Colby Psychology | Social Motivation Laboratory

Thane Pittman

Lab Director
Chair, Department of Psychology

I am a Social Psychologist, newly arrived at Colby in the fall of 2004. Born in San Antonio, Texas, I grew up in Youngstown, Ohio. I discovered social psychology in my senior year in college when I read the book A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance for a Sociology course in Public Opinion. I asked my Professor (Jerry Lewis) what people who did that kind of work called themselves, and he said "Oh, that's social psychology." I decided I would be a social psychologist, and it's the best decision I have ever made.

I taught at Gettysburg College for many years (let's not count how many), but took the opportunity to work at other institutions (Princeton University, the University of Toronto, UC Santa Barbara, the University of Maryland), and spent the last three years before coming to Colby at Princeton, teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in Psychology and the course on Negotiation in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy and International Affairs. I decided to come to Colby because the opportunity to help to build a new psychology department, and to live in Maine, was too attractive to resist. And as you can see by learning about the rest of my research team, I have the chance to work with some amazing Colby students. The chance to keep my sailboat, Salience, in Belfast Harbor on western Penobscot Bay was kind of nice too.

People are interesting, and although it is fashionable to use computer analogies to understand some aspects of human information processing, people are nothing like computers. Our desires, hopes, fears, and needs have pervasive influences on everything that we think, feel, and do. Our lab team is dedicated to the pursuit of new knowledge about these fascinating and fundamentally important aspects of human nature.

Zoe Ray

Lab Coordinator

I am a first semester senior from Wilmette, IL. I am majoring in psychology with a concentration in neuroscienc, and I am particularly interested in social and abnormal psychology. In addition to psychology, I also love running. I participated in track and cross country in high school and have since run two marathons (including Boston) and am currently training for my third. I also enjoy photography, yoga, biking, and swimming.. I am also interested in medicine and spent last summer working as an EMT for a private ambulance company and volunteering at a local hospital. Last year I spent the spring semester in Australia at the University of Melbourne after spending January interning in Switzerland, where my Mom is from.

Cheryl Hahn

I am a senior at Colby double majoring in both psychology and biology. When I am not in the lab, I am usually found at the gym or outside running. Last year I completed my first marathon in Bar Harbor, Maine and right now I am starting to train for my second one.

For the past two years I have worked as a research assistant for Yulia Chentsova-Dutton in her Emotion and Culture lab and became interested in how different people are affected by social cues in their environment. As a biology major, I also became interested in the effects of social cues on the behavior of animals. Last year I completed an independent project in Animal Behavior that examined the activity of learned helpless mice in the presence and absence of other mice.

For the past two years, I have had the privilege of presenting two projects at the Stanford Undergraduate Research Conference. As a sophomore, I presented a poster examining how men and women are affected differently by social cues. As a junior, I gave a presentation about how the impressions of Asian and European Americans are affected differently by emotional cues.

Next year I will be working on my honors thesis with Melissa Glenn and examining the maternal behavior of female rats in the presence and absence of pups. After Colby, I plan on attending graduate school for a PhD in social psychology at tje University of Virginia.

Tim Miller

I am a senior majoring in biology with a concentration in neuroscience. My scholarly interests range widely across biology and psychology—from botany to sensation to social psych. Basically I want to figure out why things happen the way they do. Naturally I have no idea what I want to do after graduation.

I just returned home (home being Camp Hill, Pennsylvania) from a semester abroad in Tropical Australia where I studied ecology. Part of the program involved a month-long independent study project in which I investigated the invasiveness of exotic plants in the rainforest. My time in Australia was amazing, but I am excited to be back at Colby where I can work in this lab as well as also hopefully do some research in neurobiology.

Besides all that “sciency” stuff, I am actively involved in both singing and acting at Colby. I’m in two choral groups: Colby College Corale and Collegium Musicum. The former will be touring Italy over spring break. I am a member of Powder and Wig, the student theatre group and have acted in numerous plays with them as well as two theatre department shows. This semester I plan to direct a play that I wrote. I am also a member of the outing club and play in the handbell choir.

Charlotte Morse-Fortier

I'm Charlotte, and I'm currently a senior at Colby. I am a French and Psychology double major, and spent the fall semester studying abroad in Grenoble, France. I grew up in Lexington Massachusetts, and went to highschool there, where I participated in Best Buddies, photography club, and National Honor Society. I was also a member of Venture Crew 160, which was a group of high schoolers interested in hiking and outdooractivities.

In my time at Colby, I have enjoyed the opportunities to travel to Greece and Senegal (and now France). I enjoy traveling, hiking(especially here in the Alps !), Scrabble, and biking. I also play on the Colby ultimate frisbee team. I am a member of the Colby Outing Club and Best Buddies.

I became interested in psychology by taking Intro Psych at Colby and annoying my friends with semi-pertinent psychological trivia. In the past I have also had experience working with the special needs community, which got me interested in the abnormal psych field. This past summer, I worked at a camp for teenagers with Asperger?s Syndrome, Autism, and other social pragmatics disorders. We taught social skills through role-playing and theater improvisation games.

Alex Wesnousky

I am a sohpomore at Colby majoring in Psychology and perhaps something else, although am currently unsure as to what that “something else” may be. I am interested in nearly all areas of psychology, and am excited to be exploring social motivation and learning what makes people do what they do. I grew up in Davis, California, and in high school was involved in Key Club, National Honors Society, and was co-president of the environmental club. I have been involved in gymnastics since I was about 4 years old and have been both a competitive gymnast and a coach. Here at Colby I am a member of the Colby Gymnastics Club and Colby Cares About Kids, and in my free time enjoy reading, traveling, running, and doodling.

Logan Berg

I am beginning my senior year at Colby as a psychology major and a music minor.
I love listening to music, playing the guitar and traveling. Last January I went to India with Professors Steven Nuss and Anindyo Roy and, after falling in love with the country and its people, hope to go back there as soon as possible.

This past summer I worked under Dr. Erin Hannon at the Lab for Developmental Studies at Harvard University where we studied infants’ music cognition. More specifically we wanted to determine whether babies prefer culturally familiar rhythms.

I love all aspects of psychology, particularly social psychology. In the future, I plan to attend graduate school for a degree in social psychology and eventually pursue a research-related career in the field.

Michele Chu

Although I can hardly believe that I’m not an undeclared, first-year anymore, I’m a junior, now, majoring in both Psychology and Economics. The first time I encountered psychology, I was a senior at Sharon High School taking A.P. Psychology. For my AP psych project, I replicated the misinformation effect on 12 year old children. When I was able to convince middle school aged children that they had seen a hippopotamus in a pink tutu, when, in fact, they had not, I realized that psychology might just be something I would be interested in pursuing (I kid.. but not really).

This semester, I’ll be conducting research in three areas, one in human movement, one in social psychology, and the other in econometrics. And, although I love economics, when I want to understand an individual’s possible motivation past ‘maximizing their marginal utility,’ I turn to psychological concepts.

When I’m not researching the social sciences, I like to go running, play tennis, and watch ridiculous TV shows on Vh1, like ‘Flavor of Love.’ After all, there might be an interesting social psychological phenomenon to be studied there.

In the future, I would like to combine my interest in psychology and economics and go to graduate school for behavioral economics or organizational behavior. I have also not ruled out pursuing a PhD in social psychology.

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