Fourth-year PhD student, Whitney Dominick, and second-year master’s student, Jess Kopitz, presented an update of their respective current studies at the most recent Psychology Department’s Lunch Bunch Research Colloquium. The Lunch Bunch hour provides a bi-monthly opportunity for graduate and undergraduate students and faculty to gather and view presentations of current psychological research at Oakland University. The presentation hour is open to all OU students and faculty.
Whitney shared results from her doctoral dissertation entitled The Impact of Recreational Wild Dolphin Interactions on Children’s Empathy, Emotion Regulation, Perceived Social Support, and Knowledge of Dolphin Welfare. She found that children feel more supported by dolphins if they also feel support from pets & program staff, and that knowledge about dolphin welfare after the program leads to greater perceptions of support a month later. Whitney presented data collected from Hawaii and Florida and plans to continue collecting data over the summer in Hawaii!
Jess presented preliminary results from her master’s thesis entitled Redefining NegativePersonality Traits and Coping Techniques after Impacts of Stress and Trauma. Jess framed her master’s thesis to deconstruct dichotomous thinking about coping strategies following traumatic experiences. She shared interesting themes from semi-structured interviews, revealing that her participants provided many examples where both traditionally negative coping techniques were crucial to their growth, and traditionally positive coping techniques were harmful or lead to harmful behaviors.
The PTG Lab is extremely proud of Whitney and Jess for representing the lab well with their fascinating research. Both presentations sparked curiosity in the audience and prompted many follow-up questions. Whitney and Jess both did a great job interacting with the audience. We look forward to the completion of each of their studies and further presentations including results! Way to go, Whitney and Jess!
FF-PTG LAB 