2023 BLISS Projects

Alisha Holland, Associate Professor of Government

Project

Immigrants’ political views often are understood in the context of the countries to which they move. In the United States, most immigrants are assumed to support the Democratic Party, given their vulnerability to deportation (if undocumented), greater reliance on government services, and alienation from white nationalist positions. Yet immigrants vary widely in the political attitudes. LatinX voters drive home this point: while Salvadorans and Mexicans have tended to support the Democratic Party, Cubans and Venezuelans tend to support the Republican Party.

One explanation for this variation comes from the differences in politics in countries that immigrants leave. Many immigrants—even when not classified as refugees—flee sharp political conflicts and harsh economic conditions. How they attribute political responsibility for their departure can have lasting consequences in their political identifications. For instance, immigrants who leave under leftist governments, such as those of Fidel Castro in Cuba or Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, often become loyal supports of Republican candidates in the United States. Immigrants who leave under right-wing military governments, such as those in El Salvador or North Korea, often adopt left-wing attitudes.

This project explores how legacies of conflict in immigrants’ home countries create distinct patterns of political incorporation in the United States. To what extent do immigrants form political views based on their understanding of ideological divisions in their birth countries? When do their political affiliations shift? And to what extent does contact with other immigrant groups, with similar or different political histories, shape political identifications?

The project will involve two main components: 1) an exploratory literature review, and 2) ethnographic interviews in the Boston area. I am looking for students who are motivated to read and explore existing knowledge about immigrant political attitudes and its variation. We will begin by focusing on research on LatinX public opinion, though also review studies based on other immigrant groups. Second, I hope to involve a research assistant in exploratory ethnographic work in the Boston community. I am looking to interview first-generation immigrants whose political attitudes inherited from their home country conflict with their current economic or social interests in some important way. Interviews will focus on the attribution of political responsibility for the conditions that led them to leave their home countries, and the ways that they see those conflicts continue to play out in the United States.

I will meet with students each week to talk about the tasks for the week ahead and the progress that the student has made in the previous week. These meetings serve as the main time to get a sense for how each task relates to the broader theoretical and empirical goals of the project. The student will get a sense for how to formulate a research question, locate relevant literature, and begin to develop hypotheses to test empirically. In addition, I will accompany the student on preliminary ethnographic work in the Boston area. The student can expect to learn how to keep ethnographic field notes on our observations and to conduct qualitative interviews. We will work to develop structured questions together and debrief what worked well in each interview. The experience should give the student a sense of how qualitative and ethnographic research can contribute to our understanding and inform the design of later surveys and other types of data collection.

Skills Needed

Comfort in speaking and reading Spanish and/or Portuguese would be a plus for the interview components for this project, but are not required.

Jesse Snedeker, Professor of Psychology

Project

Interns in the Snedeker lab will be working in-person.

Language is not one representation but many. A spoken utterance can be characterized as a string of phonemes, a nested set of prosodic phrases, a series of lexical items, a hierarchically-organized syntactic tree, a configuration of semantic relations, or the impetus for inferences about the speaker’s intentions. A fundamental challenge for the psychology of language is to understand the relations between these representations: the degree to which they are distinct, the ways in which they constrain one another, and the role that these connections play in language acquisition. My lab explores these questions with a primary focus on meaning.

Our approach to these questions is experimental and developmental. We use methods such as: EEG (measuring the electricity generated by the brain); eyetracking (monitoring children’s gaze patterns to infer what they are thinking); and behavioral experiments with a wide range of populations and languages.

BLISS fellows will be given the opportunity to work on one of several projects investigating how children acquire and process language. Fellows will be assigned a project based on their interests and will be involved in all major steps of its lifecycle: preparing study stimuli, conducting literature searches, recruiting participants, coding, entering, and transcribing data, and presenting their results. This will allow fellows to work closely with their mentors to make a contribution to the design of the study and the interpretation of its results.

The typical day in the life of a BLISS fellow in our lab varies depending on the specific project to which they are assigned and their progress over the summer. However, most fellows can anticipate spending 2-3 hours each day running participants, 2-3 hours recruiting participants, and the remaining time in the lab on tasks such as reading literature relevant to their project, attending research meetings with their mentor, or coding and entering data.

The BLISS Fellow(s) will be paired with a graduate researcher and will be involved in all major steps of psycholinguistic research. They also participate in a weekly Reading Group to talk about 1-2 journal articles with other interns, while 1-2 research mentors moderate the discussion, in weekly Lab Meetings, and in weekly meetings with their graduate student mentor and Dr. Snedeker.

In short, BLISS Fellow(s) get a chance to experience firsthand how scientific knowledge is actually produced, potentially helping them to decide whether to pursue graduate studies and a career in science, or not.

