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Jill Cermele

Self-defense training has benefits for women beyond helping them resist an attack, says Jill Cermele, associate professor of psychology. The training can also have a spillover effect on other areas of their lives. “We’re finding that women who take part in self-defense training are limiting their behavior less, taking jobs that involve travel, asking for raises, telling their peers or professors if their behavior is inappropriate,” Cermele says. Cermele teaches courses on violence and women’s resistance and heads the Lab for Research on Women’s Resistance to Violence at Drew. In interviewing dozens of women about their resistance experiences, Cermele has also discovered that women are often unaware of their own successful resistance until they are asked about things that have happened – and things that haven’t. “It’s important for women to frame the ways in which they have kept themselves safe as ‘successful resistance,’ rather than just thinking about it as a situation where ‘nothing happened,’ ” Cermele says.  “Knowing you have maintained your own safety in the past increases the likelihood you can and will do it again in the future.”  Cermele is collecting and sharing these stories to counter the myth that women can’t or don’t fight back effectively.  “The data tell us that for women, resistance increases the likelihood that assaults are thwarted,” she says.  Cermele’s work on resistance goes beyond academic study. She has taught with Prepare Inc., a New York-based personal safety organization, and has brought its IMPACT® self-defense program to more than 150 students, faculty, staff, and alumnae at Drew.

Graham Cousens

A region of the brain known as the nucleus accumbens is believed to play a significant role in drug addiction. While scientists know that drug use triggers the release of dopamine in that part of the brain, another chemical may also play a role in drug addiction, says Graham Cousens, an assistant professor of psychology. Cousens studies how modifications in the brain contribute to changes in behavior. For example, what triggers the brain, once exposed to certain narcotics, to crave those drugs? Cousens’ lab is looking at the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. Like dopamine, acetylcholine is highly concentrated in the nucleus accumbens. Unlike dopamine, though, it is a not a feel-good chemical. Rather, it may contribute to withdrawal symptoms. “People continue to take drugs, in part, to avoid the withdrawal symptoms,” Cousens says. He hypothesizes that if the receptors for acetylcholine can be blocked, say, by another drug, withdrawal anxiety will be less severe. “We want to understand how the brain changes during the transition from initial drug exposure to drug dependence so that treatments can be developed or addiction can be prevented,” he adds. He is also investigating how areas of the brain involved in drug addiction contribute to normal learning and motivation processes. In addition to his research, Cousens teaches introductory psychology and a course on cognitive neuroscience, a new course in Drew’s neuroscience program. The program, he says, is designed “to give our neuroscience students exposure to research techniques in our laboratories as well as provide opportunities to learn about research using high-tech procedures such as magnetic resonance imaging.”

Patrick Dolan

Nearly all of us believe that our memories of certain events in our lives are infallible. But psychologists have found that our memories are more porous and malleable than we think. Patrick Dolan, chair of Drew’s psychology department, is an expert on learning and memory. He teaches a course on cognition, which includes memory, language, and perception, and a seminar on cognitive illusions – how our brain plays tricks on us. He also conducts research on how our memories don’t always behave the way we think they do. “If we witness a crime but are then exposed to incorrect information about that event, we’ll start to misremember what really happened,” Dolan says. He is studying how even television crime shows may distort a witness’ remembrance of events. “If I watch ‘CSI’ on Monday, then on Tuesday witness a crime that’s similar to one in the show, will I be confused or misled by what I watched?” Dolan asks. He is also investigating whether people learn about the world through fictional, as well as non-fictional, sources. He and a graduate of Drew who now teaches at Duke are trying to understand whether movies, novels, and other fictional sources shape our general knowledge of the world. “The examples we’re using are the novel and movie versions of ‘The Da Vinci Code,’ ” Dolan says. “Some of the book and movie is blatantly made up but there’s a lot of real information about Da Vinci, the Louvre, and art. At what point do we decide, ‘This is not reality.’ And do we even make that evaluation?”

George-Harold Jennings

Since its origins more than a century ago, modern psychology has resisted any connection to spirituality. Psychologists have worked hard to be taken seriously as scientists and many believe that linking themselves with matters of the spirit could hurt their credibility. But George-Harold Jennings, an adjunct associate professor of psychology, sees glimmers of hope that spiritual, or transpersonal, psychology is gaining acceptance. “It’s not mainstream, so it’s been resisted or simply ignored,” says Jennings, who is an expert on transpersonal psychology. “But for the last 40 or so years, it’s been like snow falling. Now we’re seeing the snowflakes sticking.” For example, Jennings was heartened to learn that the latest edition of a major psychology text, Personality Theories, cited Jennings’ book Passages Beyond the Gate, which explores spiritual concepts of psychology. What’s more, the American Psychological Association recently launched the journal Psychology of Religion and Spirituality to explore those aspects of psychology. “Transpersonal psychology goes beyond the ego and allows one to ponder the greater whole – the cosmos, the divine, the spiritual,” Jennings says. “But it’s not a religious approach; it’s a psychological approach to spiritual matters.” Like Carl Jung and William James, two major figures of modern psychology, Jennings argues that we have a spiritual side to our nature which psychology should address. He believes that many people who are depressed or suffering other psychological maladies can find healing and purpose to their lives when they embrace their spirituality. And he adds, “We must study our spirituality if we hope to get an even deeper understanding of what it means to be human.”

Jessica Lakin

Maybe Groucho Marx didn’t want to be in any club that would have him, but the rest of us desperately want to fit in. So much so that we unconsciously mimic those whose acceptance we prize. Jessica Lakin, an assistant professor of psychology, wants to know how far people are willing to go to be accepted by others. In one study, she put volunteers in front of a computer to play a simple ball-tossing game with other unseen players. However, some of the volunteers weren’t passed the ball by the other players. “It’s essentially everyone’s worst memory from elementary school,” Lakin says. “All the sudden the other players start passing the ball to each other and leave you out.” Afterward, the volunteers sat down to chat with someone new to the study, who had not played the ball-tossing game. This person was actually a specially trained research assistant. The volunteers who felt excluded from the game were more likely to mimic subtle foot movements, such as tapping or shaking, by the assistants. Lakin says that the mimicry was an attempt by the excluded volunteers to ingratiate themselves with new people they thought might accept them. Lakin believes this behavior is a sort of “social glue” that helps us get along with others. “When you’re excluded from a group that’s important to you and you have a chance to make nice with someone else, you go out of your way to do it,” Lakin says. She is also studying whether people unconsciously copy others’ negative behaviors, such as frowning or fidgeting.