How the Hispanic Perception of Brigham Young University Affects Its Multicultural Student Body

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Jorge Encinas and Clifford Mayes, Educational Leadership and Foundations Introduction The purpose of this project was to investigate potential for the small amount of Hispanic students that attend BYU. I noticed this when I noticed that the percentage of the student body that is of Hispanic has been lower lately. Meanwhile similar educational institutions in […]

Cortisol Profiles as Bio-Markers of Extreme Temperaments

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Claudia Rasmuseen and Dr. James Dee Higley, Psychology Department Temperament is defined as a variation between individuals’ affective-motivational reactivity and self-regulation (Rothbart & Bates, 1998; Rothbart & Derryberry, 1981; Rettew &McKee, 2005). Temperament can be measured as early as birth and has been found to remain relatively stable across the lifespan (Goldsmith, 1987; Lansade, Bouissou […]

The Effects of Sleep-dependent Memory Consolidation on the Discriminability and Generalizability of Learning

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Bengt Grua and Dr. C. Brock Kirwan, Departments of Psychology and Neuroscience Introduction The goal of this study was to determine how sleep affects memory recall in an academic setting with relation to memory discrimination and memory generalization. Memory generalization depends on the computational process of pattern completion, which is the brain’s ability to retrieve […]

Compulsory Voting in Latin America: Good or Bad for Democracy?

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Ian Hansen and Dr. Darren Hawkins, Political Science Using survey data from across Latin America, I sought to determine whether compulsory voting laws have negative effects on constituents’ views toward democracy. I expected to find that such laws influence voters to have lower appraisals of democracy in their country. The analysis yielded results that lend […]

Voter Turnout: How Femininity and Competence Affect Attitudes Toward Female Political Candidates

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Holly Henrich and Dr. Chris Karpowitz, Political Science Department Introduction Currently, the United States ranks as the 86th country in women’s representation in government,with 18.2 percent of seats in the House of Representatives and 20 percent representation in the Senate (Inter-Parliamentary Union, 2014). With a nation that is half comprised of women, questions are raised […]

America’s Prodigal Devotion to Light Rail: Did Denver’s Light Rail System Help with Traffic Decongestion?

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Thomas Kelemen and Dr. Michael Ransom, Economics Over the past twenty years, the Denver Regional Transit District has developed an extensive light rail public transit system in the Denver, Colorado metro area. This development was motivated, at least in part, by severe highway congestion on important highway routes to downtown Denver. In a recent analysis, […]

Good vs. Evil: Incorporating Human Stimuli to the Question of Infant Morality

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Jordan Layton and Dr. Ross Flom, Psychology A recent as well as intriguing question in developmental psychology is whether human infants have an innate sense of morality. Media outlets such as 60 Minutes and New York Times magazine have reported findings from Hamlin et al. (2007)1 that infants as young as 6-months have the innate […]

MAOa Genotype X Environment Interaction and Influence on Monoamine Neurotransmitter Functioning in Rhesus Macaques (Macaca mulatta)

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Daniel Loveland and Dr. J. Dee Higley Department of Psychology Original Project Title: Why can’t we all just get along? MAOa genotype variation is associated with aggressive temperaments in nonhuman primates In place of studying behavior differences among rhesus monkeys with differing MAOa genotypes, my research group and I chose to analyze the effects of […]