Skills Needed

An active interest in working with children, some background in linguistics and psychology, a high degree of independence, problem-solving skills and the ability and interest to quickly acquire new skills.

Adaner Usmani, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Social Studies

Project
American mass incarceration is one of the major social problems of our times. The United States incarcerates more people than perhaps any other country in world history except for Stalin’s Soviet Union. Those it incarcerates are disproportionately likely to be poor and nonwhite. Scholars have offered various compelling explanations for American mass incarceration, but one of the weaknesses of most work on punishment is that it seeks to understand America by studying just America. This project seeks to bring comparative and historical perspective to the study of the American carceral state.

We aim to gather several kinds of historical data on punishment, policing and violence in other countries (with a focus on other advanced capitalist countries and Latin America). The RA will be responsible for collecting these data, which will involve reading and transcribing archival documents, trawling for new sources online, maintaining an existing database, emailing scholars in the field, and more. This continues research done by other RA’s over the past two years, so there is a lot to do and a lot to build on.

You’ll be joining a team of RA’s from Harvard and the University of Chicago, as well as some independent scholars. I will ask that you write weekly summaries of what you have done. You will meet once weekly with me and the whole research team, and you and I will also meet occasionally to make sure all is going well. You will end the summer with experience building a big dataset from a patchwork of sometimes inconsistent archival sources. We will also talk regularly about how to use these data to test arguments about punishment and policing.

Skills Needed
Spreadsheet and basic quantitative skills to curate and maintain the dataset. More advanced skills (programming, webscraping, regression analysis, etc.) would be a real plus.

John Weisz (Professor of Psychology, Director of Lab for Youth Mental Health), Katherine Venturo-Conerly (Graduate Student in Lab for Youth Mental Health, Dept. of Psychology), and Josh Steinberg (Graduate Student in Lab for Youth Mental Health, Dept. of Psychology)

Project

In recent decades, there have been major advances in the assessment, prevention, and treatment of mental health challenges in children and adolescents (herein “youths”). However, these efforts have not markedly reduced rates of psychopathology among youths on a large scale. Indeed, approximately 1 in 4 youths will experience at least one psychiatric disorder—such as depressive, anxiety, and conduct-related disorders—before adulthood, and these rates have not considerably changed over the years. With this in mind, our lab aims to explore methods for improving the effectiveness of youth psychotherapies.

A BLISS student in the Lab for Youth Mental Health will be involved in two distinct, but related, lines of research. Under the day-to-day supervision of Josh Steinberg, a BLISS student would assist with the management of a database of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of youth mental health interventions, to be used in meta-analyses that test which treatments work best for which mental health problems. This database of youth psychotherapy RCTs targeting anxiety problems, depressive problems, conduct/misbehavior problems, and ADHD problems began in January 1960 and has been continuously updated since (currently up through 2020) through comprehensive and systematic searches in PubMed and PsycINFO. Through screening articles for inclusion in this database and preparing studies to be coded for analyses, a BLISS student will gain substantial knowledge of the youth mental health treatment literature and gain skills important to systematic reviews and meta-analyses. An opportunity to assist with a meta-analysis examining the effectiveness of digital mental health interventions is also possible.

The second research project will be supervised by Katherine Venturo-Conerly. This second project will involve continuing work to compile data from 6 randomized controlled trials of a popular transdiagnostic youth psychotherapy (Modular Approach to Treatment for Children with Anxiety, Depression, Trauma, or Conduct Problems; MATCH-ADTC), then analyzing this data to assess the effectiveness of specific treatment elements within this youth psychotherapy. Additionally, this work will involve testing how demographic and clinical characteristics of youths and families interact with the effects of each treatment element. This project is already underway, and exact tasks will depend on what steps are completed by this summer, but work will very likely involve: 1) data cleaning and management, 2) literature review, and 3) assistance with interpreting and writing up statistical analyses. For this project, some experience with R and Excel is preferred, as is willingness to be meticulous in data management activities. For interested and motivated fellows hoping to make a longer-term commitment to this project, Katherine will gladly support secondary analyses or related literature reviews, and support fellow-led poster presentation and manuscript submissions as appropriate.

We are excited by the possibility that a BLISS student might participate in these projects. The BLISS student will be encouraged to identify pieces of these projects that are most interesting to them to pursue for their final project, and opportunities to be involved with manuscript development will be offered, as appropriate.

Skills Needed

This BLISS experience will be especially relevant to students who plan to pursue graduate study in clinical psychology. Students are most likely to thrive in our lab when they prioritize kindness and collaboration, attention to detail, meticulousness, reliability, and a genuine willingness to learn. Previous coursework in clinical psychology and/or research methods may be helpful but is not required. Previous experience with data management and statistical computing software such as R Studio are preferred but not required.

