Research
Each faculty member in the psychology department has an active program of research - and in every case, students play an integral role. They help plan experiments, collect data (from human participants or rats), analyze data, present results, and often join faculty at national conferences.
This student-faculty research collaboration offers tremendous benefits to students. Through these hands-on opportunities, participating students experience the process that underlies all psychological theory. What's more, research lab work provides critical preparation for graduate work and many job opportunities.
Opportunities for research can be found in the following areas
- Developmental psychology
- Behavioral and cognitive neuroscience
- Social psychology
- Cognitive psychology
- Personality psychology
- Health Psychology
Research Labs
The Behavioral Neuroscience Laboratory provides a diverse array of research opportunities for students who want to study rodent behavior and investigate the brain mechanisms that control these behaviors.
In general, the lab is interested in studying motivated behaviors when they occur adaptively, such as during food seeking and eating, and also when these motivated behaviors become problematic, like during addiction.
Even before using drugs, preclinical (i.e. animal) research indicates behavior AND brain differences between individuals who go on to engage in addiction-related behaviors and those who will not. These addiction-related behaviors include 1) increased motivation for rewards and for the environmental stimuli associated with those rewards (e.g. Pavlovian conditioned cues) and 2) reward-seeking and consumption despite negative consequences (e.g. risk-taking behaviors, behavioral inflexibility). Importantly, these behavior and brain differences are evident even prior to drug use in food reward paradigms, and we seek to understand the neurobiological mechanisms that are different between these individuals.
The main research areas include:
- Individual differences
- Reward learning that can predict addiction vulnerability
- Motivation
- Behavioral flexibility - changing our behaviors when necessary
- Risk-taking behaviors
- Binge drinking
- Neuroanatomy - the structure of the brain
- Neuropsychopharmacology - how drugs affect the brain and thus behavior
The behaviors above can be combined with neuroscience manipulation techniques, such as lesions and pharmacology, to investigate the necessity and involvement of different brain regions (e.g. the amygdala, hypothalamus, nucleus accumbens, ventral tegmental area, and prefrontal cortex) and/or neurochemicals of interest (e.g. dopamine, orexin, serotonin, just to name a few!).
For more insight into the research interest of the lab, please explore Professor Keefer’s previous publications.
Our goal in the Odor and Flavor Lab is to investigate the psychological processes that are involved with smell, taste, and flavor perception. We are interested in how development from birth on affects these processes as well as how adults are influenced by the smells and flavors they encounter.
The Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory combines non-invasive brain stimulation (tDCS) with eye-tracking and behavioral measures to study higher level aspect of thinking and cognition, such as visual attention and emotional regulation. Students who are interested in the neural basis of cognition are encouraged to contact Dr. Wilson to discuss research opportunities in the lab.
Professor Meier conducts research on health and social behavior. Research topics include health-decision making, religion, mindfulness, eating, emotion, etc.
See Professor Meier’s webpage and Google Scholar page for more details about his research and publications.
The Perception Lab offers a range of research opportunities for Gettysburg College students interested in studying visual perception and the perception of people. Topics of research include face recognition, facial attractiveness judgments, visual aesthetics and preferences, individual differences in perception, and the social organization of perception. The Perception Lab is located on the third floor of McCreary Hall.
Visit the Personality Lab at sites.gettysburg.edu
Institutional Review Board (IRB) Guidelines and forms that pertain to research involving human participation can be found on the College's IRB webpages.
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