Brief position title description
Mindfulness Lab Research Assistant

Research Advisor(s) and Affiliation
Dr. Ellen Langer, Harvard University

Minimum Time Commitment/ Start date
10 hrs per week, minimum two semesters/ Start: Fall 2011

Part-Time

Compensation: Unpaid Position

Position Description
The Langer Mindfulness lab is seeking a research assistant to assist with several projects investigating the impact of mindfulness on health, perspective, and behavior.

Commitment and Compensation: The position is on a volunteer basis and would require approximately 10 hours per week. Days and times are flexible.

Requirements: No experience necessary. Must be able to come to William James Hall on Harvard main campus. Preference given to applicants who are able to attend lab meetings Tuesday mornings from 9-11.

Application instructions: To apply, please submit your CV to Andrew Reece using the application form below.

Website: http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~langer/research.html

For a listing of regularly updated Harvard psychology lab opportunities, please visit the following link:

http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/psych/ug/faculty/Dpt.RA/index.html

Alzheimer’s Buddies Volunteer & Research Program

 
Alzheimer’s disease is a devastating, terminal neurodegenerative disease that impairs memory, motor function, and emotional response. One in eight Americans (an estimated 5.4 million individuals) are currently afflicted with this disease, and their numbers are growing rapidly[1].
 
 The Alzheimer's Buddies Program is a response to the profound isolation and social disengagement experienced by people in the intermediate-to-late-stages of Alzheimer's disease (AD). It pairs local students with Alzheimer's buddies so that they might form meaningful relationships over the course of a semester or longer.  Our initiative encourages students to take the mindset of a friend rather than of a care provider, to learn about their patients' past and passions, to establish real friendships.  This interaction not only provides patients with a unique outlet, but also provides students with a formative experience and formal training on this devastating disease.
 
Starting in September 2011, the program will be piloted at Hebrew SeniorLife, the long-term care facility affiliated with Harvard Medical School (HMS).  Staffed by HMS faculty, it is the largest provider of elder care in the Boston area and performs cutting edge research in the field of aging. The initiative is modeled after the Eleanor Robbins Program, established by Jeffrey M. Robbins, LICSW and Eileen Salmanson, LICSW from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Department of Neurology and Harvard Medical School.  Working with high school students, the Eleanor Robbins Program has demonstrated that trained youth can be extremely effective in improving the mood and responsiveness of patients.  Students enrolling in the program will be part of a clinical research study, a collaboration between Hebrew SeniorLife and the Eleanor Robbins Program, to quantify the impact of a weekly, one hour visit on reducing apathy, depression, and behavioral dyscontrol.  
 
No prior experience is required.  Social workers from the Eleanor Robbins Program and Hebrew SeniorLife will provide students with formal training and ongoing support before, during and after their visits.  In addition, educational materials will be supplied by the Alzheimer’s Association to ensure that our volunteers are as informed and comfortable as possible. 
 
Each week, our group of volunteers will visit Hebrew SeniorLife in order to see their buddy, one-on-one, for a one hour session.  Volunteers will be strongly encouraged to visit their buddies outside of these meetings.  In combination with training and reflection sessions, the program will require a minimum of 4 hours per week from each student. 
 
If you or someone you know may be interested in applying to join our initiative, please email Ryan Christ atrchrist@college.harvard.edu.  Interviews will be held in mid-September.

WITH: Gabriel Kreiman -- Harvard Medical School
COMMITMENT: Minimum one semester; Fall 2011
COMPENSATION: Volunteer or Course credit (see description below)

POSITION DESCRIPTION:We are developing Artificial Intelligence algorithms for pattern recognition. We need people interested in helping push the frontiers in the field by helping annotate datasets used for training the algorithms. The work involves watching movies and using our custom software to annotate content in the movies. 
To apply, please send CV to Gabriel Kreiman (email below).
We have multiple open positions for undergraduate students to conduct research projects in our lab. There are several possibilities including:
-- senior thesis
-- summer research
-- research during the academic year
The specific topics include visual object recognition, visual consciousness, artificial intelligence and computer vision.
The laboratory combines computational modeling, neurophysiological recordings and psychophysical measurements to study the neuronal circuits involved in visual perception.
For more information, visit klab.tch.harvard.edu

APPLICATION/CONTACT:
gabriel.kreiman@tch.harvard.edu.

WITH: Emily Cosdill and Christelle T. Ngnoumen, Professor Mahzarin R. Banaji, Psychology/FAS
COMMITMENT: 10 minimum hrs/wk (see description below)
COMPENSATION: Volunteer or Course credit (see description below)

POSITION DESCRIPTION:
About Us: Cosdill and Ngnoumen are two doctoral students in the Banaji Lab interested in face perception of adults and children. We are recruiting a research assistant to help us on the following projects.