Caroline Light, Historian and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Program in Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality

Project

Given the nation’s growing support for civilian “gun rights” (half the states now allow permitless or “Constitutional” carry, in which civilians may carry guns into public space without a license or any training) and increasing legal immunities for lethal self-defense (since 2005, approximately 2/3 of the states have adopted “Stand Your Ground” laws, allowing people to use lethal violence, without first trying to retreat, when they feel threatened), it seems counter-intuitive to consider that women who defend themselves and their children from their largest statistical threat – their own abusive spouses, boyfriends, and exes – are often treated by the criminal justice system as criminals rather than “law-abiding” citizens. Currently, there is very little concrete data – beyond observations of high rates of incarceration among female survivors of domestic and/or intimate partner violence, so this project aims to help “close the data gap” between (1) women’s high incarceration rates nationwide and (2) women’s frequent exclusion from the exonerating logic of Stand Your Ground laws and other legal immunities for “law-abiding” citizens who use firearms to defend themselves from danger.

The research for this project will be conducted using multiple different methods and through a number of different archives and data sets. We will begin by surveying existing data on gender, race and homicide, and we will address the reasons why some vital data sets are missing or difficult to access. We may start by reading some shared texts (and exploring existing data sets) on the intersections of gender, race, sexuality, and violence more generally.

We will explore several different evidentiary sources and data sets, including: legal documentation from Texas court cases collected by our community partners at the Texas Center for Justice and Equity (TCJE); the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS); and the CDC’s Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARS), and the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Reports. Researchers will gain familiarity working with different types of evidence, while bringing various sources into conversation with each other.

An average day may have the researcher reading through and coding court cases involving self-defensive homicide, or constructing surveys to code large data sets for insight into (for example) the circumstances under which women have used lethal violence in self-defense, and what percentage of those cases involve someone known to the suspect. Or the researcher might scan state legal codes to develop a map of differing “castle laws” (the laws that excuse violent self-defense, without retreat, in one’s home) or “Stand Your Ground” laws. Researchers may also investigate homicide proceedings to determine how the criminal justice system adjudicates different people’s claims of self-defense.

We will start the summer with frequent meetings where we check in and plan each day’s work. Depending on the student researcher’s level of familiarity, we might start with some shared readings to set the conceptual stage (e.g. articles on “intersectional” violence, an introduction to the various databases and archives we’ll be working with, some basic overviews of the kinds of questions we want to ask). My hope is that the researcher will gradually gain confidence in asking difficult questions of the existing literature, and that these questions may help direct our later research. Once we have gotten started and established our work expectations, we may meet weekly to check in and share our findings.

Skills Needed

The ideal researcher will be intellectually curious and comfortable working independently. Ideally, it would help to possess some familiarity with the basics of gender and ethnic studies, perhaps having taken one or two relevant courses in feminist/queer and Ethnic/EMR or African American Studies. Some experience in social scientific methods and analyzing quantitative data is preferred. Above all, the ideal researcher will possess an open mind and an abundance of curiosity, plus a capacity to look beyond the surface of our culture’s prevailing assumptions about safety and justic

Jennifer Hochschild, Henry LaBarre Jayne Professor of Government; Professor of African and African American Studies

Project

The goal is to analyze political and policy dynamics around three new technologies in genomic science, with comparisons among Germany, Great Britain, and the United States. The technologies are gene editing, mitochondrial replacement therapy, and polygenic scoring. Appropriate governance is contentious, as well as uncertain and underdeveloped. There are serious ethical issues as well as questions about how to govern this new science.

The project has three components: (a) a public opinion survey about the technologies and their broader context of views of science governance and science policy; (b) interviews with elected and appointed officials, leaders of advocacy and civic organizations, genomicists and relevant social scientists, and clergy; (c) analysis of key institutions, laws and practices, and media presentations.

Student RA work will include: (a) examining public opinion surveys to identify questions for replication and to compile survey results, especially outside the US; (b) writing literature reviews about development and use of relevant genomics technologies in the 3 countries, (c) compiling relevant laws, regulations, court decisions, agency documents, advocacy organization arguments etc.; and (d) perhaps compiling and coding print and social media around key issues and events.

I will plan to meet with the student at least once weekly, mostly in person but sometimes by zoom – and to be in close email touch otherwise. A Ph.D. candidate in the Government Department might also help with supervision. The student RA will learn about the early stages of a major research project – how to define the crucial questions, set parameters around what is feasible, explore possible new pathways (expecting some to be dead ends). Also, the student will learn skills of searching databases, compiling literature reviews, coding documents, generating a framework for systematic comparison.

