Features

Features

by Pooja Shah '17

0704_14_002Cornell psychologist Valerie Reyna, along with co-investigator Valerie Hans from the Cornell Law School, has received a $390,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to better understand damage award decision-making.

Juries are often at sea about award amounts, with widely differing outcomes for cases that seem comparable. To make sense of this process—and, ultimately, improve the process of juror decision-making—the grant builds on evidence-based scientific theory developed at Cornell.

Reyna, professor of human development in the College of Human Ecology, said the research seeks to identify the causes of inconsistent jury awards and to test credible and cost-effective solutions that could reduce unwarranted inconsistency. Researchers will apply fuzzy-trace theory, believing that jurors often understand the gist of damages but have difficulty mapping verbatim numbers (dollar awards) onto that gist.

Currently, jurors are provided with limited guidance by the legal system and are presented with injuries that are often difficult to value. For instance, Reyna said, how do we value the loss of a spouse, the pain of a severe physical injury, or the inability to hug a child?  Researchers will evaluate the effectiveness of potential legal reforms—such as providing meaningful numbers as benchmarks and “scaling” instructions that place damages in perspective. Preliminary evidence suggests that such behavioral nudges can improve the process of translating a qualitative human injury into a quantitative monetary award.

Reyna, along with Hans and Cornell students, recently published a related paper, “The Gist of Juries: Testing a Model of Damage Award Decision Making,”  in Psychology, Public Policy, and Law. (Read more about the paper in the Cornell Chronicle.)

The grant was made by the NSF Law and Social Sciences Program, which supports interdisciplinary research proposals that promote a greater understanding of the connections between law and human behavior while advancing scientific theory.

By Blaine Friedlander
Reprinted from Cornell Chronicle, July 8, 2015. Updated September 1, 2015.

For juries awarding plaintiffs for pain and suffering, the task is more challenging – and the results more inconsistent – than awarding for economic damages, which is formulaic. Now, Cornell social scientists show how to reduce wide variability for monetary judgments in those cases: Serve up the gist.

As an example of gist, juries take into account the severity of injury and time-scope. In the case of a broken ankle, that injury is a temporary setback that can be healed. In an accident where someone’s face is disfigured, the scope of time lasts infinitely and affects life quality. In short, “meaningful anchors” – where monetary awards ideally complement the context of the injury – translate into more consistent dollar amounts.

Valerie Reyna

Valerie Reyna

“Inherently, assigning exact dollar amounts is difficult for juries,” said Valerie Reyna, professor of human development. “Making awards is not chaos for juries. Instead of facing verbatim thoughts, juries rely on gist – as it is much more enduring. And when we realize that gist is more enduring, our models suggest that jury awards are fundamentally consistent.”

The foundation for understanding jury awards lies in the “fuzzy trace” theory, developed by Reyna and Charles Brainerd, professor of human development. The theory explains how in-parallel thought processes are represented in your mind. While verbatim representations – such as facts, figures, dates and other indisputable data – are literal, gist representations encompass a broad, general, imprecise meaning.

VHans Chronicle

Valerie Hans

“Experiments have confirmed the basic tenets of fuzzy trace theory,” said Valerie Hans, psychologist and Cornell professor of law, who studies the behavior of juries. “People engage in both verbatim- and gist-thinking, but when they make decisions, gist tends to be more important in determining the outcome; gist seems to drive decision-making.”

In addition to authors Reyna and Hans for the study, “The Gist of Juries: Testing a Model of Award and Decision Making,” the other co-authors include Jonathan Corbin Ph.D. ’15; Ryan Yeh ’13, now at Yale Law School; Kelvin Lin ’14, now at Columbia Law School; and Caisa Royer, a doctoral student in the field of human development and a student at Cornell Law School.

The research was funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health, Cornell’s Institute for the Social Sciences, the Cornell Law School and Cornell’s College of Human Ecology.

Update: On Sept. 1, 2015, the National Science Foundation awarded a grant for $389,996 to Cornell for support of the project “Quantitative Judgments in Law: Studies of Damage Award Decision Making,” under the direction of Valerie P. Hans and Valerie F. Reyna.

By Blaine Friedlander
Reprinted from the Cornell Chronicle, July 16, 2015

Relax. Breathe. It’s all small stuff. When faced with life’s daily challenges, adults who don’t maintain a positive outlook have shown elevated physiological markers for inflaming cardiovascular and autoimmune disease, according to new research by Cornell University and Penn State psychologists.

