UNDERGRADUATE OPPORTUNITIES

We welcome your interest and participation in our lab – In fact, we rely extensively on our excellent undergraduate Research Assistants! We always have at least three to five studies ongoing, so students get to have a lot of different experiences, and learn about different aspects of socio-emotional development and families.

Halberstadt Family Affect Beliefs and Behaviors Lab

Our work focuses on how parental behavior and beliefs about emotion impact children’s emotion-related behaviors and their understanding of others’ emotion-related behaviors. We think that parental beliefs impact children’s developing schemas, and so several years ago we developed a questionnaire that assesses how parents think and feel about children’s emotions (e.g., are emotions valuable? dangerous? controllable? manipulative? etc.). We predict that parents who believe emotions are dangerous or costly (compared to those who value emotional expression) will suggest that “bad ends” will come to those who are emotionally expressive. Also, parents who perceive emotions are dangerous may not recognize low-levels of negative emotion in others (in a way “defending” against those negative emotions), and will strive to do everything they can to avoid expressing emotions themselves. We predict that their children, while also avoiding emotion expression, will be more vigilant about attending to the emotional expression of their parents. We have several studies ongoing in this area. Our newest study, “CUED IN” is a two-year project launched this year. We are studying third-grade children’s understanding of emotion – both its antecedents, including parents’ socialization beliefs and behaviors, and its consequences, including children’s social skills in school settings.  We anticipate numerous openings in the lab to support this study, including help collecting data, and developing and then utilizing coding schemes to assess parents’ behavior and children‘s skill.
In our work, we are also interested in similarities and differences in beliefs across gender, ethnicity, and class. We work with both mothers and fathers, and our parent groups tend to  African-American, European-American, or Lumbee Indian. We also try to include parents who are from lower- and middle-income families in our research whenever possible.
We are also interested in particular emotions within family settings, such as anger and pride. We currently have data from mothers, fathers, and children in which each family member describes why she or he gets angry at each other family member and also why they think each other family member gets mad at the other family members. This full round-robin design allows us to understand more about how anger is experienced in the family. Pride is a new topic we hope to address this year.
Through participation in our research lab, you will learn and use several kinds of skills, including recruiting parents and children for participation, helping to run participant sessions, transcribing children’s and parents’ interviews, developing and then coding complex forms of data, conducting data analyses, and conducting library research on parental socialization of emotion and gender.
Determining the time commitment in research is always challenging because research demands sometimes happen in bunches, and the work is not always entirely controllable (e.g., several parents sometimes become available in the same week and then no one is available for research the next week). But overall, we need you to commit to about ten hours weekly, and you will receive 3 credit hours (PSY 499). We also have a weekly one hour meeting on Fridays at 9am that you are required to attend. Some semesters we also ask you to leave open Mondays or Wednesdays at that time for small group meetings.
This is a very exciting time in our lab! Thank you for your interest, and feel free to contact me or any of the graduate students for further information.

Amy Halberstadt

If you are interested in gaining undergraduate research experience, please download the application form and email the completed form to the lab manager, Patsy Sibley. We generally require a 3.4 or better for your total GPA or your Psychology GPA, and at least one faculty member or graduate student to speak for you. Your including their name on your application is considered agreement that we can contact them for a conversation about your abilities (they do not need to write anything on your behalf).

Fall and Spring Semesters
Applications will be considered on a rolling basis at the end of the Fall and Spring semesters. In general, we do not accept applications after the first week of the semester. Sometimes, however, we find we have openings mid-semester due to a study beginning off-schedule, so it is always fine to inquire.

Summer
If you wish to work with us over the summer, please submit your application by the last day of classes in the Spring semester.