Skills Needed

Ideally, the student will have some familiarity with genomic science, at least enough to understand discussions and debates and discern what is at stake. Familiarity with databases such as JSTOR, I-Poll, Nexus Uni, GESIS etc would be ideal, but are not expected. Experience in finding and winnowing academic publications would also be ideal but not expected.

Elizabeth Spelke, Marshall L. Berkman Professor of Psychology
Cristina Sarmiento, Lab Manager

Project

The Spelke Lab will be hosting an in-person summer internship. We have studies on Zoom and on campus.

The Spelke Lab conducts research in developmental cognitive science with infants and children and investigates the development of perception and knowledge of objects and their motions, agents and their actions, people and their social engagements, number, geometry, and formal mathematics.

Throughout the summer, student research assistants have the opportunity to learn about a wide variety of research topics within the cognitive sciences and attend professional development workshops. Student research assistants will be responsible for:

• recruiting and scheduling infant and child participants and their families
• assisting lab researchers in testing infants and children on Zoom and on campus
• interacting with families who participate in study sessions
• coding infant looking time responses and toddler behavioral responses
• working with grad students/postdocs to complete tasks specific to their research
• analyzing data

Students may also have the opportunity to assist in designing new studies.

Each student RA is paired with a grad student or postdoc in the lab to focus on one topic in depth. Students will always be supervised by the lab manager and/or mentor. Students will have weekly check-in meetings with the lab manager and will meet with their mentor weekly, or more frequently on an as-needed basis.

Skills Needed

An interest in and ability to work with young children is required, and previous experience is a plus.

Elizabeth Phelps, Pershing Square Professor of Human Neuroscience
Haoxue Fan, Doctoral candidate 
Hayley Dorfman, Postdoctoral Fellow

Project

Emotional arousal has been shown to influence many types of decision-making processes. This project will explore whether emotional arousal influences two types of decision-making processes: 1) decisions made in uncertain circumstances, and 2) decisions about controllability.

The general purpose of this project is to better understand people’s emotional responses when facing uncertain situations. Specifically, we ask questions like: what are the subjective and physiological emotional reactions (e.g. subjective fear; physiological arousal) when facing different kinds of uncertainty? How do emotional reactions influence choices between risky and safe options? How do emotions influence judgments of how much controllability people have? To answer these questions, we use a combination of behavioral experiments, computational modeling, physiological measurements, eye-tracking, and pharmacological manipulation.

The students will take part in every step of the whole research process, including conducting literature reviews, reading and synthesizing research papers, designing experiments, coding and running the experiments (potentially including collecting physiological data such as pupil diameter using an eye-tracking device and administering pharmacological interventions to manipulate emotional arousal), analyzing the data, interpreting the results and deriving new hypotheses. At the end of the summer, the student will present the project in the lab meeting and receive feedback from lab members.

At the end of the summer, the student should develop the ability to think critically about psychological research and gain a deep understanding of the psychological theories of decision-making. This will be achieved by reading related research and discussing the papers with both the mentors and other lab members. They will also be able to gain a set of research skills including conducting literature review, coming up with experiment designs, conducting proper statistical analysis, and articulating and presenting their work to the science community. These skills will be learned on a daily basis through interactions with the mentor and other lab members.

The graduate student and postdoctoral mentor will have weekly meetings with the student and will be available through slack/email during the weekdays. The student will also be fully involved in the summer activities in the Phelps Lab, including weekly lab meetings, occasional tutorials, journal clubs, and lab retreats, during which the student will have a chance to learn from other lab members and experience the daily experience of conducting research.

Skills Needed

We are looking for someone that is motivated to learn, with good communication and organizational skills and who is passionate about science. Specifically, the prerequisites for this project are (1) at least one introductory course in psychology (e.g. PSY15) (2) basic knowledge of statistics (e.g. what a linear regression is) (3) some familiarization with programming languages (one of R/Matlab/Python, ideally also javascript. We are also open to candidates who are comfortable with other programming languages and are confident in their skills). Candidates should also be comfortable communicating with study participants (no prior experience required). Previous coursework on decision-making is a plus (e.g. psych/econ electives), but is not required.

Kosuke Imai, Professor of Government and of Statistics

Project

The project will involve both in-person and online components.

The Algorithm-Assisted Redistricting Methodology (ALARM) Project is a research team at Harvard University led by Kosuke Imai. The investigators conduct research into redistricting sampling algorithms, best practices and workflows for redistricting analysis, and tools to visualize, explore, and understand redistricting plans. We will apply simulation algorithms to evaluate legislative redistricting plans enacted by various American cities. See the project website at https://alarm-redist.org/. The student will learn how to use simulation algorithms to evaluate a redistricting plan and then analyze several cities. The student will be part of my larger research group and participate in weekly research meetings.  You will receive feedback from me and other research group members. Last year’s BLISS student stayed on the research project after the summer, and so that’s an option too.

