SOAR Member Profiles

Jonathan Raley

• SOAR Position: Member
• Major: Psychology
• Faculty Mentor(s): Dr. Stuart Bernstein

Current Focus: Reactivity in Personality Assessment

Additional Interests: Neuroscience

Project Description

The project focuses on looking at reactivity in personality assessment based on reaction time. We’ll be doing exploratory data analysis on the MACH-IV test, as well as an ex-Gaussian distribution model.

Why does this topic interest you?

I think it would be interesting to see if there are a group of people out there that are trying to manipulate the results in order to get an extreme score. Even though it’s a self-report survey that has no real significance, theoretically speaking there really shouldn’t be any sort of reactivity as they’re not being monitored.

What are your professional aspirations?

My professional aspirations are to get into the field of neuroscience and maybe do something like managing a lab in academic medicine. However, I do just enjoy research in general even if it’s not related to the field of psychology. So as long as I end up as a researcher, I’ll be happy.

Do you have any advice for future researchers?

As long as you’re curious you can doing anything within a field that conducts research. I’d also say don’t be afraid to find the answers you weren’t looking for, as they can be more valuable than your expected outcomes or initial hypothesis.

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