ISSUED: 7 July 2020
MEDIA CONTACT: Valerie Owens
SHEPHERDSTOWN, WV — Psychology students and faculty members from Shepherd University presented findings from their research at the annual meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association. The conference was to take place in March but shifted online due to the outbreak of COVID-19 and was rescheduled to June 17-18. Funding for the students to attend the conference came from the Samuel O. Legreid Student Research Presentation Fund.
Student Michaela Sencindiver, Inwood, and faculty mentor Dr. Lindsey Levitan, associate professor of psychology, presented a poster on a faculty-student collaborative research project titled “Follow the Leader? The Impact of Candidate Rhetoric on Voters’ Prejudice.” The study examined the role of candidate rhetoric on individuals’ expression of prejudice as a function of their preferred candidate.
Dr. Larry Daily, associate professor of psychology, gave a talk titled “The Effect of Leisure Activity on Mate Attractiveness” that explored whether a person’s leisure activity affects perceptions of that person’s attractiveness. Co-authors included recent graduates James Joyner, Frederick, Maryland, and Michaela Carper, Stephens City, Virginia.
Joyner also presented a poster on his senior thesis, “The Effects of Attention and Task Difficulty on Prospective Timing.” Joyner conducted an experiment on the effect that small changes in attention have perception of time.
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