Skills Needed

The student should be proficient in R and should also know basic probability and statistics. The student should be passionate about politics too!

Malavika Reddy, Assistant Professor of Anthropology

Project

Legal anthropology is an academic subdiscipline that is concerned with the relation of law to social order, yet its questions and conclusions often remain detached from urgent political questions and struggle. With student collaborators led by Professor Alejandra Azuero (Swarthmore College), this summer research project is a first step towards reorienting legal anthropology towards concrete interventions in American universities and in American political life. This summer, we will focus on the following questions:

1. Over the past 10 years, what have been the research questions that legal anthropologists most commonly ask?
   • TASK: Review book precis and article abstracts from major journals in anthropology, coding recurrent keywords and themes
2. Over the past 10 years, what have been the theoretical concepts and methodological tools that legal anthropologists use?
   • TASK: Review book precis and article abstracts from major journals in anthropology, coding recurrent theoretical concepts and methodological tools
3. Over the past 10 years, how has legal anthropology been taught in American universities?
   • TASK: Collect legal anthropology syllabi from a sample of American universities and analyze course readings, assignments and pedagogical strategies.
4. What do these research questions, theoretical concepts and methodological tools reveal about the relevance of legal anthropology to pressing social problems?
   • TASK: Literature review of (1) and (2)
   • TASK: Produce a presentation that analyzes (4)
   • TASK: Craft an alternative syllabus that helps undergraduates use legal anthropology to think about new political horizons

Over the course of this project, the student will:

• Learn how to ‘code’ for social science research, a technique that allows researchers to detect themes and patterns in the texts under analysis
• Learn how to write a literature review
• Practice collaborative research and analysis
• Meet with me to discuss progress every week + with our collaborators at Swarthmore College every 2 weeks

Skills Needed

An interest or some coursework in anthropology would be great!

Melissa Dell, Andrew E. Furer Professor of Economics

Project

Interactions with the larger project team will be via Zoom (not everyone is in Cambridge), but there will be opportunities for in-person interactions with pre-docs/PI in Cambridge.

We have developed a deep learning pipeline to extract structured text from over 50 million page scans drawn from over 10,000 historical U.S. newspapers (1880-1978). We are now using cutting edge NLP methods to understand what content different newspapers printed, the sources they used (i.e. locally generated versus newswire or syndicated content), the sentiment of their coverage, and what factors influenced the choice of content and its sentiment. Specific topics examined currently include the drivers of anti-war sentiment during the Vietnam War and how a deadly vaccine accident in the 1950s influenced sentiment towards vaccination and public health more generally.

Working with the PI/pre-doctoral fellow to build out a full deep learning pipeline to analyze newspaper sentiment across time on a topic of mutual interest. This entails compiling data necessary to train an NLP model, validating results, and doing visualizations and statistical analyses of the output. The PI and fellow will work together to identify a public policy topic that received substantial media coverage across space and time, that is feasible to quantify, and that is of mutual interest.

The student will join weekly group meetings with the entire team, including the PI, and will give a brief presentation at these meetings on a weekly basis. The student will also receive daily feedback from the PI and/or a predoctoral fellow on a short written report of daily progress. The predoctoral fellow mentor will help the student troubleshoot and acquire the needed skills to implement a topic/sentiment analysis pipeline.

Skills Needed

Knowledge of Python and R. Strong interest in using quantitative methods, including those drawn from deep learning, to shed new light on fundamental social science questions.

Katie Giles, Strategic Initiatives Project Officer, Democratic Knowledge Project (Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics)

Project

The EJSCE is currently seeking BLISS Fellows to support a major initiative, the Democratic Knowledge Project (DKP), seeking to renew K-12 civic education. The DKP offers curriculum development resources, professional development workshops for educators, and assessment tools and resources—all in support of education for constitutional democracy. Among the questions we are trying to answer this summer are:

• How do curricular resources support learners’ development of civic identity?
• How can professional development support educators’ development of their own civic learning?
• What are administrator, teacher, caregiver, and youth perceptions, questions, hopes and concerns regarding in-school civic learning?

The types of tasks that a student research assistant would be undertaking include: preparing and cataloging qualitative data (such as student work artifacts, interviews, focus groups) and quantitative data (such as from surveys); conducting literature reviews and policy landscape analyses; supporting professional development opportunities for K-12 classroom teachers; conducting background research for curricular materials.

The BLISS Fellow(s) will meet with one team member on a daily basis (virtual or in person) for brief check-ins, as well as participate in team meetings that occur throughout the week, including our weekly DKP team meeting, where they will report on progress, raise issues and share their work with the team. The student will also use virtual communication tools (Slack, email, shared Google files/folders) for their work and to collaborate with team members. DKP team members are on campus at least several days a week and we anticipate the student also being in person at the center 2-3 days per week. The student will learn about best practices in civic education as well as research skills, such as how to process and manage data, document research decisions/activities.

