Research Assistantships Spring 2024

Below are the research assistantships available in our department.
Feel free to email the contact individual for that lab.
Please check back as new opportunities are listed on a continuing basis.
If you are a PBS member and would like to post on this page, please complete our Undergraduate Recruitment Form.

FAM Lab
Responsibilities:

RAs must be interested in mentoring youth in the community through various activities including sports and engaging in academic activities. Interest in working directly with families and conducting family interviews in English and Spanish. RAs are also expected to attend lab meetings, attend community events, and/or lead workshops for community members.

If interested in this opportunity, send us an email including these three addresses:

aylinfernand@umass.edu, evemercado@umass.edu, familias@umass.edu

Pre-requisites: Have experience working with youth. Having consistent availability in morning or gaps in afternoon. Must be able to commit to working for 2 semesters.
Times you must be available: RAs must be available to attend lab meetings and commit to attending mentoring sessions consistently every week. Also must be flexible to be available on weekends. Potential for summer employment as well.
Hours per week: 6-9
Credits: 2 credits (6 hrs/week) or 3 credits (9 hrs/week)
Visual Cognition and Attention Lab
Contact: Kyle Cave, kcave@umass.edu
Responsibilities:

Write code in JavaScript or Octave to control perception experiments, or write code in R to organize and analyze data from experiments.

Pre-requisites: Experience in programming either Javascript, Octave, Matlab, or R.
Times you must be available: flexible
Hours per week: 9 hours/week
Credits: 3
Visual Cognition and Attention Lab
Contact: Kyle Cave, kcave@umass.edu
Responsibilities:

Help in testing human participants in perception experiments, either online or in our lab, and in interpreting the results and planning new experiments.

Pre-requisites: An interest in Cognitive Psychology and Cognitive Science
Times you must be available: Lab meetings Fridays 2:30-4:00. Otherwise flexible.
Hours per week: 9 hours/week
Credits: 3
Culture and Morality Lab
Contact: Mohammad Atari, matari@umass.edu
Responsibilities:

Helping grad students with the annotation of textual data about cultural factors and moral values.

Times you must be available: Most of the work can be done remotely.
Hours per week: 5-10 depending on their availability
Credits: 1-3
Implicit Social Cognition Lab
Contact: Aanchal Setia, asetia@umass.edu
Responsibilities:

Our current research project broadly focuses on understanding how gender stereotypes in leadership situations affect women's motivation to gravitate toward or distance themselves from other women.

(Minimum) RA Requirements:
Will assist in participant recruitment, data collection, conduct literature reviews on relevant lab topics, and attend bi-weekly lab meetings.

If you are interested in applying to work in our lab, please fill out this form here.

Pre-requisites: Ideal candidates will have the ability to commit to at least two semesters.
Times you must be available: RAs should be available to attend lab meetings and collect data. Flexibility in schedules is needed for this lab.
Hours per week: 9 hours/week (including lab meetings)
Credits: 3
Learning Lab
Contact: Jennifer McDermott, jmm@umass.edu
Responsibilities:

Undergraduate RAs will work closely with graduate students and the lab director as members of a team studying cognitive capabilities and socio-emotional development of children and young adults. Additional projects may include a focus on issues related to adoption, kinship care, and foster care.

Pre-requisites: Strong time management and team work skills.
Times you must be available: Various times on weekdays, occasional weekend hours
Hours per week: 6-9
Credits: 2 credits (6 hrs/week) or 3 credits (9 hrs/week)
Social Processes and Health Lab
Contact: Alexander Kellogg, akellogg@umass.edu
Responsibilities:

We study how features of the social environment affect health-related behaviors and outcomes. We examine a range of social processes, including mimicry and peer social networks. RAs are sometimes able to contribute to our work on structural stigma. We also examine a range of health behaviors, including alcohol consumption and unhealthy eating behaviors. Undergraduate RAs will oversee research participants in in-person studies as well as assist with tasks such as literature review, study design and interpretation, survey construction, data collection, and data entry and analysis.

Pre-requisites: We are especially interested in students who are at least rising sophomores, have basic knowledge of research methodology and statistics, and would be interested in conducting independent research or an honors thesis in the future.
Times you must be available: Variable
Hours per week: 6-9 hours (depending)
Credits: 2-3 credits (depending)
Intergroup Relations and Social Justice Lab
Contact: Liora Morhayim, lmorhayim@umass.edu
Responsibilities:

RAs will primarily be responsible for data collection where they will run participants for an experiment that involves an online interaction. Besides data collection RAs will help with data organization/management, transcribing, coding qualitative data, recruiting participants and with some administrative tasks related to ongoing research.
 

Pre-requisites: PSYCH 100
Times you must be available: TBD
Hours per week: 9
Credits: 3