Anthony Ong

Anthony Ong

“Hassles and minor frustrations are common in day-to-day living. Our findings suggest that how people react to daily stressors may matter more … than the frequency of such stressors,” explain the researchers in “Affective Reactivity to Daily Stressors is Associated with Elevated Inflammation,” published June 8 in the journal Health Psychology and co-authored by Anthony Ong, Cornell associate professor of human development; along with Penn State researchers Nancy Sin, Jennifer Graham-Engeland and David Almeida.

While many scientists have studied how chronic stress affects human health, the researchers explained that little is known about how reactivity to daily stressors affects biomarkers of inflammation.

The study found that those people who had difficulty maintaining positive emotional engagement during times of stress appeared to be particularly at risk for elevated levels of inflammation.

The researchers surveyed nearly 870 midlife and older adults. People who experienced greater decreases in positive affect on days when stress occurred were found to have increased amounts of interleukin-6 (a protein that acts as an inflammatory or anti-inflammatory agent) and C-reactive protein (an anti-inflammatory agent). Women who experience increased negative affect when faced with minor stressors may be at particular risk of elevated inflammation.

“Previous research suggests that the chronic experience of joy and happiness may slow down the physiological effects of aging,” Ong said. “This study extends that research by showing that possessing stable levels of ‘positive affect’ may be conducive to good health, while disturbances in daily positive affect may be associated with heightened inflammatory immune responses.”

Ong explained, “These findings are novel because they point to the importance of daily positive emotion regulation that until now have largely been neglected in studies of stress and inflammation.”

By Lori Sonken
Reprinted from the Cornell Chronicle, June 2, 2015

 

Banner-Logo-150x150Scholars funded through the Institute for the Social Sciences’ small grant program this spring seek to answer such questions as, how do economic crises affect voters’ behavior, and how do public perceptions of social inequality influence efforts to mobilize cooperative solutions to climate change?

Twice yearly, the Institute for the Social Sciences (ISS) provides up to $12,000 to tenured and tenure-track faculty through its peer-reviewed small grant program. This spring, faculty from six different colleges won awards.

“One of the strengths of the program is that it forges interdisciplinary connections across campus, both in the traditional strongholds of the social sciences and units where scholars are working at the boundaries of social sciences, humanities and life sciences,” said Kim Weeden, professor of sociology and the Robert S. Harrison Director of ISS.

One of these boundary-spanning projects is a collaborative effort between Malte Jung and Steven Jackson, both in Computing and Information Sciences, and a surgical team at Weill Medical College in New York City. They will compare robotic and laparoscopic surgical teams.

Christopher Huckfeldt, assistant professor in economics, is calibrating a macroeconomic model of unemployment with data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. He is applying quantitative macroeconomic theory to assess the importance of occupational downgrading in generating permanent income losses for workers who lose their job during a recession.

“The ISS grant has put me on a faster track to accomplish the research goals associated with my project. As a junior faculty member, this type of grant is invaluable for establishing a long-term research agenda,” Huckfeldt said.

Claire Lim, assistant professor in economics, is looking at how deregulation, mergers and acquisitions, and changes in regulators’ ideology, have affected executive compensation in the domestic energy industry. She’s also examining how political environments in the U.S. influence the regulation and conduct of energy firms.

Using the Charles Manson murders and subsequent trials in the early 1970s as a stage, Claudia Verhoeven, associate professor in history, hopes to invigorate the historiography through analysis of gender, class, race, geo-politics, pop and mass culture, social movements, religion, the justice system, mass media and militant environmentalism. She intends to properly situate the case in the context of the late 1960s, and provide it with a reception history – a history of the way events were portrayed and perceived at the time.

Jonathon Schuldt, assistant professor of communication, will use his ISS grant to study how socioeconomic status influences beliefs and intentions to address and mitigate climate change.

Alexander Kuo, assistant professor of government, will use the grant to conduct surveys before and after the 2015 national elections in Spain to analyze how an economic crisis affects voter behavior and supports new political movements.

The ISS’ small grants program also is supporting two upcoming conferences.

Trevor Pinch and collaborators Michael Lynch and Bruce Lewenstein, all from science and technology studies, are using ISS funds to support a 2016 conference to take stock of the field of science and technology studies, what it has accomplished and where it is headed.

Another conference, led by Gustavo Flores-Macias, assistant professor in government, is bringing together leading scholars on the political economy of Latin America in a conference to address taxation and its importance to inequality and economic development.

Other recipients of spring 2015 small grants include Adam Anderson, associate professor in human development; Garrick Blalock, associate professor in the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management; John Forester, professor in city and regional planning; Karel Mertens, associate professor of economics; David Mimno, assistant professor in information science; and Luo Zuo, assistant professor of accounting.

