UROP Project

Contaminant Avoidance Adaptability

threat, contamination, avoidance, pathogen, adaptive

Research Mentor: Dr. David S. March,
Department, College, Affiliation: Psychology, Arts and Sciences
Contact Email: march@psy.fsu.edu
Research Assistant Supervisor (if different from mentor): Patrick J. Oefelein
Research Assistant Supervisor Email: oefelein@psy.fsu.edu
Faculty Collaborators:
Faculty Collaborators Email:

Looking for Research Assistants: Yes
Number of Research Assistants: 1
Relevant Majors: Psychology
Project Location: On FSU Main Campus
Research Assistant Transportation Required:
Remote or In-person: In-person
Approximate Weekly Hours: 5-10, During business hours
Roundtable Times and Zoom Link:
Not participating in the roundtable

Project Description

Contaminants are objects, organisms, or individuals that may serve as vectors of harmful pathogens. Avoiding them therefore requires a cost-benefit calculation that weighs the potential costs of infection against the potential benefits of approaching or interacting with a contamination source, such as food, shelter, useful information, or social connection. This calculation is inherently asymmetric since in many contexts, the potential fitness costs of infection are substantially greater than the benefits associated with any single opportunity for resource acquisition. Yet people do not evaluate these costs and benefits objectively or in a vacuum. Their judgments are shaped by factors that alter either the perceived likelihood and cost of infection or the subjective value of the resource at stake, including current hunger or need, resource scarcity, risk tolerance, prior experience, and broader environmental conditions.
 
In the current work, we are interested in whether resource deprivation changes this tradeoff, particularly when deprivation occurs during early development or is experienced chronically in the present. One possibility is that adaptation to resource-scarce environments increases the subjective cost of foregoing an available resource. Under scarcity, passing up food, shelter, social support, or other opportunities may itself become consequential enough to justify accepting greater contamination risk. Resource deprivation may therefore shift the cost-benefit calculation away from pathogen avoidance and toward resource acquisition, not necessarily because contaminants are perceived as less dangerous, but because the competing benefits of approach become more valuable. If so, individuals with greater histories or current experiences of resource deprivation should be more willing to tolerate contamination risk when doing so provides an opportunity to acquire a valued resource.

A UROP student will work prepare the stimuli used in the study and collect behavioral and survey data from participants in the lab. Once data collection is complete, the UROP student may be involved in applying insights from the study to explain behaviors like risk tolerance, contamination threat evaluations, and group interactions.

Research Tasks: Stimuli creation, study creation/coding, data collection, data cleaning, supplementary literature search and review.

Skills that research assistant(s) may need: Basic familiarity with Windows++ (required)
Basic knowledge of image editing/cropping (required)
Basic statistical programming experience/knowledge (recommended, and can be taught)
Quick and eager to learn new skills