Brittany Beard '12

2011 Soar Student

Brittany Beard '12

Major/minor: Psychology/Education

Hometown: Lebanon, PA

Project: Writing research in Rehabilitation Psychology: an article, two chapters, and a conference presentation

Project advisor: Dana Dunn, professor of psychology

Project details: For this project I helped Dr. Dunn complete a few writing projects. This involved doing library research, outlining, drafting, writing, and revising an article and two chapters. A book review was also completed.

Why I wanted to participate in SOAR: I was asked to assist Dr. Dunn complete a SOAR project two years ago that included conducting research on peoples’ perceptions of disabilities. I found the research fascinating and extremely beneficial, as I plan on attending graduate school. Dr. Dunn has also been wonderful to work with, and he has provided me with one of the most rewarding hands-on experiences of my undergraduate career.

Results: The results from our SOAR work from the past two summers includes five publications:

  • Dunn, D. S., & Beard, B. M. (in press). Cognitive tools for exploring social phenomena: New methodological frontiers in social cognition. [Review of cognitive methods in social psychology]. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology. 
  • Dunn, D. S., Fisher, D., & Beard, B. (in press). Disability as diversity rather than (in)difference. To appear in D. S. Dunn, J. H. Wilson, R. A. R. Gurung & K. Naufel (Eds.), Hot topics: Best practices in teaching controversial issues in psychology. Washington, DC: APA Books. 
  • Dunn, D. S., Fisher, D. J., & Beard, B. M. (2011). Revisiting the mine-thine problem: A sensitizing exercise for clinic, classroom, and attributional research. To be published in Rehabilitation Psychology. 
  • Dunn, D. S., Uswatte, G., Elliott, T. R., Lastres, A., & Beard, B. (under editorial review). A positive psychology of physical disability: Principles and progress. To appear in M. L. Wehmeyer (Ed.), Oxford handbook of positive psychology and disability. New York: Oxford University Press. 
  • Dunn, D. S., Beard, B. M., & Fisher, D. J. (2011). On happiness: Introducing students to positive psychology. In R. Miller, E. Balcetis, S. R. Burns, D. B. Daniel, B. K. Saville, & W. D. Woody (Eds.), Promoting student engagement (Vol. 2, pp. 207-216). Retrieved from the Society for the Teaching of Psychology.

The research conducted has also been/will be presented by Dr. Dunn:

  • Dunn, D. S., Fisher, D., & Beard, B. (2011, March). Revisiting the mine-thine problem: A sensitizing exercise for clinic, classroom, and attributional research. Presentation at the Annual Meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association, Cambridge, MA.
  • Dunn, D. S., Fisher, D. J., & Beard, B. M. (2012, March). Severity of paired disability does not change the mine-thine effect. Paper to be presented at the annual meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association, Pittsburgh, PA.

Future plans: I hope to continue my research in graduate school.