Research
Research is a fundamental aspect of the Psychology Department. All faculty maintain active research programs, and students play a crucial role as collaborators and research assistants.
All Psychology majors conduct their own independent empirical projects through the Directed Research in Psychology course, and some students opt to conduct even more intensive research through our Honors program.
In addition, students can apply for additional research opportunities both on- and off-campus.
All research conducted by Macalester faculty and students must meet the ethical standards defined by the appropriate review board before beginning. Studies involving human participants must first be approved by Macalester College’s Institutional Review Board (IRB). Studies involving non-human animal participants must first be approved by Macalester College’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC).
Student Research Support
Research – new and noteworthy
In recent years, more than 35 students have co-authored presentations at national professional meetings and more than 10 students have co-authored publications in top psychology journals.
Grace Watkins ‘26 (San Angelo, TX) was the 2024 Parchem Fellow and worked during the summer of 2024 with Professor Jean-Marie Maddux. Grace is presenting her research at the annual Faculty for Undergraduate Neuroscience poster session at the Society for Neuroscience conference in Chicago, IL in October 2024.
As part of the Indigenous Joy Collective, El Alcalá (‘24) worked with Jill Fish to publish A Conversation on Indigenous Healing and Joy in an Urban Indigenous Landscape https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/3vrpg
Bailey Haas ’19 (Ocean Springs, MS) was the 2017 Parchem Fellow and worked during the summer of 2017 with Professor Joan Ostrove.
Linda De Anda ’18 (St. Paul, M) was the 2016 Parchem Fellow and worked durig the summer of 2016 with Professor Cari Gillen-O’Neel.
Emily Sanford ’17 (Seattle, WA) was the 2015 Parchem Fellow and did research about animal cognition with Professor Julia Manor during the summer of 2015.
Alexander Ropes’16 (Pella, IA) worked with Professor Steve Guglielmo on studies of morality as the department Parchem Research Fellow during the Fall of 2014.
Lydia Craig ’16 (Suttons Bay, MI) was accepted to the APA’s Summer Science Fellowship.
Jessica Pham ’16 (Hanoi, Vietnam) was awarded a summer fellowship at the Clinical and Translational Science Institute in the Undergraduate Research Program at the University of Minnesota.
Faculty member Joan Ostrove’s research group presented a poster at the 2015 Midwest Psychological Association conference in Chicago. The poster won an award from Psi Chi, an international honors society in psychology. The group included P.J. Murphy ’15 (Chesterland, OH), Leah Beckmann ’16 (Sayville, NY), Maddie Kornfeld ’16 (Denver, CO), Marium Ibrahim ’16 (Karachi, Pakistan) and Elena Torry-Schrag ’17 (Forest Grove, OR).
Heather Renetzky ’15 (Tarzana, CA) presented a poster at the 2015 Midwest Psychological Association conference in Chicago based on her honors project on guilt and moral compensation.
Shaina Davis ’13 (Pala Alto, CA) and Professor Lea worked on a Student-Faculty Summer Research-funded (SFSR) project studying the question, “How do we mentally represent our relationships with people?”
Micah Mumper ’13 (Kailua, Hawaii) was the statewide awardee of the Donald G. Paterson Award, given by the Minnesota Psychological Association to the most promising senior in Minnesota Planning a career in psychology He is now a graduate student in cognitive psychology at SUNY Stonybrook.