The deadline for the fall 2015 small grants competition is Sept. 8, and applications will be requested shortly after the fall semester begins.

Lori Sonken is the staff writer for the Institute for the Social Sciences.

By H. Roger Segelken
Reprinted from the Cornell Chronicle, June 15, 2015
EEV-brains460_2

MRI images show increased activity in the brains of EEV gene carriers. (Rebecca Todd)

As research subjects viewed emotion-laden pictures while an fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imagining) machine scanned their brains for activity, researchers in a Cornell-University of British Columbia-University of Toronto study began to think: Perhaps our genes really can regulate response to emotional information.

Carriers of a genetic variation (the ADRA2b deletion variant) showed more vivid perceptions of emotional events (called emotionally enhanced vividness or EEV), which was associated with more activity in a region of the brain responsible for regulating emotions and evaluating pleasure and threat (the ventromedial prefrontal cortex), researchers reported in the April 22 Journal of Neuroscience.

The 2014 study was a relatively small one, with 39 subjects undergoing fMRI scans at the University of Toronto. Slightly more than half (21) carried the ADRA2b deletion variant, and the rest did not. But the result was clear. Some people are genetically wired, as the researchers report, to “enhance the subjective vividness of perceptual experience and its emotional enhancement.”

“Emotions are not only about how we feel about the world, but how our brains construct our perception of it,” says Adam K. Anderson, Cornell associate professor of human development and the study’s senior author.

“Our genes influence how our brains see the positive and negative aspects of our world more vividly. As a result, we may come to mistakenly believe the world has more rewards or threats.” “People really do see the world differently,” said Rebecca Todd, first author and assistant professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia. “For people with this gene variation, the emotionally relevant things in the world stand out much more.”

Todd said she believes emotionally enhanced vividness may help explain why some people are more susceptible to PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) and intrusive memories following trauma.

The report is titled “Neurogenic Variations in Norepinephrine Availability Enhance Perceptual Vividness.” The study was supported, in part, by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.EEV-brains460_2

Reprinted from the Cornell Chronicle, June 17, 2015
Pillemer460

Karl Pillemer

With wedding season in full swing, America’s newlyweds stand to learn from the experts: older adults whose love has endured job changes, child-rearing, economic certainty, health concerns and other life challenges.

Filling our knowledge gap on finding a mate and remaining married, Cornell gerontologist Karl Pillemer completed the Cornell Marriage Advice Project, the largest in-depth interview study ever done of people in very long unions, surveying more than 700 individuals wedded for a total of 40,000 years. The findings are detailed in Pillemer’s book, “30 Lessons for Loving: Advice from the Wisest Americans on Love, Relationships, and Marriage.”

To capture the voice of lived experience, Pillemer conducted a random national survey of nearly 400 Americans age 65 and older, asking how to find a compatible partner and other advice on love and relationships. In subsequent in-person interviews with more than 300 long-wedded individuals – those in unions of 30, 40, 50, or more years – Pillemer captured more insights for overcoming common marriage troubles. His team interviewed divorced individuals, too, asking how others might avoid marital breakups.

The average age of interviewees was 77 and included 58 percent women and 42 percent men. The average length of marriage in the sample was 44 years; the couple with the longest marriage were ages 98 and 101 and had been married 76 years. Responses were coded into the most commonly occurring recommendations, resulting in a list of the most frequently selected lessons for a successful, long-term relationship.

“Rather than focus on a small number of stories, my goal was to take advantage of the ‘wisdom of crowds,’ collecting the love and relationship advice of a large and varied cross-section of long-married elders in a scientifically reliable and valid way,” said Pillemer.

Pillemer uncovered common advice for couples walking down the aisle or decades into marriage. The top five lessons from the elders, along with Pillemer’s analysis:

Learn to communicate: “For a good marriage, the elders overwhelmingly tell us to ‘talk, talk, talk.’ They believe most marital problems can be solved through open communication, and conversely many whose marriages dissolved blamed lack of communication.”

Get to know your partner very well before marrying: “Many of the elders I surveyed married very young; despite that fact, they recommend the opposite. They strongly advise younger people to wait to marry until they have gotten to know their partner well and have a number of shared experiences. An important part of this advice is a lesson that was endorsed in very strong terms: Never get married expecting to be able to change your partner.”

