OUR LAB
A Collaborative & Diverse Group
Students in the Culture and Human Development Lab have an opportunity to learn research skills including research design, data collection, coding, writing manuscripts, and giving research presentations. The major aims of the lab group are to extend theoretical and methodological underpinnings of psychology as a field and to extend the results of various research programs across cultural groups. Undergraduate students work together with Dr. Maynard and the graduate students to produce research that meets these aims.
SOPHIE GRALAPP, MA
Graduate Student
Sophie Gralapp is a sixth-year PhD student in the Community, Cultural, and Developmental psychology program. Although born in Salem, Massachusetts, she spent several years of her adolescence living overseas in places like Sydney, Australia, and Beijing, China. However, the majority of her life has been spent in Honolulu, Hawai'i, which is where she calls home. She completed her master’s thesis exploring whether or not it’s possible to induce empathy for stigmatized groups and their families in spring of 2017: “Making People Care: Can inducing empathic concern motivate desire to engage in social action on behalf of a stigmatized group and their families?” Currently, she is collecting data for her dissertation exploring the impact of job stress experienced by correctional officers: “Job Stress Experienced by Correctional Officers in Hawai‘i Related to Working in a Carceral Space.” Sophie also works as a graduate research assistant for Dr. Jack Barile’s Ecological Determinants Lab as a program evaluator for Hawai'i’s chapter of Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD), which is a community-based diversion program serving people whose criminal activity is due to behavioral health issues. Sophie is interested in using program evaluation as a tool to provide practical feedback to programs in order to better reach their short and long-term goals and her research is focused primarily on finding ways to better serve and understand the needs of underserviced populations, especially those impacted by arrest and incarceration.
Past Student Dissertations
Lance Linke, Ph.D., 2007 A developmental approach to understanding the evaluation of moral transgressions across social category.
Marianna Valdez, Ph.D., 2008 The interplay between sense of community and poverty in middle school students' achievement.
Maria-Christina Stewart, Ph.D., 2009 Relationships between Intolerance of Uncertainty and eating disorder symptomatology in a mixed non-clinical, sub-clinical, and clinical eating disordered population.
Katrin Tovote, Ph.D., 2011 How working poor Maya migrant families acculturate to an urban setting- daily routines and adaptation strategies.
Rebecca Luning, Ph.D., 2013 Uluwehi na Pua i ke Kulaiwi: Perspectives from Hawaiian Cultural Practitioners and Classroom Educators on a Modern Hawaiian Ethnotheory of Learning.
Ashley Anglin, Ph.D., 2014 Collaborative Identification of Assets in South Rome, Georgia Using the Community Capitals Framework: Exploring Influential Factors and Discovering Community Strengths.
Dewayne Bettag, Ph.D. 2016 Analysis of the Adaptation of the Responsive Teaching Paradigm to Serve Predominantly Native Hawaiian Communities: A Framework for Guiding Culturally Appropriate, Family-Centered, Relationship-Based Early Childhood Services.
Ashley Morris, PhD. 2017 Gender stereotypes and counter-stereotypes in children’s television: Prevalence and effects on children’s own stereotypes.
Melodi Wynne, Ph.D. 2018 Indigenizing Intellectual Property: Tribally-Based Definition and Protections for Traditional Knowledge and Cultural Resources.
Michele Cantwell, Ph.D. 2019 Relationships of Geopolitical, Ethnic, and Moral Identity Profiles on Narcissism, Altruism, and Political Ideology: A Latent Profile Analysis.