Motivation and Behavior Lab

Do you and your romantic partner both smoke ci******es? We are conducting research on smoking in couples. You are each eligible to earn up to $335. Find out if you are eligible at: https://ugapsych.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_411PiGYwu5rurC6

(UGA IRB #7344)

Congratulations to who recently received a research/travel award from the Psychology Division of the Council on Undergraduate Research for his research on the behavioral activation system and smoking cessation. Congrats, Matthew!

What’s the best night of the year? Soup night obviously! All squished around the table in every scrap piece of furniture we can gather. Cheers to this group of students and all the things they learned and taught each other (and me!) this semester.

We had a great weekend at but a highlight was getting recognized for our work. Kayla Brown, Defne Bozbey, and Emma Bales won an award for their poster presenting two studies on Interpersonal Licensing. Look out for their applications to your grad programs in Fall of 2024!

Current lab status = happy. Tonight, pizza + dessert. Tomorrow, science!

With the semester back in session, we are wasting no time in getting to work. One of our lab traditions is where we sit down in teams to get work done. IRBs, conference abstracts, data analysis, and grant preparation. Thanks to the team for holding down the fort while I was out of town today!

When your former RA starts grad school at the same program where you started grad school, you get a scouting report on your old office space. She reports that the sub basement of Kastle Hall seems as sketchy as I described it. Thanks for the tea, .tanaka !

In today’s ’where are they now’ post, we are so proud to brag on lab alum who will be heading to Dacula High School to continue her career as a School Psychologist!

Another one of our amazing lab graduates from 2023 is Reese Giddens. Reese worked with us for three semesters and just finished her honors thesis on perceptions of others’ eating behaviors as justifications for personal indulgence. She’s headed to Northeastern University to get a Masters of Science in Counseling with an emphasis on research. She’s excited to be able to work in a lab that studies eating behaviors and continue growing her expertise in this area. Congratulations and good luck in Boston, Reese!

It’s impossible to believe, but recent lab grad .eliz.11 has already started her masters in math degree at Wake Forest University. I think this means we have to face the reality that she is actually gone…

In reality, the way Hailey has shaped our lab will live on for so many years. She helped craft our first lab manual and got us hooked on Zotero. She was our perfect inaugural lab manager and we are so, so, so thankful to have spent so much time with her over the last two years.

Kat Tanaka (class of 2023) will be heading to UK in August to pursue her PhD in Clinical Psychology. After earning a Bachelors in both Psychology and Spanish (plus a minor in HDFS!), we know she is ready. And we’re pretty excited she will be connecting our lab back to UK where lab PI Dr. V started grad school.

It’s always a good day when you get to catch up with former students. Perris Oyagha was in town for business and we took a stroll around campus to talk about his life as a professional mental health counselor.