Projects Description: The first project will be looking at how children learn to infer traits from faces. In the past decade there has been a wealth of research looking at how adults judge whether a face looks "trustworthy," "competent," or "dominant." However, this work has yet to be extended to children, and the question of how these processes develop in childhood remains theoretically interesting and important. The second project is to investigate how face perception affects social judgment. More specifically, you will be involved in a study that explores the degree to which trustworthiness and untrustworthiness judgments (and similarly, judgments concerning competency and incompetency)--inferred from faces--are implicitly associated with various forms of positive and negative stimuli, respectively.

Duties and Time Commitment: RA must work in the lab at least 10 hours per week. Duties involve collecting data, recruiting subjects, and attending project meetings.

Location: William James Hall on FAS campus.

Training: You will learn several aspects of social and developmental psychology research, such as how to administer the IAT, how to collect and manage data etc. Compensation: Volunteer or for course credit. Qualifications: (1) Moderate computer background --e.g., PC Windows; Macintosh; MS Word; Excel; (2) Concentrator in Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, Neuroscience, or related fields.

APPLICATION/CONTACT:
To Apply: Please email Emily Cogsdill ecogsdill@fas.harvard.edu or Christelle Ngnoumen cngnoumen@gmail.com to express your interests in the projects.
.

WITH: Drs. Charles Nelson and Adeline Jabes
COMMITMENT: 10-15 hrs/wk (see description below)
COMPENSATION: See description below

POSITION DESCRIPTION:
The Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience, located in the Longwood Medical Area, are currently looking for a volunteer research assistant to work on research related to memory processes over the course of development. This position will focus on projects using behavioral coding and electrophysiological measures to investigate spatial memory abilities in 9- and 24-month-old infants, and adults. The research assistant will gain familiarity with several neuroscience research methods, including eye movement analysis, event-related potentials (ERPs), and EEG.

Responsibilities will include implementation of experiments with child participants and their parents, subject recruitment, and some data analysis. Weekend hours are required. This position is ideal for anyone considering future graduate study in experimental psychology, developmental psychology, or cognitive neuroscience or in pursuing medical school.

Requirements: currently at least a junior or bachelor's degree in educational or scientific field, ability to work with children, familiar with both PC and Mac, self-motivation and enthusiasm for developmental research. Knowledge of SPSS and psychological experiment software, particularly E-Prime or SuperCoder, is helpful but not required. Applicants to this position must be able to commit at least 10-15 hours/week (mornings in particular) during the Fall semester, and there may be potential to continue in the Spring semester.

To learn more about the research conducted in our lab, visit our website athttp://www.childrenshospital.org/research/brainworks.

APPLICATION:
To apply, please send a statement of interest, along with a CV or resume, to Adeline Jabes at adeline.jabes@childrens.harvard.edu.

WITH: Professor Jim Sidanius
COMMITMENT: Fall term (see description below)
COMPENSATION: Course credit; See description below

POSITION DESCRIPTION:
The Lab: Members of the Sidanius Lab in Intergroup Relations are a collection of scholars interested in the interface among intergroup relations, conflict, inequality, social hierarchy, stereotyping, ideology and prejudice. The goals of the lab group are to examine the social psychology of power and intergroup relations from an integrative and multi-disciplinary perspective, producing research that speaks to real world social and political issues.

The Position: The Sidanius Lab is seeking a set of strongly motivated research assistants to support its varied research program during the Fall 2011 semester. Research assistants will be involved in a range of projects across the lab, supervised by faculty, post-doctoral fellows and graduate students. Tasks will include research design, participant recruitment and management, data collection and analysis, and hands-on experience as an experimenter or confederate in lab-based experiments. We expect you to gain skills in online survey design, running studies in a lab, and statistical analysis. The research assistants are also invited to attend and participate in fortnightly lab meetings in which we discuss the lab’s research relating to the social psychology of power and inequality; if interested, research assistants are also invited to present and receive feedback on their own research ideas. Research Assistants are welcome either on a volunteer basis or for course credit, and are required to commit to a minimum number of hours per week depending on their enrollment. The lab is based in William James Hall, though occasional research tasks may require short trips off-campus to access community samples.

The Research: Below is an outline of the main projects taking place at the lab this semester. 

• Professor Jim Sidanius: Prof. Sidanius is commencing a new research project exploring the relationships between neurotransmitters and hormones on the one hand, and socio-political outgroup attitudes, on the other hand. This project will investigate the associations with a set of physiological measures and political psychological constructs such as right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation. Tasks may include assembling and integrating the research in this area, along with other ad hoc research tasks as required.
  
