Monthly Archives: October 2016

First semester graduate student, Matt, presented his master’s thesis research proposal entitled The Effects of Relational Mobility on the Reporting of Posttraumatic Growth in Japanese and American Samples. The purpose of this study is (1) to examine whether sociocultural and socioecological differences impact an individual’s reporting of posttrumatic growth, (2) to examine whether individuals in a society low in relational mobility report less illusory PTG, and (3) to examine whether an Amrican sample will report greater relational mobility, self-enhancing tendencies, and illusory PTG than a Japanese sample. The PTG Lab is enthusiastic about Matt’s research and excited for him to begin.

Lab member, Shelby, presented her research proposal on resilience, social support, and self-esteem at our last lab meeting. The purpose of this study is to examine how social support relates to resilience in adolescents, to examine the predictive ability of social support and self-esteem to resilience, and to indicate if the relationship between resilience and social support is moderated by self-esteem. Shelby plans to present her findings and clinical implications at the 89th annual meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association in Chicago April 2017.

Dr. Taku and lab member, Kyle, presented at this year’s Research Assistant Workshop
hosted by Psi Chi. The presentation began with a brief overview of what it is like being a research assistant and what is required of the position. A number of faculty’s research interests were presented and guest speakers were included as well. These guest speakers were either faculty or students part of a lab and they spoke of what is required of their lab specifically. Finally, Kyle and Dr. Taku explained the process of applying for research assistant positions and tips for being accepted. They encourage anyone interested in getting more experience in the psych department and building positive relationships with faculty to consider contacting professors about research assistant positions.

Lab member, Geena presented a study, Associations among religious coping, daily hassles, and resilience by Laura McIntire and Renae Duncan. After presenting the article to the lab, she presented potential hypotheses based on the article’s findings and started a discussion about them. The
main purpose of this study was to to examine the relationships among religious coping styles, the experience of daily hassles, and resiliency. Negative religious coping was found to be positively correlated with psychological distress and resilience was found to be negatively correlated with psychological distress. Researchers also found that individuals who experienced more daily hassles and used positive religious coping had a greater resilience than those who experienced more daily hassles but used negative religious coping. Geena then presented hypotheses based the findings that she plans to further research in the future.