By Amelia De Jesus, Psychology Major
After an amazing experience at the first Heterodox Psychology Conference in 2018 Orange, CA, psychology student and faculty from SUNY New Paltz were welcomed back! The second Heterodox Psychology Conference was also held in Orange, CA. This time in early January, 2020.
We got to represent SUNY New Paltz as the single-largest group at the conference from any one university, in fact, with 10 of us (including faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students) from New Paltz in total. Dr. Glenn Geher’s New Paltz Evolutionary Psychology Lab joined with some of his undergraduate students from his Fall 2019 Advanced Evolutionary Psychology research class (PSY 493) to support each other in presenting an array of different projects.
Since New Paltz was the largest representative group, what did we do there?! We took part in two “Hack-A-Thons” (i.e., academic workshops). Two of these were led by Glenn Geher and one was led by Julie Planke. Julie’s topic was “Curricula and Mentoring: Bringing Heterodoxy to Undergraduates and Prospective Graduate Students.” Glenn got to lead one with Dr. Richard Redding (Chapman University) on “Developing a Research Agenda for Studying Meta-Heterodox Issues.” Glenn also got to lead one on “Fostering Communication and Networking among Heterodox Researchers.” His four undergraduate students sat in on this one! This was a great experience for both the students and the other members who were not used to having such a young presence at such meetings. Cody from our group had great suggestions for working on a YouTube channel for Heterodox Psychology which was exciting when everyone hopped on board to bring his ideas to life. Glenn made sure his students got the chance to have a voice during this meeting when everyone wondered what the youth thought was most effective for targeting their age range. And boy did they deliver during the group work!
Our students also presented in four paper sessions. Graduate students Julie Planke, Alex Mackiel and Jaqueline Di Santo shared some great studies previously and presently being worked on. Julie got to present her study “Examining Gender Salience in Preschoolers Through a Category Formation Task” in the section of Gender and Sexuality. Alex presented in the session none other than Evolutionary Perspectives. Here he shared a study, “Darwin, Jesus and GMOs: An Empirical Assessment of Attitude Changes in the Face of Scientific Evidence,” which the data is currently being analyzed for in Glenn’s research lab.
Jaqueline presented the study, “Open-Minded Psychology: How to Best Frame Intellectual Pluralism in the Behavioral Sciences,” in the Orthodoxies and Intellectual Diversity in Psychology paper session. With this study, she provided evidence that Heterodox is actually not a very well-received term. Not only do lay people not love this term but neither do academics! With this information in-hand, a survey is currently being distributed to see if there is potential to change the name of the conference to make it sound more inviting for all. We are very excited to see where this goes! It is inspiring to us that students from SUNY New Paltz are leading this initiative!
Not only did our Graduate scholars present invigorating research, but so did our flourishing undergraduates. Small fish in a big pond, our undergraduates Amelia, Aliza, Kelly and Cody took the stage in the grand ballroom to present “Betrayal, Outrage, Guilt, and Forgiveness: The Four Horsemen of the Human Social-Emotional Experience.” This article came out of a research project called the Betrayal Study that was developed during our Advanced Research in Evolutionary Psychology (Fall 2019) class. We are currently working on analyzing our data for this study in the lab. The study sparked Glenn’s interest for the potential of an article to come out of it. With all hands on deck, we created something innovative and presentation-worthy. It was such an honor for these students to go across the country to show others what we’ve been working on. While our in-person meetings have been cut short this semester due to the pandemic, we are continuing to work (remotely) toward publications on the projects that we presented at the conference.
The 2020 Heterodox Psychology Conference in Southern California was a wonderful experience across the board for participants from SUNY New Paltz. We look forward to helping to organize and participate in the next one. Stay tuned regarding time and place!
DISCLAIMER: The Heterodoxy in Psychology Conference is an independent conference not organized or sponsored by Heterodox Academy or other entities. The content and views shared at this conference do not necessarily reflect the position or commitments of other organizations.
