Current Lab Members
Director
Tiffany A. Ito
- Associate Professor
- PhD, University of Southern California, 1995
- Muenzinger D357B
- 303-492-5879
- tiffany.ito@colorado.edu
- http://psych.colorado.edu/~tito/
Post-docs
Erika Henry
- PhD, University of Missouri, 2011
- MA, University of Missouri, 2006
- BS, University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign, 2002
- Muenzinger D356B
- erika.henry@colorado.edu
Research Interests: My research utilizes psychophysiological measures to study processes related to self-regulation, emotion, and addiction. I am particularly interested in individual differences in emotional experience as a function of one's ability to engage in self-regulatory processes, as well as how these differences influence drug use.
Jane Stout
- PhD, University of Massachusetts, 2011
- Muenzinger D356D
- jane.stout@colorado.edu
Research Interests: I study the way that our social identities (e.g., gender, race/ethnicity) can influence the degree to which we feel welcomed, motivated and engaged in achievement situations. To date, I have sought to pinpoint situations in which individuals feel uneasy and avoidant due to their social identity (i.e., identity threat) and I have uncovered strategies that people can use to feel confident and engaged in identity threatening situations.
Chris Loersch
- PhD, Ohio State University, 2009
- MA, Ohio State University, 2004
- BS, Kansas State University, 2002
- Muenzinger D356D
- christopher.loersch@colorado.edu
Research Interests: I am interested in the automatic processes which affect our judgment, behavior, and motivation. My work is anchored in social psychology’s attitudes and social cognition research tradition and largely examines the ways in which incidentally encountered information affects judgment, behavior, and motivation. At the broadest level, I have developed a priming model which provides a novel mechanism for understanding both how and when accessible information will exert an influence on these outcomes. In addition to a number of research lines testing the predictions of this model, I also investigate the basic processes which underlie the formation and expression of attitudes and the various ways that belonging to social groups influences behavior outside of conscious awareness. My most recent work has begun to examine the impact of alcohol consumption on the mental processes which produce the above effects and the neural underpinnings of these processes as measured by event-related brain potentials.
Graduate Students
Geoff Kerr
- BA, University of Missouri, 2008
- Muenzinger D354
- geoffrey.kerr@colorado.edu
- http://psych.colorado.edu/~kerrg/
Keith Senholzi
- MA, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2008
- BA, Rutgers University, 2005
- Muenzinger D338
- keith.senholzi@colorado.edu
Research Interests:y research is conducted using a multi-level approach, bidirectionally integrating theory and methods from social psychology and neuroscience. I am primarily interested in the ways in which we perceive and extract information from human faces. The span of this research ranges from both the cognitive and neural substrates that underlie face encoding and perception to the social and attentional dimensions that may affect them and subsequent behavior (e.g., memory for faces). The overarching aims of this research are to help illuminate the ways in which the above factors interact to affect our perceptions of others, and to provide insights regarding in what ways we may be able to overcome certain resultant biases.
My most recent research has expanded into two new areas: using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to identify the neural systems engaged subsequent to stereotype threat among female science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) majors during math testing and measuring event-related brain potentials (ERPs) among different levels of marijuana users to examine decision-making strategies during probabilistic learning. These projects seek to shed light on the neural processes and social factors involved in the cognitive functioning and decision-making strategies, as a function of different types of feedback, of these two distinct samples.
Project Director
Suzanne Taborsky-Barba
- BS, University of California at Irvine, 1988
- Muenzinger D364B
- suzanne.taborsky-barba@Colorado.edu
Professional Research Assistants
Kevin Brown
- BS, University of Arizona, 2011
- Muenzinger D365D
- Kevin.Brown-1@Colorado.edu
Caitlin Miner
- BS, Union College, 2011
- Muenzinger D365D
- Caitlin.Miner@colorado.edu
Research Interests: My undergraduate research examined the temporal characteristics of absolute and relative musical pitch in young adults using EEG. I am also interested in using fMRI to study neuroplasticity following traumatic brain injury and stroke and also the neurodegenerative processes associated with the progression of Alzheimer's Disease, dementia, and Multiple Sclerosis.
Luis Parra
- BA, California State University, Northridge, 2010
- Muenzinger D356C
- luis.parra@colorado.edu
Research Interests: To date, much research examining the neural substrates of social categorization and stereotyping has primarily focused on social groups with perceptually obvious facial characteristics (e.g., race). However, little research has examined the neurobiological underpinnings of social categorization and stereotyping in members of ambiguous social groups such as gay and straight men. To address this disparity, my line of research seeks to index neural components that may be directly linked to the categorization and stereotyping of sexual orientation.
My other research interest seeks to examine the interplay between the neural mechanisms of attention and emotional reactivity. More specifically, I seek to understand how individuals with concealable stigmas and those without (e.g., gay men who conceal their sexual orientation vs. openly gay men) engage attentional control to temper anxiety-related reactions when encountering social threats.
Nicolas Planet
- BA, University of California - Santa Cruz, 2006
- MS, University of Massachusetts - Amherst, 2010
- Muenzinger D354
Kismet Smith
- BA, University of Colorado, 2011
- Muenzinger D351D
- kismetemsik@gmail.com
Research Interests: Health psychology, public health, obesity interventions and treatments, nutrition, exercise, risky behavior, and at-risk youth.