Skills Needed

We seek students with knowledge of, and interest in, any of the following areas: K-12 education (particularly with regards to social studies, history and civics) and research; US government; youth engagement, group facilitation; qualitative research methods; curriculum writing/development. An ideal candidate will be comfortable working in Google Suite, have good attention to detail, and be highly organized.

Brandon M. Terry, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences
Elizabeth Hinton, Associate Professor of History and African American Studies and Professor of Law, Yale University
Dr. Brennan Klein, Data Science Fellow at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research 

Project

In this BLISS research project, we continue ongoing efforts to collect and analyze data about disparities in the criminal legal system. In particular, we will focus on the disparate impact of laws that automatically increase the length of sentences of people  convicted of certain offenses (e.g. so-called “Drug-Free School Zone” laws, among others). Who is most impacted by these laws? Where are they most prevalent? Can we quantify the reach of these laws? This is multidisciplinary work that requires qualitative or quantitative skills ranging from reviewing / summarizing literature around the topic to collecting and analyzing new streams of data. We hope to use this research in future publications, both in academic settings and in public-facing work. This research project is in collaboration with the Institute on Policing, Incarceration, and Public Safety at the Hutchins Center, and it builds on our recent work, “COVID-19 amplified racial disparities in the U.S. criminal legal system” (https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.12.14.21267199; forthcoming, Nature). During the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of incarcerated people in the U.S. decreased by almost 16%—the single largest decline in this country’s history. Amid this mass decarceration event, however, we saw an abrupt and dramatic increase in the relative number of Black people in prison. In this project, we identified and extensively quantified this trend, and in the coming months and years, we hope to build out a number of followup studies that shine new light on the mechanisms around mass incarceration, inequality, policing, and race in the U.S.

For this BLISS research project, we seek a student who can attend weekly research meetings where the team reviews progress on a variety of fronts (primarily over Zoom). The student will work closely with other research assistants working on this project, which may be about data analyses or manuscript writing. The student will also spend part of their time collecting data (either directly from public records, or by submitting Freedom of Information Act requests to state/federal agencies). Towards the end of the summer, the student is expected to work on their final presentation, consolidating their research experience into a slideshow and short writeup.

Because this work is so multidisciplinary, we will provide a variety of mentorship opportunities throughout the project. Dr. Klein will support the student in gaining an understanding about data and data science, including hands-on assistance with learning Python or R for analyzing the data. In addition to the quantitative training, we will also support the student in learning the ins and outs of requesting access to public records via the FOIA process. We are looking to work with a student eager to be a part of this research on the publication side as well—this will involve mentorship about writing for academic audiences, literature reviews, and the publication process. Finally, the student will assist in the composition of public-facing writing (e.g., opinion editorials, long-form magazine writing, public forums and interviews) concerning this research and other matters pertaining to the work of the center as they arise.

Skills Needed

We are seeking students who have familiarity with recent work by members of this team (“COVID-19 amplified racial disparities in the U.S. criminal legal system”, accessible via: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.12.14.21267199). Additionally, we hope to work with students who have an independent and creative work ethic, with the ability to write up analyses and results clearly for technical and non-technical audiences. Preferred, but not required, qualifications include familiarity with computer programming (e.g. in Python or R), especially as it relates to social scientific questions. Most importantly, we hope to work with a student who has a deep commitment to combat ongoing structural inequities throughout society.

Nicole Noll, Senior Preceptor in Psychology

Project

“Gender” is a construct with many aspects and meanings. It is used to refer to one of an individual’s identities, to describe traits and behaviors that are considered more typical or appropriate for women vs. men (or vice versa), and (incorrectly) as a synonym for “sex.” How do these various aspects and meanings of gender play out in people’s day-to-day lives?

We pose and explore research questions broadly related to gender, such as:

• Some people’s appearance does not conform to gender norms. Does that affect their lived experiences and what other people think about them? If so, how?
• Are body postures and styles of movement related to individuals’ perceptions of their own gender and that of other people?
• What does the process of gender identity development look like for individuals who identify as nonbinary?
• Does the type of explanation given for a gender difference in an illness influence a reader’s future decision-making and/or behavior related to that illness?
• Do the inferences people make about scientific findings about sex/gender differences vary based on how the data are represented visually?

BLISS fellows will have the opportunity to work on one of several current projects and will get experience with multiple stages of the research process, such as articulating a research question, conducting a literature review, preparing experimental materials, collecting and analyzing data, writing research reports, and presenting results orally. The student researchers will make a substantive contribution to the project through their work.

