challenges that academics presented. I had a very vague sense of what I wanted to study (how people change), but it was too vague to know to what programs I should apply.​”

And she faced a number of challenges along the way. In addition to changing her mind about what she wanted to study, she also describes worrying about the cost of a graduate degree. Most importantly, however, she worried about what it would take to study and become an expert in brain development. She says, “I was somewhat intimidated by the idea of studying ‘brain development’ — it seemed like an immense challenge. I started to realize that studying brain development was really not too far out of reach while working as a research assistant in several imaging labs after [getting my undergraduate degree].”

Indeed, this is her first piece of advice for any student interested in graduate school: get first-hand experience in the field you’re interested in. It will help you see if you even like that type of work and, if that’s not the case, can guide you to other career paths or areas of study before you apply to graduate school. It can also show you that you do have the experience and the skills to embark on such a path. Working as a research assistant, Vinci-Booher found that she did feel confident in pursuing the graduate training she would need to continue studying functional brain development in children.

Working with and around graduate students and researchers will also teach you some of the fundamentals. For example, Vinci-Booher learned that most Ph.D. programs cover students’ tuition and pay an annual stipend with health care, removing her worries about the cost of a graduate degree.

Vinci-Booher’s next advice for students interested in graduate school is to look for advisors who will meet your needs. She says, “A lot of students think that the most important thing is to pick an advisor who is working on a topic that you want to study. I would argue that the most important thing is to pick an advisor who will be a good mentor who is at a university that values graduate students.”

“Graduate school is objectively difficult,” Vinci-Booher explains. “A major part of this difficulty is the emotions that come with trying your best in a very competitive environment (e.g., rejection). You need an advisor and department that understand that you are a developing scientist and that help you set goals that are in line with where you are and where you want to go. This type of mentorship is, in my opinion, extremely important to a graduate student’s sense of efficacy and often translates to their ability to complete the degree.”

In addition, many graduate students spend long hours in their labs, conducting research. This was one of the biggest adjustments Vinci-Booher had to make when transitioning to graduate school. The workload and long hours often felt overwhelming, especially since she came back to school after working for 4 years as a clinical technician. Many graduate students follow a similar path, returning to graduate school after spending time employed elsewhere. As she notes, “I had to remember how to actually study and how to function well when everything was so confusing. I felt like I was always having to talk with people about things that I had no idea about–like we were speaking in another language. And, on top of that, I had to do that all day long, everyday. Of course, things got easier over time, but it was a big adjustment for me in the beginning.”

Ultimately, Vinci-Booher recommends that those considering graduate school think holistically about what they want to get out of graduate school and how they will manage their lives during that time. She adds, “What’s important is that you can live a healthy life, physically and mentally, in that environment.” Like many psychologists, she reminds people to take care of themselves, to find balance, to evaluate how they can best achieve their goals, and to identify what help they will need along the way.

Reprinted from a post I wrote for the SciU blog at Indiana University:

When you do an image search for dating or relationships, the results almost entirely focus on two people, usually in an implied heterosexual relationship. Most popular TV shows and movies focus on the same types of couples as well. However, it’s important to recognize that other types of relationships exist too. Consensual non-monogamy is one type of relationship that is often overlooked in both popular culture and scientific research. New studies from IU are trying to fill that gap and shed light on a surprisingly common type of relationship.

Indiana University’s Kinsey Institute has always been at the forefront of research into gender, sexuality, relationships, and well-being. Now, new findings from Kinsey show that over 20% of people surveyed have had open sexual relationships in their lifetimes; that is, relationships with an agreed-upon, sexually non-exclusive component [1]. 

This survey data was based on two nationally-representative samples of over 8,500 people total that were drawn from the annual Singles in America survey gathered by Kinsey. Participants were recruited from a variety of methods like paper and electronic mailings and internet recruitment.

