Ithaca College

The Annual Convention of the Society of Personality and Social Psychology took place February 28 - March 3, 2018, in Atlanta, GA. At this convention, Associate Professor Leigh Ann Vaughn presented in a professional development workshop on “Modest Coffers, Meaningful Contributions” and presented a poster session about linguistic contents of goals.

Leigh Ann Vaughn, Christopher Chartier (Ashland University), and Charles Ebersole (University of Virginia) presented the professional development workshop, which addressed ways to maintain research productivity and make meaningful contributions to psychological science without large external research grants. The workshop covered 1) pursuing small grant opportunities and efficiently using all lab, department, and institutional resources, 2) exchanging research resources via the StudySwap platform, and 3) initiating or joining large-scale collaborations such as the Many Lab projects.

The poster session about linguistic contents of goals presented the results of linguistic analyses of almost 1000 American and Canadian participants’ descriptions of two common types of goals: hopes and duties. It showed that language in descriptions of hopes and duties differs in theoretically relevant ways. Specifically, descriptions of hopes emphasized positive outcomes, whereas descriptions of duties emphasized social relationships. Grants from the Ithaca College Provost’s Office supported this research.