The activities of BLISS fellows will vary based on the project(s) they are working on, their previous knowledge and experience, and their progress over the summer. Most student researchers may expect to spend a few hours each day reading scientific literature related to their project and a few hours working with an existing dataset. The remaining lab hours will be devoted to tasks such as meetings, conducting literature reviews, developing experimental materials and protocols, or entering/coding/analyzing data.

At the beginning of the summer we will meet to establish a foundational understanding of the project(s), set goals for the summer, and lay out a work plan for each day. We will begin by reading and discussing articles that provide the basis for the research question addressed by the project and learning relevant lab procedures (e.g., experimental protocols, data management, etc.). We rely on student researchers to be actively engaged, ask questions, and think critically about all aspects of the research process. We hope to foster BLISS fellows’ ability to generate their own hypotheses and design experiments to test them. After we have laid a foundation, we will meet weekly (or as needed). This summer experience will help students decide whether they want to pursue a career path that involves social science research.

Skills Needed

Curiosity about human behavior, some background in psychology and, ideally, gender studies. Previous experience in a psychology lab is preferred, but not required, as project-specific skills will be learned as needed. The only other skills that we expect BLISS fellows to have are attention to detail, punctuality, follow-through, proactive communication, and a professional attitude. Most importantly, student researchers should be interested in identifying and challenging their own assumptions about the meaning of empirical data and research results.

Jocelyn Viterna, Professor of Sociology

Project

Why is a society’s gender hierarchy exceedingly resistant to transformation, even in moments of otherwise progressive social transformation? How might social movements mobilize gendered identities and imagery to forward some political causes, while retrenching traditional gender ideologies?

The data for this project are thousands of (already-collected) emails representing a range of both progressive and conservative social movement organizations in the United States. (Example, Gun control movements, gun rights movements, anti-abortion movements, pro-choice movements, anti-immigrant movements, pro-immigrant movements, etc). The BLISS RA will engage in either COMPUTATIONAL analysis, or QUALITATIVE analysis, or BOTH of these texts. If the BLISS candidate has computational skills, we will ask them to work with us on scraping additional sorts of data (such as press releases and tweets), plus cleaning and preparing our current data for computational text analysis. If the BLISS candidate has more qualitative coding skills, we will ask them to code a sample of our emails for themes related to gender and social change, and integrate these qualitative findings into the computational process. The ideal candidate would be able to engage in both aspects of analysis, but we are happy with one or the other interest.

The BLISS candidate will work closely with both Professor Viterna and her graduate student, Catharina O’Donnell. The full team will meet at least weekly, and the BLISS candidate will be expected to work each day in the office alongside either Viterna or O’Donnell. The BLISS candidate will also be involved in the entire, iterative process of the logic of inquiry, as we inductively determine a coding schema and develop an appropriate method of analysis to test our hypotheses. We anticipate that this project is bounded in size and scope, such that we could generate a completed research paper by the end of the summer session.

Skills Needed

We prefer a candidate who has had a basic course in social science research methods or computational analyses, but we are able to train any willing individual.

Fiery Cushman, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences
Xavier Roberts-Gaal, Doctoral Student in Psychology

Project

Culture is a distinctive ingredient in human success. Over generations, societies accumulate knowledge and practices so complex that no individual could invent them from scratch. A key theme of our current research is investigating how our suite of social learning strategies — such as imitation, teaching, and mentalizing — can give rise to cumulative culture. Specifically, we seek to understand and model the circumstances that determine when each of our social learning strategies is adaptive, and why. To do this, we use multiple approaches including behavioral experiments, integrating diverse datasets, and naturalistic, interactive paradigms like video games.

A typical day in lab involves a mixture of the following: creating experimental tasks and deploying them to online research platforms; analyzing diverse previously collected datasets (e.g., climate data, sociological surveys), and combining these with analyses of experimental data to create cognitive/evolutionary models; creating visualizations and interpreting findings; preparing a write-up of results; and attending lab meetings/other professional development activities.

The student will learn how to conduct experimental cognitive science research, including  framing a scientific question, designing and implementing an experiment or conducting statistical analyses on previously collected data, and interpreting results in the context of cognitive models. The student will work closely with a PhD student in the lab, as well as the PI,  throughout this project. In addition to individual meetings on a weekly basis to provide supervision and support, students will attend lab meetings, where there will be an opportunity to hone presentational skills, learn about cutting-edge work in the field, and engage in other professional development activities alongside the lab’s other summer interns.

Skills Needed

Required: Curiosity about culture/social learning/cognitive modeling, and the desire to learn new skills. At least one introductory class in social science (e.g., psychology or economics).