Treat marriage as an unbreakable, lifelong commitment: “Rather than seeing marriage as a voluntary partnership that lasts only as long as the passion does, the elders propose a mindset in which it is a profound commitment to be respected, even if things go sour over the short term. Many struggled through dry and unhappy periods and found ways to resolve them – giving them the reward of a fulfilling, intact marriage in later life.”

Learn to work as a team: “The elders urge us to apply what we have learned from our lifelong experiences in teams – in sports, in work, in the military – to marriage. Concretely, this viewpoint involves seeing problems as collective to the couple, rather than the domain of one partner. Any difficulty, illness, or setback experienced by one member of the couple is the other partner’s responsibility.”

Chose a partner who is very similar to you: “Marriage is difficult at times for everyone, the elders assert, but it’s much easier with someone who shares your interests, background and orientation. The most critical need for similarity is in core values regarding potentially contentious issues like child-rearing, how money should be spent and religion.”

According to Pillemer, “These unique insights show the value of using rigorous survey methods to uncover the practical wisdom of older people. Although a number of general studies of elder wisdom have been conducted, no one had researched the specific advice elders have for a critical life domain like marriage. Therefore, the study points the way toward the need for future research on concrete lessons we learn over the course of our lives.”

By Josephine Engreitz
Reprinted from Cornell Chronicle, May 5, 2015
oadi460

Lance Collins, dean of the College of Engineering, speaks at the second annual Office of Academic Diversity Initiatives Honors Award Ceremony May 1. (Lindsay France/University Photography)

 

In 1890, ex-slave George Washington Fields became the first African- American to graduate from Cornell Law School. Nearly 125 years later, the Office of Academic Diversity Initiatives (OADI) continues to celebrate diversity at Cornell with a series of awards named after Fields and nine other Cornellian trailblazers.

More than 70 people gathered May 1 for the second annual OADI Honors Awards Ceremony. Student presentations, a dinner reception and musical performances kicked off the event, which highlighted accomplishments and contributions of some of Cornell’s most talented scholars and leaders.

OADI is pronounced “wadi,” which is an Arabic and Swahili word for a cool, protected passage through a desert, often formed by a seasonal river. OADI was formed in 2011 as part of an initiative to provide support and mentorship to Cornell students who come from historically underrepresented backgrounds.

“These services play a crucial role in fulfilling Cornell University’s ‘any person, any study’ motto,” said Carlos Gonzalez, executive director of OADI.

Engineering Dean Lance Collins gave the keynote address for the awards ceremony. The first African-American dean at Cornell, Collins shared his insights on the role of diversity in the three core pillars of academic excellence: scholarship, leadership and community engagement.

Collins encouraged the audience to seek mentors and to mentor others, to lead by inspiring others to take action, and to work for results rather than recognition.

Collins also emphasized the importance of thinking about diversity not only as a social justice issue, but also in terms of the inherent value that it brings to society. “We are a pluralistic society, and there is great power and strength in that,” he said. “Each of you in the audience brings something special and unique and positive, adding to the excellence of this institution.”

OADI presented 10 awards named after some of Cornell’s most inspiring trailblazers that recognized achievement and excellence of scholar-leaders and campus partners. This year’s recipients were:

  • Andrew Martinez '12, assistant dean of students, 626 Center for Intercultural Dialogue – Ryokichi Yatabe Award for Outstanding Alumna/Alumnus Partner.
  • Anthony Burrow, assistant professor, human development – Estevan Fuertes Award for Outstanding OADI Faculty Partner.
  • Angel Keen, assistant director, Diversity Programs in Engineering – Tomás Bautista Mapúa Award for Outstanding OADI Staff Partner.
  • Zarif Islam, M.P.S. candidate – Toni Morrison Award for Outstanding Graduate Mentorship.
  • Scholars Working Ambitiously to Graduate (SWAG) – Club Brasileiro Award for Outstanding Organization.
  • Kemar Prussien '15 – Solomon Cook Award for Engaged Research and Scholarship.
  • Rachel Reindorf '16 – George Washington Fields Award for Professional Development.
  • Andrea Kim '12– Gloria Joseph Award for Opportunity Programs Students.
  • Allison Arteaga '18 – Marvin Jack Award for OADI Emerging Scholar-Leader.
  • Misha Inniss-Thompson '16 – Jerome Holland Award for Outstanding OADI Scholar-Leader.

Thaddeus Talbot '15 was selected as the student speaker for the awards ceremony. Earlier this year, Talbot marched in Selma, Alabama, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1965 voting rights marches from Selma to Montgomery.

“Tonight is all about taking risks and the rewards that follow,” said Talbot.

 Josephine Engreitz ’15 is a writer intern for the Cornell Chronicle.

