- CRedit CaRd StudY in the credit card study, weaver and team leader kist looked specifcally to college-aged students since credit companies often target 18- to 24-year olds. The team predicted that adolescents and young adults with higher credit card debt would be more impulsive than those with lower debt, and that credit cardholders in general would be more impulsive than their non-card-carrying counterparts. They questioned about 30 students, many of them freshmen, about their history with credit cards and administered two personality questionnaires to measure impulsivity. “ The fnal test – known as a delay discounting test – asked volunteers if they would prefer a small reward now or a larger reward later. essentially, the test measures the participant s ability to wait before fnally receiving a reward. ” ’ ’ The end results contradicted the teams hypothesis: data indicated that students with credit cards were actually less impulsive than non-cardholding students. and, among the cardholding students, credit card debt was fairly low. ’ updated fndings at the american psychological associations annual convention this summer. my students are completely imaginative and hard working. Jessica and Jordan really drove the research home, while i guided them and provided a frm foundation, says weaver. The insight and the dedication all started and ended with the team leaders and the assistants. while i was defnitely present to help, mostly the students derived the “ ” “ ” interpretation and outcomes. overall, it was a dynamic, creative experience for everyone. They now suspect that the cardholders – many of whom had credit cards before college – may have learned responsibility under the supervision of their parents. weaver and his team will also be continuing this study by including even younger subjects. weaver points out that humans learn the most during the frst stages of life, so studying younger people may help the team to distinguish when and why someone develops a habit or an addiction that continues into adulthood. while he supervised the teams, weaver notes that students researched, developed and followed through with these studies. he specifcally credits braymiller and kist, both of whom presented their research at the western pennsylvania undergraduate psychology conference in april and plan to present
’ postdoctoral associate at the university of pittsburgh. That work opened the door for him to head mercyhurst s new laboratory on addiction and impulsive behavior. last spring, weaver and student team leaders Jessica braymiller ’14 and Jordan kist ’15 launched the labs frst two studies. one compared social and dependent smokers, while the second probed the connection between impulsive behavior and credit card debt. ’ “ students are highly involved with these studies, explains weaver, who received the b.f. skinner foundations early career researcher award in 2013. i ve been blown away by the students response in lab. working in teams has been a collaborative and dynamic process. ” ’ “ ’ ’ ” ’ with an estimated 163,000 americans dying each year from smoking-related illnesses (and another fve million worldwide), braymiller s team questioned why adults continue to smoke despite widespread information about the negative health efects caused by tobacco products. The student researchers started with the hypothesis that external cues – like a familiar environment or a pack of cigarettes – can cause smokers to subconsciously crave tobacco. They set out to determine whether social smokers react diferently to those cues than dependent smokers do and whether smokers respond diferently depending on how much nicotine is present in their systems. “ ” ’ The researchers frst divided their 19 test subjects – smokers aged 19-58 – into social smokers and dependent smokers. The researchers then compared participants heart rate, skin temperature and craving before and after the test. during the test the researchers showed the smokers cues, in this case photos of popular outdoor smoking spots on the erie campus. models in some held cigarettes, while in others the same models held more neutral objects, like cell phones or car keys. ’ The subjects were tested once right after smoking a cigarette, and on another occasion when they hadn t smoked for at least four hours. The results surprised the students, who had fgured that only the dependent smokers would crave cigarettes. They found that all smokers, regardless of dependence level, craved a cigarette after four hours of abstinence. even more surprising, the dependent smokers reported craving cigarettes after they were exposed to the cues even when they had just smoked a cigarette. Thus, it appears that dependent smokers are more afected by the cues than non-dependent smokers. by characterizing the relationship between smoking cues and dependence level, the group hopes to help prevent social smokers from turning into dependent smokers, and help those who are already dependent smokers. These are questions psychology professor matthew T. weaver, ph.d., explored during several years as a
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