Brianna Middlewood, Ph.D.
Brianna is a fourth year graduate student in the FBIp Lab. She studies the influence that emotion and beliefs have on information processing and behavior. Current projects include a. studying how the visual arrangement of information affects the judgments people make about it b. how beliefs about free will influence emotional and rational processing about moral decisions c. examining the influence that hope and fear have on how efficacious a person feels in response to an environmental threat, and d. a project that will examine how political humor, by altering emotional states, might influence how engaged people are with politics. Other interests include exercising, fiction, swing dancing, cooking (well, mostly eating), and travel. |
Jean Lamont, Ph.D.
Jean received her Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Penn State in 2013 and is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology at Bucknell University. Her research interests include examining the processes by which self-conscious emotions such as guilt, general shame, and body shame may contribute to poor health outcomes. Some examples of these mediating factors in which Jean is interested include health information seeking behavior, perceived control over health, and physiological (e.g., immune) responses. Her teaching interests include Intro to Psychology, Research Methods, Health Psychology, the Psychology of Gender, and Social Psychology. |
Joy Hackenbracht, Ph.D.
Joy received her Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Penn State in 2012. Joy worked with Dr. Gasper and studied affect, social cognition, and the self-disclosure process from the perspective of the listener. After graduating, she took a job in the Washington DC metro area at an applied research and consulting firm. Joy provides expertise in the area of emotion assessment and advanced statistical methods. She teaches company-wide trainings on data analysis, writes sections of outgoing proposals, and works alongside economists to conduct fair lending analyses of mortgage lending for an agency within the U.S. government. |
Cinnamon Danube, Ph.D.
I received my Ph.D. in Social Psychology with a minor in Women’s Studies from Penn State in 2011. I am currently a post-doctoral scholar on the Psychology Training in Alcohol Research Fellowship at the University of Washington. My research examines men and women’s sexual violence histories, expectancies about alcohol and sex, and situational factors like alcohol intoxication as predictors of risky sex. I am also interested in factors that predict men’s perpetration of sexual coercion and violence. My goal is to inform and develop interventions aimed at reducing sexual risk and violence. |
Lavonia Smith LeBeau, Ph.D.
Lavonia finished her PhD in 2007, went on to do a 1 year Post Doc in social psychophysiology at Harvard and has been conducting research and evaluation work in Public Health for the past 5 years. Recently she has accepted a Health Policy Analyst position at the Massachusetts Behavioral Health Partnership and she’s excited about the opportunity to utilize her data analysis and interpretation skills to help monitor and improve services provided to MBHP’s members. In her spare time Lavonia is entertained by her husband and 3 year old son. |
Kosha Bramesfeld, Ph.D.
Kosha received her Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Penn State in 2006. After receiving her Ph.D., she worked for one year as a Lecturer at Penn State and then for one year as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Research Methodology for Saint Louis University. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor of Social Psychology, Teaching Stream at the University of Toronto Scarborough. Kosha is interested in how affective and motivational states arouse, sustain, and direct social behavior. In her research, she integrates research on mood and information processing with research on motivation and group dynamics to better understand how group members work together to process information and make decisions. She is also interested in social inequalities and has designed a game to help students better understand them. |