Hi! My name is Maryann and I’m a Psychology and Philosophy major and an Economics minor at Tulane University. I’ve loved studying all three subjects during my time at Tulane, as they each teach me about people and the world from a different point of view.
This summer I am lucky to have the opportunity to work in Dr. O’Brien’s social psychology research lab on Tulane’s campus. Dr. O’Brien is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Tulane University, and her research focuses on prejudice (especially perceived prejudice) and stigma. For example, a recent study she published looked at the different inferences that people tend to make about Black and White Americans political views and prejudicial attitudes if they claim discrimination. My internship this summer involves working with Dr. O’Brien and graduate student Stefanie Simon to design and run an experiment.
As an intern and research assistant working specifically on this experiment, my responsibilities will change throughout the summer based on what is needed to design the experiment and get it passed by the Institutional Review Board (an approval process all studies must go through). At this point in time I am reading and annotating assigned articles that relate to the topic that we are studying as well as finding and annotating more articles that relate to the experiment. This ensures that I have the proper background on the topic to assist with the experiment, and allows me to contribute to the research that is being used in the experimental design and eventually in writing the study.
I found this internship by working in Dr. O’Brien’s lab as a research assistant my Junior year at Tulane. Dr. O’Brien offers summer positions in her lab mostly to those who are already working in her lab throughout the school year. This is a practice at Tulane, so I would suggest to anyone who is hoping to intern in a research lab for the summer to look into interviewing for a position during the school year.
My first week was different from most internships because I already know most of the faculty, graduate students, and research assistants working in the lab. This made it an easier transition in some ways, but my responsibilities this summer are also very different from those during the school year. During the summer I have a lot more time to work independently on long-term tasks, so a lot of the first week was spent with Stefanie planning the work I needed to be completing each day. I spent the rest of the week reading an annotating articles, which is something I find really exciting. By reading a lot of articles on the same topic I’m building a knowledge base on that subject that allows me to be a critical consumer of that research and (hopefully) eventually contribute my own research and knowledge to that body of work.
This ability to learn specifically about one topic, and eventually contribute to it is one of my main goals for my internship this summer. Another one of my goals is to be able to apply a lot of the theoretical knowledge that I have gained from my psychology and statistics classes at Tulane to the process of designing an experiment. This summer is the first time that I will be involved in the designing of an experiment from start to finish – and the insight into the scientific process that I will gain from that experience will likely be the highlight of this internship.