• Arnold Ho: Many have argued that the increasing rate of intermarriage between racial minorities and Whites and patterns of biracial identification will lead to the dissolution of the American racial hierarchy (e.g., Alba & Nee, 2003; Lee & Bean, 2004; 2007a; 2007b; Sears & Savalei, 2006; Thornton, 2009). Yet, little empirical evidence exists on perceptions of new racial identities that diverge from older notions of race purity and the “one drop” rule. My research examines how biracial individuals are perceived, and what this implies for racial hierarchies. Having accumulated evidence that both Asian-White and Black-White biracials are seen as relatively more minority than White, I am now examining whether stereotypes of biracials are consistent with stereotypes of their minority parent group, and what attitudes and beliefs may predict the view that biracial people are closer to their minority parent group. I am also working on projects to understand individual differences in support for social hierarchies and inequality (social dominance orientation), and ideologies and beliefs that are related to this orientation. For additional information about some of this research, see http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/in-the-eye-the-beholder/201104/the-one-drop-rule-how-black-is-black and http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2010/12/%E2%80%98one-drop-rule%E2%80%99-persists/.
• Nour Kteily: Nour is primarily interested in investigating the dynamics of intergroup relations between high and low power groups. In particular, he is interested in understanding more about the experience of members of low-power groups, exploring questions such as the conditions under which they accept versus challenge the status quo. Currently, he is conducting experimental research in the United States to follow up on his findings in the Israeli/Palestinian context exploring the psychological factors that influence high and low power group members’ willingness to accept or reject negotiations with one another. Related work in the Middle East is investigating the predictors of support for various forms of protest against the United States in four Arab countries. In a second stream of research, Nour is investigating predictions from Social Dominance Theory’s evolutionary framework, which suggests that prejudice towards other groups is driven by fundamentally different factors amongst men and women. Nour will only need limited research support this semester.
• Jennifer Sheehy-Skeffington: What are the psychological effects of inequality in society? Does power really corrupt those at the top? Jennifer’s research is interested in the effect of being in a group that is given high or low power on how one thinks, feels and behaves. Her research has focused on the tendency of those in high power groups to take greater risks, and the importance of power differences being seen as legitimate by those whom they affect. In the fall semester, Jennifer will be running lab-based and survey experiments exploring the effect of observing or imagining a member of your ingroup being in a position of high or low power, to see whether power’s effects extend along the lines of group membership, and what this means for social change in unequal societies. In a separate strand of research, Jennifer is exploring the social psychology of institutional corruption, looking at why peers retaliate against whistleblowers in an organizational setting. RAs may be asked to provide input to study design, to act as lab experimenters or confederates, to manage online data collection, and to assist in data cleaning and analysis.
• Diana Ramos de Oliveira: Members of high-status groups display in-group favoritism shown to favor social inequality, but little research has investigated the contribution of perceived inter-group threat and maintenance of dominance, or the relationship of dominant group members with beneficiaries and minority groups and willingness (or lack thereof) to support them. Diana’s current research project investigates whether threat perception (e.g. economic, sexual, and physical) might affect in different ways variables such as social dominance orientation, authoritarianism, and Schadenfreude - the idea that individuals take pleasure in the misfortunes of out-groups or individuals. This project will be carried out between Brazil and the United States in the first phase, and possibly extended to Spain and Portugal in a second phase with different target groups. Diana will be seeking RA support to act as lab experimenter, to manage online data collection, and to assist in data cleaning and analysis, some text corrections and data coding.
• Sarah Cotterill: While social inequality is sometimes maintained through physical force, Sarah is interested in how ideology might also perpetuate and legitimize differences in group status. This fall, Sarah will launch a project that explores whether mere exposure to these ideologies is sufficient to influence support for policies with implications for the distribution of resources. She also hopes to investigate how exposure to certain ideologies shapes interpretation of history, with a broader goal of understanding how these variables interact to determine support for policy outcomes. Future projects may also examine the way in which ideology generates competition between low-status groups. Sarah will need an RA to act as a lab experimenter, and to help with data management and analysis.

APPLICATION/CONTACT:
To apply for a fall RA position, contact Sarah Cotterill (scotterill@fas.harvard.edu) with your CV or resumé (with details of relevant classes taken) and a paragraph on the reasons for applying to the lab, and which projects interest you most, and why.

