Author: W. Allen Lambert       Major: Psychology and Biology 

W. Allen Lambert

Throughout the past year and half, I have been working with Ryan Blanchard and Dr. Anastasia Makhanova in the Spark Lab. Our research focused on pathogen disgust and its association with social biases in medical professionals. Medical professionals are a unique population because in their careers, they willingly and constantly approach disgusting and infectious stimuli. Our research investigated the differences in disgust sensitivity between medical professionals and the general public, as well as if these two populations differed on social biases that have been linked to disgust. Specifically, we examined people’s tendency to categorize targets with heuristic disease cues (e.g., being elderly) as members of a novel outgroup. Consistent with predictions, medical professionals reported lower pathogen disgust but, surprisingly, higher moral disgust than non-medical professionals. Consistent with past literature, social biases in outgroup categorization of elderly targets were positively associated with pathogen disgust. However, the association was not moderated by group membership. These findings suggest that there is a link between decreased disgust sensitivity and medical professionals, but medical professionals nonetheless demonstrate biases towards elderly individuals consistent with the pathogen disgust and behavioral immune system literature.

During the Spring 2021 semester I finished up my research in Dr. Makhanova’s SPARK Lab where I worked on recruiting participants and writing my thesis on Disgust Sensitivity and Associated Social Behaviors in Medical Professionals. This semester I have learned more than I could have imagined. It started off with a lot of recruiting. I mean a lot! We had to drastically change our original recruiting strategy because we were getting a lot of fake responses. I am pretty sure I emailed every person I know that was either in the medical field or that had some type of a connection to the medical field to see if they would be willing to “participate in a brief social psychology research study at the University of Arkansas.” I thought this process would never end, but it taught me that it is not so bad asking someone for help. As Dr. M would say, “what’s the worst thing they are going to say? No?”

Then, on top of the recruiting, I had to actually write my thesis. This was a beast that I was not prepared to take on. I thought it was going to be a breeze, I mean I had already written the proposal, right? Wrong. That thesis took days upon days to write, make corrections, trash the entire thing, re-write, and continuously make more and more corrections. I am pretty sure that if I would not have had a due date I would still be making corrections. However, through all of the frustration, I finally finished the paper and learned many lessons along the way. Three of the most important ones were: (1) Don’t procrastinate. Procrastinating only results in more time stressing and less time working when it really matters. (2) Frustration is a part of the process. Dr. M told me that almost every author goes through a period of frustration, but if you use your resources you will continue to make progress. (3) You cannot write this paper alone. Yes, I was the sole author on my thesis paper, but this did not mean I had to write it alone. For many weeks I tried this and it only lead to more frustration but when I realized I had an amazing advisor, a research partner, a graduate student, a post-bac research assistant, and 15 undergraduate research assistants who were all willing to help me, the process started flowing much more smoothly.

I want to conclude this section by saying I am extremely thankful for my time here in the Spark Lab. In the past two years here, I have learned just as much about myself and life as I have about psychology and research. I am glad I got to be a part of this lab and I am truly going to miss it.