Preferred: Proficiency in Python or R. Extremely helpful to have knowledge of game development or psychology-specific packages (e.g., PsychoPy). At least one statistics class.

Alaysia Brown, Inequality in America Initiative Postdoctoral Fellow

Project

I will be pursuing two lines of research this summer, and the BLISS fellow may work on both or just one, depending on their interests and skillset.

1. Unlearning the Narrative: Identifying the Key Determinants of Relationship Satisfaction for African American Couples
   What makes relationships last? Why are some couples happier than others? These questions have plagued researchers for decades and several theories have been proposed to explain the factors that lead to positive romantic relationships. Although these explanations are meaningful, they fail to acknowledge the central role that race and racism plays in influencing intimate partnerships, and in particular, the determinants of romantic relationship quality and adjustment for African American couples. This project aims to address this limitation by identifying the individual, relational, familial, and contextual factors that are key determinants of relationship satisfaction for African American couples.
2. “Who am I?”: Investigating the Association Between Racial Discrimination, Coping, and Self-Concept Clarity
   W.E.B. Dubois famously used the term double consciousness to draw attention to the role that racism plays in shaping how African Americans view themselves and described it as a “sense of always looking at oneself through the revelation of the other world”. To cope with this awareness African Americans may ‘code switch’ or modulate their behavior or appearance in order to avoid confirming negative racial stereotypes. For example, research suggests that Black women–who are often portrayed as aggressive and unjustified in their emotions–may be less inclined to express negative emotions in certain settings even when these expressions may be healthy/warranted to avoid confirming negative stereotypes and expectations. This project extends this research by examining the psychological cost of code-switching. I argue that although these efforts may reduce exposure to discrimination comporting oneself in this manner may negatively influence self-concept clarity or the ability to develop a clearly defined sense of self.

The student and I will work together to develop a timeline for project completion and will meet twice weekly to discuss progress on assigned tasks. At the conclusion of the program, the student will be expected to have drafted a short write-up of at least one of the research projects that includes an introduction, methods, results, and discussion section. The student may also have the option to submit their write-up for presentation at the National Council on Family Relations conference, which will take place in November 2024.

Skills Needed

• Knowledge about the fundamentals of working with survey data and quantitative analysis methods (ex. correlation, regression, t-tests, etc.)
• Experience working with statistical software programs (ex. R, SPSS, SAS, STATA). Experience working with R is preferred.
• Coursework, or an active interest, in the following content areas: African American studies, social inequality, discrimination, human development, romantic relationships, public health
• An ideal candidate will also possess intellectual curiosity, the willingness to take initiative, desire to learn new skills and information, attention to detail, and high levels of organization.

In addition to the menu of BLISS projects on offer, students may propose their own campus-based social science research projects under supervision of a faculty mentor. (At this time a maximum of three “independent research” students will be accepted to the program.) NOTE: These slots may be extremely competitive, and priority will be given to advanced students demonstrating strong research skills. Students earlier in their academic careers should consider applying to faculty-led projects.

This option may be most suitable for an existing student-faculty research collaboration that would benefit from the student’s ability to commit to fulltime work over an extended period.

To propose a BLISS independent research project, student applicants must a) identify a mentor, and b) describe the proposed research in detail, including:

• the goals/expected outcomes for the 10-week summer research period, and an explanation of how this relates to your general short-term (undergraduate) and long-term academic and professional goals
• a general plan for your daily/weekly research-related activities (“fulltime” research is loosely defined as 35-40 hours per week.)
• information about the resources and materials to be engaged on campus
• a plan for communicating with the research mentor (How often will you meet? What will you do if you encounter problems or have questions between meetings?)

In the BLISS application, your independent project proposal will be included as your first and second essay responses. If you have already conducted research with your mentor, make sure to explain how this summer opportunity is significantly different from term-time research and particularly beneficial to your academic and career development. Please answer the third essay question as it is framed.

Research Mentor Confirmation Letter

Your letter of recommendation must be from your research mentor and should comment on your qualifications for the project as well as the mentor’s role over the summer. Please provide the following instructions to your mentor (which differ from the general instructions to recommenders). Please also see the FAQs on the BLISS homepage.

Instructions for mentors

Please provide a letter of recommendation for the applicant, addressing the following information:

1. In what capacity do you know the applicant? If the student is already conducting research with you, how will BLISS differ significantly from the applicant’s term-time work?
2. Is the applicant qualified to carry out the research as described? Are the goals feasible within the specified time period? Does the workplan seem reasonable?
3. What is your mentoring plan? What will the student learn from you? How will you oversee their work? If you are traveling at any point during the summer, how will you stay in contact with the student?
4. A critical component of the BLISS program is the student’s participation in the “summer undergraduate research village” community. How do you envision the applicant benefitting from, and contributing to, the community?