Congratulations to the 2013 APS Student Grant Competition Winners

Three graduate students have been named winners of the APSSC Student Grant Competition, sponsored by the APS Student Caucus. Each winner will receive $500 to be used for research that is currently in its initial stages of development. The winning research proposals are outlined below.

Jason A. Oliver

6th year Doctoral Student in Clinical Psychology
University of South Florida and Moffitt Cancer Center, FL
Contemporary theories of smoking behavior typically emphasize the role of nicotine in enhancing the reward derived from cigarettes, but animal research suggests nicotine withdrawal also suppresses the value of alternative rewards. This study seeks to establish the effects of nicotine withdrawal on self-report, behavioral, and neural indices of reward-processing in humans. We expect results to aid in the development of novel theories of smoking behavior and provide a framework for testing relevant behavioral and pharmacological interventions that target these processes.

Jonathan P. Stange 

3rd year Doctoral Student in Clinical Psychology
Temple University, PA
This multi-method, multi-wave study will compare inflexible cognitive, behavioral, and psychophysiological characteristics as vulnerabilities to depression in the context of life stress. This study differs from most prior research which has focused on the content of cognitive and coping styles that confer vulnerability to depression rather than the role of the rigidity of those styles in promoting vulnerability.

Jill E. Knapen

2nd year Doctoral Student in Social and Organizational Psychology
William James Graduate School, VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands
It is hypothesized that when men are of shorter stature they will behave more dominantly and aggressively towards their taller opponents, but only when these opponents do not have the opportunity to retaliate (Napoleon complex). This Virtual Reality experiment manipulates experienced height in men and investigates whether a popular theory of human behavior that is over 100 years old actually holds true.