Graduate Student Research and Publications

The department adopts a mentorship model of graduate education in which students work closely with a faculty advisor during their two years in our program.  Typically there is a 2:1 graduate student:faculty ratio that provides the student with individualized attention and, therefore, superior training.  Students conduct both a first year research project and a thesis.

We admit students into the program rather than to work with individual faculty members. Nonetheless, we do our best to match students with their preferred advisor whenever possible, and thus having a good match with one or two faculty members is an important part of the admission decision.  Thus, we encourage you to highlight at least one or two professors who might be good matches to your interests.  If your interests are still broad, that’s fine, but provide us with some indication of the type of research you are interested in doing.

Most faculty begin working with one new student each year; however, the faculty available to take new students in their lab varies from year to year for various reasons (e.g., sabbaticals, number of openings in a lab, etc.). You are welcome to contact a faculty member to see if she or he anticipates taking a student – please see the department’s faculty web page for research interests and contact information.

Follow this link to view a list of completed Thesis projects.

Recent Publications

Note that the list below is not an exhaustive list of recent publications that our grad students have co-authored based on work done at Wake Forest.

*Carlson, H. N., Christensen, B. A., & Pratt, W. E. (2022). Stimulation of mu-opioid, but not GABAergic, receptors of the lateral habenula alters free feeding in rats. Neuroscience Letters, 771, 136417, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neulet.2021.136417

*Carney, A. E., Clarke, C, & Pratt, W. E. (2023). Administration of neuropeptide Y into the rat nucleus accumbens shell, but not core, attenuates the motivational impairment from systemic dopamine receptor antagonism by α-flupenthixol. Neuroscience Letters, 797, 137069, doi: 10.1016/j.neulet.2023.137069.

Fleeson, W., Furr, R. M., Jayawickreme, E., & *Hardin, B. (2022). Honesty as a trait. Current Opinion in Psychology, 47. https://doi-org.wake.idm.oclc.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2022.101418

*Lyu, X. & Garrison, S. M. (In press). Effects of Genetic Relatedness of Kin Pairs on Univariate ACE Model Performance. Twin Research and Human Genetics

*Miskewicz, K., Furr, R. M., & Fleeson, W. (2022). Do normal personality traits connect to the dynamic processes of psychopathology? Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment, 13, 423-437.   6.

Petrocelli, J. V., Silverman, H. E., & *Shang, S. X. (2023). Social perception and influence of lies vs. bullshit: A test of the insidious bullshit hypothesis. Current Psychology, 42, 9609-9617. 

*Stall, L. M., & Petrocelli, J. V. (2023). Countering conspiracy theory beliefs: Understanding the conjunction fallacy and considering disconfirming evidence. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 37, 266-276. 

*Vlasenko, V.V., Hayutin, I., Pan, C., Michael-Varakis, J., Waugh, C.E., Admon, R., & McRae, K. (in press). How do people use reappraisal? An investigation of selection frequency and affective outcomes of reappraisal tactics. Emotion.

*Zhao, Y., Waugh, C.E., Kammrath, L., Wang, Q. (2022). Comparing the Affective and Social Effects of Positive Reappraisal and Minimising Reappraisal. Cognition and Emotion, 36, 433-451.