My Harvey Specter moment presenting my poster on “Challenged Beliefs Increase Anti-Intellectual Attitudes”
Author: Mckinley Almeida | Major: Economics, Psychology | Semester: Spring 2025
The Annual Convention for the Society of Social Psychology and Personality Psychology (SPSP) is an international gathering featuring some of the brightest minds in the psychology field from all over the world. I was presenting a poster I worked on under Marie Altgilbers and Dr. Scott Eidelman titled “Challenged Beliefs Increase Anti-Intellectual Attitudes”. Well, the first question you might ask is “What is anti-intellectualism?” Anti-intellectualism can be characterized by a few elements such as distrust in evidence, distrust in experts, and no inclination for reasoning that is obviously practical. In the research that was already conducted on anti-intellectualism, the topic was always positioned as the predictor of different things, not the predicted. So we thought that challenging important beliefs was one of the things that might have caused anti-intellectualism. We conducted research that challenged core and cherished beliefs to see if anti-intellectualism would occur. Turns out it does, and that is what I presented at SPSP.
I learned a lot from presenting my poster at SPSP. One particular comment from a graduate student from the University of Michigan struck me. She mentioned that our section that measured anti-intellectualism without any manipulation served as a “baseline for anti-intellectualism”. So she recommended a study that had to do with religious leaders presenting on random topics that were non-sensical like escalators and then measuring anti-intellectualism.
The trip to SPSP was incredibly useful to my career. It’s rare for undergraduate students to present posters, I saw mainly graduate students and individuals who held PhDs. It was really insightful because as a first-generation student, it feels like I am trying to navigate the University of Arkansas website when it comes to post-undergraduate education. That being said, meeting first-generation students who are succeeding in graduate programs and asking them for advice has been useful. At first, I was really scared to hang out and talk with the graduate students in the same way a middle schooler might be afraid to hang out with high schoolers. I also felt pressure to present to people with PhDs because I was thinking to myself “I am just a humble undergraduate student, who am I to actually give my thoughts and opinions to experts in the field?!” Then I slapped myself and realized that these are people too and I shouldn’t be scared to talk to them. I ended up networking with people across the world from Ivy League schools to Korea and Japan. One moment that particularly shocked me was when I was invited to a hangout dinner with a group of graduate students from pretty prestigious schools, and we ended up talking about Breaking Bad and How I Met Your Mother over Indian food.
If I were to give any pieces of advice to other students going to a conference. I would say “Network! Network! Network!”. There are so many incredibly smart and well-connected people at these conventions, and if you can show your shine in a way thats appropriate, then they seem to really like that as well. I was also shown potential career paths since I am a double major in psychology and economics. My current hope is to be a clinical psychologist in underserved communities with a background in economics. However, some other enticing ideas that were pitched to me include behavioral economics, organizational psychology, and potentially working at the United Nations. In my life, I just hope that I can help others to the best of my ability. I personally grew up in poorer conditions, and I know that there are plenty of diamonds in the rough who dont have the resources both mentally or financially to draw out their potential. So one day, I just hope to live my life in such a way where I can love others and polish the diamonds in the rough.