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Research Labs

The Department of Psychology at UL Lafayette is actively engaged in vibrant research initiatives to advance the science and practice of psychology. Here are our state-of-the-art research labs:

Building Effective Environments Through Scholarship (BEETS) Lab

The primary mission of the BEETS Lab is to reinvent the world through research by sculpt the workplace through scholarship. The goal of the lab is to provide undergraduate and graduate students with research opportunities to acquire and put into practice scholarly knowledge in the area of industrial/organizational psychology.

Learn more about the BEETS Lab »

Cognition and Psycholinguistics (CaP) Research Laboratory

The research conducted in the Cognition and Psycholinguistics (CaP) Research Lab explores what people say, why people say what they say, and how people understand what others have said. We currently have two primary lines of research:

  • the ways that people talk about death and dying
  • the processing of metaphors.

Learn more about the Cognition and Psycholinguistics Research Lab »

Communication. Rationality. Opinions. Attitudes. Knowedge (C.R.O.A.K.) Lab

The C.R.O.A.K. Lab is a group of behavioral scientists and students dedicated to examining how people make decisions and form beliefs. We are particularly interested in how these processes relate to public health, e.g., vaccine hesitancy, risk communication, disease mitigation behaviors. Another part of our mission is to mentor early career researchers and professionals, training them in the latest data analytic techniques and open science practices. We aspire for all our lab members to be high achieving, and to leave the C.R.O.A.K. Lab with valuable skills, even if they haven't chosen research as their primary career path.

Learn more about the C.R.O.A.K. Lab»

Data Science Application in Social and Community Psychology (DAISO) LabCommunication.

The DAISO lab conducts research in social, community and cross-cultural psychology.  Specifically, through using innovative research methods and computational analytic techniques, members of the DAISO lab conducts research (a) to identify psychological mechanisms relating to people’s engagement and belonging to place and community, and (b) to predict individual/group perceptions and behaviors within and across cultures..

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Developmental Science Laboratory (DSL)

The Developmental Science Laboratory (DSL)  consists of a team of interested faculty and student, who share similar passion for examining developmental processes across the life span.
Researchers from the DSL Lab take an interdisciplinary approach in order to examine the complexity of adjusted and maladjusted developmental processes appropriately.
The DSL is equipped with the state-of-the-art Noldus audio-video recording system and coding software, the Observer XT, that allows analysis of behaviors at a frame-by-frame basis.

Learn more about the Developmental Science Laboratory »

Health, Emotion, Anxiety, and Trauma Lab

Overview of topics and areas of focus:

  • Mechanisms by which psychological disorders contribute to medical problems and health risk behaviors (e.g., substance use)
  • Roles of stress, anxiety, and trauma-related disorders on physical health, particularly migraine and other chronic pain conditions
  • Cognitive-emotional mechanisms (e.g., emotion dysregulation, attentional processing, and anxiety sensitivity) that may underlie psychological factors and physical health

Undergrad and graduate students who are well suited for the Health, Emotion, Anxiety, and Trauma Research Lab are interested in health-related psychological research.

Learn more about the Health, Emotion, Anxiety, and Trauma Lab »

Louisiana Contextual Science Research Group

Broadly, the Louisiana Contextual Science Research Group is a community of folks who are: (1) inspired by the idea of a world where people can embrace their ongoing experiences to actively create meaningful lives and (2) dedicated to building a science of that.

We build that science by using specific theoretical perspectives grounded in behaviorism with an emphasis on Relational Frame Theory and the psychological flexibility model in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. We apply these perspectives to any places where we see folks (even folks in the mirror) getting stuck and alienated from the things that matter to them.

Please visit the website of Louisiana Contextual Science Research Group for information regarding research projects, research opportunities, contact information and so on.

Sexual Violence Research Laboratory

The Sexual Violence Research Lab at UL Lafayette is led by Dr. Amy Brown. Dr. Brown’s research follows two primary lines of investigation:

  1. Social perception of sexual violence: This line of research explores the factors related to willingness to provide sympathy and support to victims and judgments of responsibility toward victims and perpetrators in hypothetical vignettes. Some factors that have been studied include victim alcohol consumption, perpetrator use of force, victim sexual orientation and perpetrator gender.
  2. Bystander intervention against sexual violence: This line of research explores students’ willingness to engage in and prior experience with prosocial intervention in the context of sexual violence. We have investigated the impact of gender, perceived peer norms, and bystander alcohol use on bystander attitudes and behaviors.

Learn more about the Sexual Violence Research Laboratory »

Stress, Coping, and Wellness Laboratory

The Stress, Coping, and Wellness Lab at UL Lafayette is led by Dr. Theresa Wozencraft and focuses on the relationships between health, stress and coping and how they predict health status and life satisfaction.

Learn more about the Stress, Coping, and Wellness Laboratory

The Achievement and Social Cognition (TASC) Lab

The TASC Lab focusses on the psychological factors associated with the achievement of excellence. Led by Dr. Valanne MacGyvers, a team of graduate students and undergraduate students are engaged in a number of research projects, some large and some smaller. Most projects will include mindset as a variable of interest.

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The Zebrafish Lab

The Zebrafish Lab conducts research to better understand human behavior from a neurobiological standpoint. Using a zebrafish animal model, the researchers in this lab are able to make comparative connections to humans on a wide variety of behavioral sets. Our main focus is exploring the neural basis of cognition, learning, memory, and Alzheimer's disease. Other interests include but are not limited to: addiction, individual differences, PTSD, motivation, and sleep.

Learn more about the Zebrafish Lab »