WITH: Caroline Wilmuth, Elizabeth Baily, and Professor Amy Cuddy, Harvard Business School
COMMITMENT: 8-10 hr/wk; 2011-2012
COMPENSATION: Not listed

POSITION DESCRIPTION:
We are seeking a research assistant to help with several projects on the origins and outcomes of how we perceive and are influenced by other people, taking into account the roles of variables such as emotions, gender, culture, race and ethnicity, and nonverbal behaviors. Examples of current lines of research that we are pursuing include the effects of nonverbal expressions of power/status and connecting or engaging with others, perceptions of working mothers, and the social-cognitive effects of oxytocin. In addition to self-report and behavioral data, the research conducted in this lab often employs psychophysiology measures, hormone assays, facial action coding, and eye tracking.

Expected time commitment is between 8-10 hours per week and duties will likely include attending lab meetings, contributing to study design, running participants, coding qualitative data, and performing literature reviews. No research experience or background in psychology is required, though all applicants should possess a motivation to gain research experience, a strong work ethic, and an enthusiasm for social psychology.

APPLICATION:
To apply or inquire about the details of the position or the research that is conducted in Professor Cuddy’s lab, please contact Caroline Wilmuth at cwilmuth@fas.harvard.edu.

Research Assistant Position in Social Psychology: Unconscious Moral Cognition WITH: Paul Meinshausen and Professor Mahzarin R. Banaji
COMMITMENT: 10-12 hr/wk; Fall term (see description)
COMPENSATION: Course credit available

POSITION DESCRIPTION:
Description of Research:
How do subtle cues and nonconscious processes inform the moral and ethical decisions we make on a daily basis? How are our moral attitudes and decisions shaped and influenced by our peer groups and by the social settings we operate in? Much of my work this semester will address this question, with particular emphasis on the institutional effects of nonconscious cognition. Using studies conducted online and in the lab, we will explore questions such as: How do the small and implicit biases of individual persons combine and emerge as the social phenomena we recognize as institutional corruption? When are financial dependencies and conflicts of interest likely to exercise a corrupting influence upon actors and when might they be safely ignored? In addition to this research on unconscious cognition and institutional corruption, RAs may be asked to assist with several other projects. These include work on developing educational modules that concisely convey the findings of cognitive and social psychology regarding the cognitive and social biases that can consistently affect our personal and professional decisions and behavior. This work will involve literature reviews and well as thinking innovatively about how ideas can be best presented using pictures, videos, games, and other dynamic media.
Duties:
I am looking for a research assistant to work 10-12 hours/week during the Fall 2011 term. Duties will likely include design of experimental stimuli, participant recruitment, data collection and coding, and literature searches.
Experience: Previous coursework in psychology is preferred. Experience with computer and web programming and/or social media would be helpful. Compensation: Fall Research Assistant positions are offered on a volunteer basis. Additionally, course credits and work-study funding may be possible for those who qualify. Location: William James Hall.

APPLICATION:
To apply: Please contact Paul Meinshausen (meinshausen@fas.harvard.edu).

CONTACT/APPLICATION: Paul Meinshausen (meinshausen@fas.harvard.edu).

WITH: Project leaders, Dr. Yuval Feldman and Sabrina Sun; Supervising Professors: Dr. Mahzarin R. Banaji and Dr. Yuval Feldman
COMMITMENT: Varies (see description)
COMPENSATION: Course credit available

POSITION DESCRIPTION:
Areas of Research: Social Psychology and Law
Who are we and who are we looking for?
We are a team of legal scholar and psychologists interested in the social cognitive factors in legal and moral decision making, and we are looking for an undergraduate research assistant for Fall 2011.
If you are a motivated student with great ideas in social sciences, we invite you to join our team on an exciting project in psychology and law.
What are our topics?
Topics core to our research are institutional corruption, ethical and legal decision-making, legal ambiguity and compliance, motivated reasoning and self-deception, as well as behavioral approach to law. Currently, we are investigating processes influencing people's honesty and compliance in the face of legal ambiguity, as well as the level of consciousness such processes are rooted in.
What will you do?
As a member of our team, you will be exposed to all aspects of research, including but not limited to literature search on topics of your interest, brain storming about experiment design, and possibly participant recruitment and data collection. We are happy to train you on any aspect of the research with which you are not familiar.  Should you have original ideas about the project, we will greatly appreciate and value your input. Depending on your level of commitment and motivation, you may also lead your own project in the course of the semester.
Compensation, Time & Location
Besides the state of the art training in social psychology and behavioral legal analysis, you may choose to receive course credits for PSY 1556r or PSY 2352r.  To receive course credits, 8-10 hr/wk of work will be expected; and yes, we will work around your class and exam schedules. Should you choose to volunteer with us, hours per week are more flexible. All our meetings are held on the Cambridge campus.

APPLICATION:
If you are interested in joining our team, please send an email to Sabrina Sun [sun@wjh.harvard.edu] with a brief description of yourself.

CONTACT/APPLICATION: Sabrina Sun, sun@wjh.harvard.edu