{"id":38119,"date":"2018-05-03T10:00:01","date_gmt":"2018-05-03T14:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/?p=38119"},"modified":"2018-05-07T12:35:53","modified_gmt":"2018-05-07T16:35:53","slug":"personal-ties-make-psychology-research-projects-meaningful-outstanding-says-winner-lara-weaver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2018\/personal-ties-make-psychology-research-projects-meaningful-outstanding-says-winner-lara-weaver\/","title":{"rendered":"Personal connections make psychology research projects meaningful, says winner Lara Weaver"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In part stemming from her travels to Asia, Eastern Mennonite University senior Lara Weaver has always been fascinated by the ways religion motivates and influences people. So when Professor <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/emu.edu\/faculty-staff\/?show=gzk2346\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Gregory Koop<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> encouraged students in his two-semester applied psychology research class to investigate topics they felt personally drawn to, she took the bait \u2013 and won.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Weaver\u2019s poster about her research received the student poster award at the Virginia Association for Psychological Science annual convention in Roanoke in April. <\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_38122\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-38122\" style=\"width: 200px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-38122\" src=\"\/\/emu.edu\/now\/is\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/43\/2018\/05\/20180425-Lara-Weaver-001-1000px-200x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/43\/2018\/05\/20180425-Lara-Weaver-001-1000px-200x300.jpg 200w, https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/43\/2018\/05\/20180425-Lara-Weaver-001-1000px.jpg 667w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-38122\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">EMU senior Lara Weaver won the student poster award at 2018 VAPS with &#8220;The role of religious motivation and empathy in predicting theological ideation.&#8221; (Photo by Andrew Strack)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Titled \u201cThe role of religious motivation and empathy in predicting theological ideation,\u201d it explored how religious ideation is correlated with empathy and religious motivation, and gave her results that she said were \u201cpretty cool to see.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Winning \u201cfelt good, for sure,\u201d Weaver said \u2013 and added that her classmates\u2019 work was also outstanding, in part thanks to the \u201ccountless hours\u201d of review and input from Koop. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cHe made sure we spent a lot of time proofreading and critiquing them,\u201d she said. \u201cAll of our research stood out. We had put a lot of time into them because we each had a personal tie to our research.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Her senior classmates and their projects were:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Michael Austin: \u201cDirected forgetting: Examining accounts through negative priming\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Liza Brenneman and Liz Resto: \u201cTest anxiety: Expressive writing as a priming intervention\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hannah Cash: \u201cEffects of art making among college students\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Cela Hoefle: \u201cVisibility and attitudes towards transgenderism within Thai and U.S. undergraduates\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Jasmine Johnson: \u201cHow pre-performance routines enhance performance in individuals participating in sports activities\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Maisie Kirkley: \u201cThe effects of reporting study hours on academic performance\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Michaela Mast: \u201cThe brain on music: An inquiry of shared music-color associations\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Lydia Musselman: \u201cDo we remember emotional material better?\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Rose Persinger: \u201cSelf-objectifying environments affect one\u2019s mood and self-esteem\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Emma Stutzman: \u201cCan anger make you happy? Examining desired emotions and well-being\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3><b>Research strength<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Original research projects introduce every student to \u201cthe ins and outs of scientific inquiry,\u201d said department chair <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/emu.edu\/faculty-staff\/?show=brennkg\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Kim Brenneman<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u2013 and an added strength of the psychology program at EMU is that all students have the opportunity to conduct individual research on a topic related to their unique interests. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The senior research course cultivates a broad background in the field of psychology for students, who by their senior year have fulfilled prerequisites of general, developmental, social and cognitive psychology, as well as a course on interpersonal relationships among others, Koop said. They all have been introduced formally to the research process in the cognitive psychology class, where each student formulates a research proposal.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For Weaver, that proposal took her into the minds of Mennonite church-goers in Harrisonburg.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>Weaver\u2019s research<\/b><\/h3>\n<figure id=\"attachment_38124\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-38124\" style=\"width: 240px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-38124 size-medium\" src=\"\/\/emu.edu\/now\/is\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/43\/2018\/05\/VAPSposter-1000-240x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"240\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/43\/2018\/05\/VAPSposter-1000-240x300.jpg 240w, https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/43\/2018\/05\/VAPSposter-1000-768x960.jpg 768w, https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/43\/2018\/05\/VAPSposter-1000-819x1024.jpg 819w, https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/43\/2018\/05\/VAPSposter-1000.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 240px) 100vw, 240px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-38124\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The winning poster by Lara Weaver.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Previous research, as described by Weaver on her poster, suggested that people whose religious motivations are intrinsic are more likely to act on their morals than are people whose religious motivations are extrinsic, say from social or family influences. Similarly, empathy is associated with greater tendency to act in socially supportive ways.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But would religious ideation be connected with empathy and religious motivation? Weaver hypothesized that intrinsic religious motivation would correlate with greater empathy and predict \u201ca more progressive theology,\u201d while extrinsic religious motivation would correlate with less empathy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To assess the variables in her subjects, Weaver sent three-part surveys to 30 randomly selected members of each of four Mennonite churches in Harrisonburg, two she identified as conservative and two she identified as progressive. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, she said, only three people from the conservative churches responded (37 responded from the two progressive churches). Therefore, she reported on her poster, \u201cthe lack of variation in theological variation made it impossible to indicate whether intrinsic or extrinsic religious motivation along with empathy relate to theological ideation.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Her results did suggest, however, that \u201cthose who are more intrinsically motivated are correlated with higher levels of empathy.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In part stemming from her travels to Asia, Eastern Mennonite University senior Lara Weaver has always been fascinated by the ways religion motivates and influences people. So when Professor Gregory <a href=\"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2018\/personal-ties-make-psychology-research-projects-meaningful-outstanding-says-winner-lara-weaver\/\" target=\"_self\" class=\"more-link\">... read more <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">about Personal connections make psychology research projects meaningful, says winner Lara Weaver<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":38121,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17562,5603,14139],"tags":[],"feature":[17427,17423,17426,17241,17422],"class_list":["post-38119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-digest","category-psychology","category-student-profiles","feature-emu-home-page-feature","feature-featured-undergrad","feature-myemu-feature","feature-news-feature","feature-news-landing-page-main-feature"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Personal connections make psychology research projects meaningful, says winner Lara Weaver - EMU News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2018\/personal-ties-make-psychology-research-projects-meaningful-outstanding-says-winner-lara-weaver\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Personal connections make psychology research projects meaningful, says winner Lara Weaver - EMU News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In part stemming from her travels to Asia, Eastern Mennonite University senior Lara Weaver has always been fascinated by the ways religion motivates and influences people. 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