Research interests and you!

[PhillyPsych]

Hey everyone, I was just sitting at my desk entering some data into a spreadsheet and I got to thinking about how interesting it is that there are seemingly infinite research areas, and ways for people get interested in them. So I figured I would pose the question to the forum on the light note of your research interests and how you fell in love (or just fell into) with them.

The area that I am currently immersed in as an RA at the moment is health psych, and more specifically smoking cessation in an emergency room and inpatient setting, and how perceptions of health can influence people and the decisions they make around quitting smoking. At first I didn't think that this would be of interest at all to me as I used to be a very active smoker (at one point at my peak stress level about 2 packs a day), but I figured that I would give it a shot anyway. After a few weeks I became increasingly interested, and extremely excited about the study (I am primarily doing data collection and entry, with some help on scale creation). It is so cool to be able to see the ideas proposed take form, and it was also great at giving me ideas for future research! I have also quit smoking!

Just wondering if anyone else had any interesting stories and ideas that may be able to inspire future researchers!

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[Ollie123]

Mine are really quite broad. Probably too broad...I'm sure it will come back to bite me when its job search time, but I have little interest in developing a narrow, circumscribed research line. I'd get bored fast.

Generally, I'm interested in the basic processes underlying psychopathology. Things like attention, emotion and emotional control, genetics, personality, etc. In terms of where my career is going, I'm probably going to be more of a cognitive/affective neuroscientist than a traditional clinical psychologist, though I'm obviously interested in clinical populations.

My long-term goal would be to develop an entirely different classification system for psychopathology that helps account for the wild co-morbidity we see. Realistically, if I manage to slightly impact how we look at even a single diagnosis, I'll be content For now, my work is focusing on attention and, oddly enough, also smoking (there aren't too many of us studying tobacco use in psychology, so its nice to run across another one!). Fortunately, I really found the perfect research match, and I'm in a place where I actually can learn about all of the above, and much more. Truthfully, the research match found me since I didn't actually apply to my lab, so my advice is to keep an open mind when applying! All psychology research is connected somehow, and you'll be amazed at how what might seem like a distant leap ends up not being as big a stretch as you thought.

 

[futureapppsy2]

I'm far more boring then both of you... My primary interests are in resiliency, accommodation, and adaptation in people with disabilities, namely physical or primarily physical disabilities. In other words, I want to study how different personal/psychological and institutional (i.e., intervention, inclusion, and assessment programs) help or hinder the academic and social success of students with disabilities. I take kind of a multicultural view of disability to my work as well. Because I want to study primarily early onset disabilities and because the educational system has such a big role in defining disability, school psych seems like a good fit.

I originally fell in love with multicultural psych, and in the process of doing that research realized the inherent difficulty of doing multicultural research as an "outsider." Around that time, I also started working in an RAship involving disability psych and was shocked and pleasently surprised to learn that disability psych is, in a lot of ways, "multicultural" psych. Yay, cultural research!

 

[okayroots06]

the development of a depressogenic ruminative response style and cognitive vulnerability-stress theories of depression.

 

[socialcog]

the development of a depressogenic ruminative response style and cognitive vulnerability-stress theories of depression.

Is this considered clinical or development? Golly, this might even be emotion/affect science. Regardless, it sounds very interesting.

 

[okayroots06]

its considered clinical (e.g., abela, 2006; nolen-hoeksema, 1991). i still think its a relatively understudied domain.

i agree with you 100%, i find it interesting and enjoy studying it.

 

[JockNerd]

Didn't we have a thread about this a while ago?

I research LGBT stuff, focus on social justice. I also do stuff on gender and health behaviors, and will be intersecting those two interests in my next project.

(edit)... oh, how we got interested in it. I'm gay, so lgbt stuff is interesting. The health behaviors are done with a particularly cool slant that I love (performance-enhancing drugs). I actually didn't think I'd get to look at it, but things have come together nicely.

 

[glasscandie]

I started off interested in clinical psych., and after doing an internship at a psychiatric rehab. clinic I found that I was way more interested in research -and I was particularly interested in pharmacological research in schizophrenia patients, particularly those who are dual diagnosis (mental illness + substance abuse). From there, I did (am doing) an internship at Hopkins looking at the behavioral pharmacology of a few different drugs of abuse, mainly MDMA (ecstasy). Sort of concurrently at the time I started my undergraduate research at the psych. rehab. facility, I became really interested in the biology of various functionings - prejudice, etc. It just is amazing to me how the body is innately able to handle different things, and even more interesting, how different agents affect behavior.

 

[rmenoch]

Well I started off interested in researching the field of memory, particularly related to forensic psychology. So my first RA position was for a forensic/developmental researcher focusing on the accuracy of children's memories in legal situations. She also had a connection at a nearby children's hospital, so I offered to help with a project focusing on childhood sexual abuse. However, my clinical inerests have always skewed more towards working with LGBT clients. I volunteered at LGBT community organizations throughout my undergrad.

I went on to get my M.S. in forensic psychology. I have been researching children in the dependency system that go on to enter the delinquency system, along with associated risk and resiliency factors related to this group. For my Ph.D. in plan on combining my interests in children, risk and risiliency, and the LGBT population; focusing on assessing the dominant protective and risk factors related to the development of LGBT adolescents. Also, I wouldn't mind looking at LGBT individuals in correctional facilities.

 

[cara susanna]

Mindfulness, personality, and emotions. The lab I'm currently in studies mindfulness and personality, so that's how I got interested in that. Emotions it's kind of a longer story, but one of the other profs I've worked with studies that, so it's not terribly out of the blue.

 

[socialcog]

Mindfulness, personality, and emotions. The lab I'm currently in studies mindfulness and personality, so that's how I got interested in that. Emotions it's kind of a longer story, but one of the other profs I've worked with studies that, so it's not terribly out of the blue.

Hmmmmm...emotions and mindfulness from Wisconsin, huh? Richie Davidson perhaps?

 

[cara susanna]

Nope, I have no neuroscience research background