Building on previous research that was ambiguous about who was most likely to engage in consensual non-monogamy, researchers found that rates of ever engaging in a consensual non-monogamous relationship were the same for survey respondents across demographic categories like age, race, religion, political affiliation, and levels of education or income. This suggests that a much wider and more diverse segment of Americans have had consensual non-monogamous relationships than was previously known.

On the other hand, the researchers did find differences in having consensual non-monogamous relationships based on gender and sexual orientation. They found that men were more likely to have ever had a consensual non-monogamous relationship than women. Additionally, people identifying as gay, lesbian, and bisexual were also more likely to have ever engaged in a consensual non-monogamous relationship than those identifying as heterosexual.

This new work finds that open relationships, polyamory, and swinging, among other forms of consensual non-monogamy, are actually quite common for many Americans, and importantly–that these relationships may be underrepresented in both research efforts and mainstream culture. As most of the existing research and theory on gender, relationships, and sexuality does not discuss consensual non-monogamy, future work will focus on identifying people in these relationships and learning more about their experiences in order to better understand the full range of human relationships.

Clinicians across a variety of fields will also want to keep this in mind in their work. Demonstrating awareness about consensual non-monogamous relationships, by including it as an option on intake forms or avoiding statements that assume monogamous relationships, can help mental and physical health care providers make their patients more comfortable, vastly improving their quality of care.

[1] M. L. Haupert, Amanda N. Gesselman, Amy C. Moors, Helen E. Fisher & Justin R. Garcia (2017). Prevalence of Experiences With Consensual Nonmonogamous Relationships: Findings From Two National Samples of Single Americans, Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, Vol. 43, Iss. 5. 

Edited by Taylor Nicholas and Lana Ruck

Reprinted from a post I wrote for the SciU blog at Indiana University:

Imagine you’re out around town and see a protest down the street. Within the first two seconds, you’re making judgments about the crowd of people you see. You may evaluate the crowd and their cause as being justified and join their protest. Or you may evaluate them as being unjustified and stop to argue with the protesters or join a counter-protest to make sure your views are heard, too. When people view protests, however, they do more than just evaluate how much they agree or disagree with the opinions being raised: they may also evaluate the emotions they see among the protesters. This may be especially important to observers as it helps them figure out if a protest may become violent or dangerous, in which case they may choose to leave the area. Even the police may not be immune to these rapid perceptual judgments, which could then influence when and how much force they choose to use against those protesters.

Protesting has been on the rise, both nationally and internationally. At last spring’s March for Science and the People’s Climate March as well as the more recent protests in Boston, New York, and Washington D. C., an estimated several hundred thousand people made signs and joined the crowds. Large events like this often draw both protesters and counter-protesters who want to make opposing views known. My recent research with the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Indiana University suggests these instances, when protesters and counter-protesters meet, might be more risky for those who participate for reasons you might not expect. Although there can be a risk of violence from those involved in the protest or counter-protest as they try to make themselves heard, this work points to more confusion by observers in these situations, which could become risky if they try to get involved.

My research, conducted in collaboration with IU’s Social Neuroscience Lab, explored both IU students’ and Bloomington community members’ perceptions of crowds. We showed these participants crowds of 36 faces each and varied the types of emotional expressions seen within the crowds, including both positive facial expressions such as smiles, and negative facial expressions such as angry glares (see examples of similar images below). Importantly, we also varied how mixed or ambiguous these emotions were; that is, whether the crowds were mostly positive with only a few faces with another expression or whether the crowds were more evenly split between emotions. Then we asked participants to pick which emotion they thought the majority of the crowd was showing.

We found people had the most difficulty making these decisions about the most ambiguous crowds. People made more errors and were much slower to make these decisions when ambiguity was high. In addition, we found evidence for a bias toward negative emotions. That means that participants weighted negative expressions more heavily and thought there were more negative expressions within the crowds even when the crowds were evenly mixed with negative and positive expressions.

This suggests that observers have more difficulty figuring out what’s happening with more mixed, ambiguous crowds and that they may misinterpret crowds as more negative especially when crowds are more ambiguous, as they might be in cases where protesters and counter-protesters meet.

