Poster Presentation – Jolie Brewer

Author: Jolie Brewer | Major: Psychology | Semester: Summer 2025

My name is Jolie Brewer, and I am a psychology major on the pre-med track. My research investigated the relationship between psychopathy and an appreciation for dark humor. I found that individuals who display more signs of psychopathy, specifically egocentrism, are more likely to use and appreciate dark humor.

For my trip, I went to Atlantic City, New Jersey. While in Atlantic City, I attended the annual Northeastern Evolutionary Psychology Society (NEEPS) conference. At this conference, I presented at the in-person poster presentation on Tuesday, June 10th. While I was presenting, I had the opportunity to talk to some well-known researchers who took an interest in my study. By having these conversations, I was able to expand on possible future directions. These conversations also challenged me to step outside of my comfort zone and answer questions that I had never thought of before. Most of the feedback I received about my poster was positive, with many people wanting to know how I found the jokes that I used and why I chose this topic. This gave me the opportunity to speak about my hours of scrolling TikTok and Facebook reels to find jokes that I could use.

This trip contributed to my professional development by allowing me to meet others in my field. It also prepared me for future conversations or interviews. By answering questions about my poster, I was given the challenge of answering “on-the-spot” questions and testing my knowledge about my topic. There were several experts at this conference, and I was given the opportunity to meet them. This opened doors for me because many of them were more than willing to collaborate on future studies. If a collaboration were to happen, it would multiply access to resources such as materials and participants. This could open doors for many more research opportunities in the future.

This trip taught me not only about psychological research, but also about life. By travelling to Atlantic City, I was exposed to different ways of life that I had never seen firsthand. Being from a small town, I found it interesting seeing how people live outside of Arkansas. I also learned some things by attending sessions at the conference. There were several talks that stuck out to me. One of these talks was about the influence of mustaches in romantic partnerships. This research concluded that men without mustaches were ranked higher in a series of qualities, including long-term and short-term partners. Another talk that I found interesting was about the supernormal stimuli of sex dolls. In this talk, the focus was on how many men have unrealistic expectations of women’s bodies due to the unnatural shapes and proportions of sex dolls.

Some advice that I would give to other students would be to have confidence in your research. It is not uncommon for people to have questions about your study or its findings, and they may not always agree with your conclusion. It is important to remember that you ran the study, collected the data, and analyzed the results. Even if the topic is not in your “specialty”, you still know more about it than the average person, so be confident in what you know. With that being said, if someone asks a question that you do not know the answer to, don’t be afraid to admit it. It is better to admit when you don’t know something than to try to make something up. You might even learn something in the process by asking them their opinion. This can open opportunities to learn and potentially generate new research ideas. I had some of these conversations, and I came up with more future directions that I hadn’t thought of. This brings up the topic of what is next for me. I plan to extend research on my findings about psychopathy and dark humor. This will be the topic of my thesis, and hopefully a published paper or two.