6 Degrees of Separation with Trent Gaugler
Working with: Jamila Bookwala, dean of faculty
“Relationship quality and 5-year mortality risk”
“This paper actually got a fair amount of mainstream attention. We studied various measures of aspects of relationship quality and modeled mortality as a function of these factors, controlling for other major variables like age, physical health, etc. As it turns out, positive elements of a relationship were not significantly protective of death, but negative elements were significantly associated with increased risk of death.”
Working with: Jennifer Talarico, Psychology Department head
“Are mnemonic failures and benefits two sides of the same coin?: Investigating the real-world consequences of individual differences in memory integration”
“This project explored the ways in which people remember information exactly as given to them vs. with information they infer to be true given the information. This process of retrieval/augmentation was studied for correlations to other real-world measures. The data required fairly advanced analytical techniques.”
Working with: Susan Wenze, associate professor of psychology
“Momentary experiential avoidance: Within-person correlates, antecedents, and consequences and between-person moderators”
“This project was about the ways we handle our emotions. How does our handling of emotions evolve over time, and what happens down the road if we continue to employ a particular strategy for emotional regulation? This required getting survey data multiple times per day for several days, yielding a complicated data structure.”
Working with: Susan Basow, professor emeritus, psychology
“Predicting Adjustment of U.S. College Students Studying Abroad: Beyond the Multicultural Personality”
“This project used a technique called path analysis to determine the extent to which a student’s multicultural personality profile predicted how well they adjusted to studying in a foreign setting. The analysis controlled for their behavior in the study abroad program.”