Reprinted from Human Ecology Magazine, Spring 2015

Human Ecology's Translational Research Institute for Pain in Later Life, a New York City-based center that helps older adults prevent and manage pain, received a five-year, $1.95 million renewal grant from the National Institute on Aging.

TRIPLL unites social and psychological scientists at Cornell's Ithaca campus and Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research, researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College, and community-based health care practitioners to study innovative, nonpharmacological methods to ease persistent pain.

In its first five years, TRIPLL funded 30 pilot studies on innovative treatments, protocols, and interventions for improved pain management. With the grant renewal, TRIPLL adds a focus on behavior change science, seeking to apply insights from psychology, sociology, economics, and communications to develop optimal pain management techniques.

Reprinted from Cornell Chronicle, May 18, 2015

Fourteen Cornell scholars (11 faculty members and one faculty member-graduate student team) received 2015 awards from the Jeffrey S. Lehman Fund for Scholarly Exchange with China. The fund provides grants to initiate research projects, sponsor research-related conferences or workshops, host visitors from China or support faculty travel to China to work on collaborative research projects.

Projects and winners are:

  • Integrating Eastern and Western Medicine to Address Iron Deficiency In Rural Chinese Women. Project director: Laura Pompano, doctoral candidate in the field of nutritional sciences, and Jere D. Haas, the Nancy Schlegel Meinig Professor of Maternal and Child Nutrition, Division of Nutritional Sciences;
  • Manufacturing Revolutions: The Socialist Development of a Chinese Auto-Industrial Base. Project director: Victor Seow, assistant professor, Department of History;
  • Chinese Medicine and Healing: Translating Practice. Project director: TJ Hinrichs, associate professor, Department of History;
  • China/Cornell Media Arts Exchange Program. Project director: J.P. Sniadecki, assistant professor, Department of Performing and Media Arts;
  • Constructing the Autobiographical Self in Cyberspace. Project director: Qi Wang, professor, Department of Human Development;
  • Inflation, String Theory, and Cosmic Strings. Project directors: David Chernoff, professor, Department of Astronomy, and Liam McAllister, professor, Department of Physics;
  • Conference and Publication on Feminist Jurisprudence in Shanghai. Project director: Cynthia Grant Bowman, the Dorothea S. Clarke Professor of Feminist Jurisprudence, Law School;
  • Ricci Flow on 4manifolds and Applications. Project director: Xiaodong Cao, associate professor, Department of Mathematics;
  • Beijing Film and Digital Media Initiative. Project directors: Tim Murray, director, Society for the Humanities, and Amy Villarejo, chair, Department of Performing and Media Arts;
  • Creating China? Transnational Public Intellectuals and the Making of Contemporary Chinese Politics and Foreign Relations. Project director: Allen Carlson, associate professor, Department of Government.

For more information, contact the East Asia Program in the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies at cueap@cornell.edu.

Reprinted from Cornell Chronicle, May 27, 2015

Students, faculty and staff in Cornell's contract colleges have won State University of New York (SUNY) Chancellor's Awards for Excellence for 2015.

Faculty and staff recipients of the award have served their campuses and communities with distinction. Students were honored as leaders, role models and volunteers, and for their academic achievements.

Those honored this year are:

  • Excellence in Faculty Service: Carol Devine, professor of nutritional sciences, College of Human Ecology (HE); Mark Sorrells, plant breeding and genetics, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS).
  • Excellence in Professional Service: Lars Angenent, biological and environmental engineering, CALS; Ann LaFave, CALS Office of Academic Programs; Thomas O’Toole, executive director, Cornell Institute for Public Affairs, HE.
  • Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities: Charles Brainerd, professor and chair of human development, HE.
  • Excellence in Teaching: Anthony Burrow, assistant professor of human development, HE; Jeffrey Niederdeppe, associate professor of communication, CALS; M. Todd Walter, associate professor, biological and environmental engineering, CALS.
  • Student Excellence: Alexa Bakker ‘15, science of natural and environment systems, (CALS); Katherine Bibi, DVM ‘15, College of Veterinary Medicine; Emily Clark ’15, policy analysis and management, CALS; Atticus DeProspo ‘15, industrial and labor relations (ILR School); Owen Lee-Park ’15, human biology, health and society (HE); Rachel Harmon ‘15, industrial and labor relations (ILR); Aaron Match ‘15, atmospheric science (CALS); Patrick Satchell, DVM ’15, veterinary medicine; and Maia Vernacchia ‘15, food science (CALS).
©2020 College of Human Ecology, Cornell University. All rights reserved.