Of course, you should still join protests or counter-protests for causes you care about when you want to have your voice heard, but this research suggests you might want to stay more distant from those with opposing views to avoid confusion and the potential for violence.

Edited by Victoria Kohout and Maria Tiongco

Reprinted from a post I wrote for the SciU blog at Indiana University:

There is a dizzying array of things to think about when signing up for classes and again later when you’re thinking about what to keep the first week of classes. You may have to consider requirements for your major or for the Common Ground and Shared Goals curricula at IU. You may try to sign up for classes that your friends are taking, especially if there might be group projects. And you may even look for which classes or instructors have given out the best grades in the past.

One thing you might not have thought much about yet is how your instructors view their students: specifically, their lay theories of intelligence. Lay theories of intelligence refer to how instructors (and even students themselves) think about the nature of intelligence. There are two lay theories of intelligence: entity and incremental. The entity theory of intelligence means you think that intellectual abilities are set and cannot be changed, or in other words, thinking that you either have the innate intellectual abilities for a certain topic or you don’t. For example, some people may think they are innately talented in business and marketing but believe they just don’t have it for physics.

In contrast, the incremental theory of intelligence means you think that intellectual abilities can be improved through hard work and dedication, or in other words, thinking that if you keep putting in the work, you can get there. For example, if someone encounters a class they find difficult, like organic chemistry, they believe they can work hard, complete the practice problems, and get extra help from the instructor to slowly build their knowledge of the topic and eventually do well in the class.

Recent and ongoing research in Indiana University’s Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences (e.g., Murphy & Dweck, 2010; Boucher & Murphy, 2017; in a business context: Emerson & Murphy, 2014, 2015) has found this to be an important factor for students, especially for those taking classes in domains where they might be stereotyped, such as men in English and writing classes, or women and students of color in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) classes.

In classrooms, instructors’ lay theories of intelligence can have a huge impact on students. For example, in a classroom with an instructor who believes in the entity theory, students could spend more time worrying about whether they have it or not and less time focusing on the class material. In addition, if they feel the professor doesn’t think they have it, these students might put less work into the class, drop the class, or even leave the major for a field where the instructors do think they have it.

On the other hand, in a classroom with an instructor who believes in the incremental theory, students could instead worry less about their abilities and be encouraged to continue working hard, even when they encounter obstacles. This is because they see improvement as being within their grasp as long as they’re willing to put in the effort.

Thus, students who believe they have it or who get the impression from their instructors that they have it can do just fine in entity classrooms. But those without those beliefs or who are told they may not have it could suffer academically. In incremental classrooms, however, there is room for improvement and growth from all students if they’re willing to work hard.

These theories are in line with the research findings. Women students were asked about whether their instructors think some students have it and others don’t or whether the instructors think anyone can succeed if they work hard enough. The ones that perceived their STEM instructors as having an entity theory of intelligence experienced greater feelings of threat based on their identities as women and fewer feelings of belonging in the classroom (Murphy, Garcia, & Zirkel, 2013). These women were also more likely to experience feelings of imposter syndrome, where they fear they don’t truly understand the material and attribute success in these classes to factors like luck instead of their own skill and knowledge. Moreover, these findings showed that these theories of intelligence can have a real impact on students’ behaviors. Heightened feelings of threat were linked to students being less likely to go to office hours and speak up in class, even to ask questions and get help (Zirkel, Garcia, & Murphy, 2015).

Therefore, when you’re thinking about which classes to take (or which to stay in) this Fall, keep in mind how your instructors think about the nature of intelligence. In many cases, students do well in entity classrooms, if they already believe they have it or if they feel like their instructors think they have it. However, if you’re worried about your performance (if it’s a required class or if it’s in a department where people like you might have stereotypes about doing poorly), you may want to consider whether your instructor will have an incremental theory of intelligence. In short, when you have an option, think about who will give the best type of instruction for you.

Edited by Katherine VanDenBurgh and Maria Tiongco