2nd in Social Sciences!
Author: Bree Westfall | Major: Psychology | Semester: Spring 2023
My name is Bree Westfall, and I just graduated from the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a minor in criminology. For the last year and a half, I’ve been working on my Honors thesis under Dr. Jennifer Veilleux in the Psychological Sciences department. Spring 2024 was my final semester of Honors College Research Grant funding, during which I completed and successfully defended my thesis on the experience of emotional numbness. Since graduating, I have accepted and began a research assistant job at UAMS in the Psychiatric Research Institute – Center for Addiction Research. I plan to continue this job for at least a year (maybe two) until I feel confident and accomplished enough to be competitive for my dream PhD graduate program in Clinical Psychology.
My thesis research was a lengthy project, hence the 1.5 year timeline. In summary, we conducted a two-part project with a qualitative and quantitative component, asking participants general questions about their experience with the phenomenon of emotional numbness (defined as the lack of emotional feeling). Between both studies, we had 350 total participants, which were sourced from both the UARK psychology subject pool and an online general population subject pool. Notably, only 4 people between both studies indicated that they had never experienced emotional numbness, so our biggest takeaway from this project was that emotional numbness in indeed a common experience, and it should be studied further. We had other interesting findings that I will detail more later, but overall I believe my project could have a substantial impact on emotional psychology and the study of emotional numbness.
As I said in my blog post for my first semester of funding, the starting point for this research came from what we call “me-search,” as I have personally experienced the phenomenon and wanted to learn more about it. I had already been interested in affective or emotional psychology, and I was a research assistant in Dr. Veilleux’s TEMPT Lab on campus, so choosing a mentor came quite easily, as our research interests heavily aligned.
We learned quite a bit about emotional numbness, aside from how common it is. We found that the phenomenon is related to other psychological constructs, including alexithymia, interoceptive awareness, and self-invalidation due to emotion. Additionally, we had some preliminary conclusions that those who experience emotional numbness more severely have more cognitive dissonance in their thoughts and feelings toward the experience. These findings have many research and clinical implications, and I am very much looking forward to furthering my findings throughout my research career.
The only real challenges I would say I faced were the timing of the project. Because it was such a large endeavor, I vastly underestimated how much work and time I would need to commit to the project. As the deadlines were approaching much faster than I had anticipated, I really had to set aside all my free time to finalizing and writing up my paper, as well as preparing for my defense. This was especially difficult because of how much data we had collected in the end. I found all of it to be interesting, but one can only put so much information into a 30 minute presentation.
Dr. Veilleux was an absolutely amazing mentor. She helped me learn data programming and taught me so much about research that I feel entirely confident moving forward in the psychology research field. We kept the project ultimately my own, as I got to choose what I wanted to include and exclude, while Dr. Veilleux regularly checked my worked, encouraged my curiosity, and offered constructive criticism where necessary. I also got a little help from other RAs in the TEMPT lab who assisted me in coding the lengthy qualitative data from Study 1. The Ras and graduate students in the lab also helped me practice for my defense, offering advice and raising questions that were super helpful moving forward.
I did get to present my final project at the UARK Undergraduate Research Week Poster Competition, where I placed 2nd in the Social Sciences category! This was incredibly encouraging and validating, knowing that others looked at my work and saw the hardwork and effort I put into the project. As for what’s next, Dr. Veilleux and I are working on co-authoring an article on my thesis data, which I’m incredibly excited for. Things are moving a little slowly on my part, as I’m working full-time now, but I hope to complete the paper and submit to a journal by the end of the summer. My job at UAMS is also going great. I’m working on a NIDA-funded clinical trial on the use of different medications to help those with opioid addictions, which is not only extremely interesting from a psychology standpoint, but also super fulfilling when I get to interact and help people who want to recover from addiction. I’m excited to continue in this line of work, and eventually continue my education in graduate school.
Finally, I want to say that I’m beyond grateful for the Honors College funding my time during my thesis research. Because of the extra financial support, I was able to solely focus on the project that I was extremely passionate about, putting in my best work and effort.