Research Labs

Students often participate in faculty research as student research assistants. We offer a wide variety of research programs.

Our Labs

Spirituality and Health Lab
Dr. John Pérez's primary research interest is exploring how spirituality and religiousness influence mental and physical health across the lifespan.

Cognition and Emotion Lab
Dr. Marisa Knight's research interests are focused on the interplay between motivation, emotion, and cognitive functioning across the lifespan.

Family Research Lab
Dr. Shirley McGuire's research involves using a biocontextual approach to study children's social and personality development and adjustment during middle childhood and adolescence.

Learn more at the TAPS website »

Social Cognition and Judgment Lab
Dr. Saera Khan explores how individuals’ motivation and their processing of social information act to influence their use of stereotypes when judging others.

Foster Care Research Group (FCRG)
The FCRG is directed by Dr. Saralyn Ruff, a full-time faculty member in Psychology. Dr. Clausen, who founded the lab in 2000, serves as a consultant to the lab.

Learn more at the FCRG website »

Mass Emotion and Intergroup Conflict Lab
Dr. Violet Cheung's research focuses on emotion processes and self-regulation. These topics are approached from both a social and developmental perspective.

Acculturation and Immigrant Health Research Lab
Dr. Kevin Chun's research and publications focus on processes of adaptation and their relation to health and psychosocial adjustment for Asian American immigrants and refugees.

Social Reasoning in Childhood (SeaRCH) Lab
Dr. Aline Hitti's research focuses on developing concepts of fairness, justice, social inequalities, and other’s well-being when it comes to social exclusion of peers and decisions about peer relationships. We also examine the role of bias, prejudice, and stereotypes in making such decisions.

Learning and Reasoning Lab
Dr. Ed Munnich's research focuses on whether, and to what extent, statistics influence people’s beliefs and preferences about personal and public policy issues.

Aging and Diversity Research Lab
Dr. Lisa Wagner's research has examined both ethnic/racial stereotypes and age-related stereotypes with her most recent research examining stereotype threat and older adults.

Sexuality and HIV Lab
Dr. Ja’Nina Garrett-Walker’s research focuses on multiple identity development for Black lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) emerging adults.