Research Opportunities

Undergraduate Research Initiative

Whatever your future career interests, research experience is an invaluable way to strengthen your psychology education. The Undergraduate Research Initiative is designed to help students find research opportunities that fit their interests and learn how to use those experiences to further their academic and professional development. URIP offers a variety of workshops, informational sessions, and career development events throughout the year to help students make the most of the many opportunities and research-related events available on campus and beyond. To see a list of scheduled events, please visit our Events page.

How to Get Started

1. Make an appointment with URIP director, Anne Henly, to discuss your research interests and goals. You can also contact lab directors directly to find out if there are opportunities for undergraduate researchers.

2. Join a study! On this page you will find information for students and young adults (18+) who would like to participate in a research study.

How to Fund Your Work

Undergrads have the opportunity to apply for research funding through the Earl R. Franklin Research Fellowship.  

Additional opportunities may be found through UChicago Career Advancement.

Recent Honors Projects

Most of our psychology majors are involved in research and many complete honors projects. Below is a list of recent honors projects.

2023

Emily Chan (Adviser: Amanda Woodward) Infants' Responses to Strangers: Developing a Virtual Paradigm
Meriel Doyle (Adviser: Yuan Chang Leong) Motivational Influences on Intuitive Physical Judgments
Grace Gautier (Adviser: Yuan Chang Leong) Emotional regulation through positive memories in relation to resilience and long-term stress
Cynthia Gaspard (Adviser: Greg Norman) Examining perceived racial discrimination, stress and loneliness: The moderating role of social support and parasympathetic activity
Tommy Hsee (Adviser: Boaz Keysar) The Effect of Foreign Language on Social Distance Judgment
Lucy Tindel (Adviser: Monica Rosenberg) The Impacts of Fluctuating Engagement on Visual and Narrative Memory
Bella Howard (Adviser: Katherine Kinzler) The Development of Regional Accent-Based Attitudes in the U.S.
Kristen Iverson (Adviser: Susan Levine) Helping Hands: Cardinal Number Gesture Improves Preschool Children's Accuracy with Verbal Number Labels
Jayda Hart (Adviser: Anne Henly) Prop Use and Intimacy in Theater 
Channell Kann (Adviser: Aly Light) Why Did I Do That? Consequences of Attributional Thinking on Knowing the Self and Well-Being
Joshua Kim (Adviser: Shannon Heald) Understanding the Mechanisms of Need-Solution Pairs
Kimberly Shorter (Adviser: Susan Goldin-Meadow) Dialect in the Courtroom: An Experimental Examination of Raciolinguistics and Stereotyping
Jordi Sterett (Adviser: Amanda Woodward) Household, Social Network and Neighborhood Predictors of Preschoolers' Theory of Mind Development
Abigail Shivers (Adviser: Akram Bakkour) The impact of dopamine in the prioritization of information and reward on reinforcement learning of a novel environment in a complex, sequential decision-making task

2022

Katharine Boggs (Adviser: Emma Levine) Do gendered expectations influence interest in workplace tasks?
Sydney Buffonge (Adviser: Amanda Woodward) Infants' Race-Based Visual Preferences: Exploring Bias in Static Versus Dynamic Contexts
Defne Buyukyazgan (Adviser: Akram Bakkour) The Effect of Differential Learning of Stimulus Attributes on Subjective Value Construction
Caroline Chade (Adviser: Susan Goldin-Meadow) Parental Responses to Children's Actions and Gestures: Effects on Word Learning
Lev Copelan (Adviser: Susan Goldin-Meadow) Response Latency to Questions Regarding Differing Social Groups
Jessica Davalos (Adviser: Amanda Woodward) What's going on?: Comparisons of social referencing among Mayan and US infants
Rebecca Greenberg (Adviser: Wilma Bainbridge) Investigating Variations Within Visual Memory When Scene Grammar Is Violated
Alyssa Guillu (Adviser: Susan Goldin-Meadow) Shrug Gestures as a Window into the Pragmatic Development of Children with Pre- and Perinatal Brain Lesions
Mahika Hari (Adviser: Boaz Keysar) Impact of Language Modality on Empathy and Forgiveness
Katherine Hodgdon (Adviser: Katherine Kinzler) Motivated Perspective-Taking: The role of social information in children's theory of mind
Naomi Nero (Adviser: Jean Decety) Psychopathy, Borderline Personality Disorder, and Violent Crime in Male and Female Inmates
Chloe Roske (Adviser: Bernd Wittenbrink) Is it real? The influence of perceived target ethnicity on authenticity judgments of smile expressions
Lauren Thompson (Adviser: Jean Decety) Impact of Moral Convictions and Cognitive Style on Social Evaluations of Political Violence
Kaitlyn Wallace (Adviser: Kate Keenan) Interpersonal Needs and Minority Stress: Contributions to Bisexual Mental Health
Jack Westhead (Adviser: Boaz Keysar) The Impact of Mood Dimensions on Metacognitive Performance
Feyza Yucel (Adviser: Brian Prendergast) Time Restricted Feeding and Alzheimer's-Type Behavior in a Mouse Model