Title	Ruth Daniel’s Division II Contract
File Date	09/25/2024
Revision Date	09/25/2024
Anticipated Completion Date	12/15/2024
Study Areas	Psychology, Public Health, Cognitive Science

Your Committee

Hampshire College Members

• Viveca Greene – Current Committee Chair
• Melissa Burch – Current Committee Member

Overview

Provide an overview of your concentration, including several fundamental questions or issues that will help frame your studies. Describe the relevant areas of study:

My concentration focuses on the intersection of psychology, social change, and cultural practices, with a particular emphasis on how perceptions of morality, death, and ritual influence individual and collective experiences. Central to my studies are questions about the ways people interpret and respond to social change, how rituals shape processes like grieving and dying, and how academic research can be effectively communicated to diverse audiences.

Several fundamental questions frame my concentration:

1. How do individuals perceive and interpret changes in societal moral standards over time?
2. What role do rituals play in helping people navigate transitions, such as death and loss, on both personal and cultural levels?
3. How can psychological research be made more accessible and relevant to broader, more diverse populations?

My studies integrate psychology with disciplines such as sociology, cultural anthropology, and history. This interdisciplinary approach allows me to examine these questions from various angles, emphasizing both the theoretical foundations and practical applications of psychological research.

Relevant areas of study include:

Social Psychology: Exploring how people perceive and influence each other within societal contexts, particularly regarding morality and social change.

Cultural Psychology: Investigating how cultural contexts shape psychological processes, especially about rituals and practices around death and dying.

Research Methods and Statistics: Developing a strong understanding of how to design, conduct, and analyze psychological research to ensure it is rigorous and inclusive.

Historical Perspective: Examining how historical perspectives on morality and human behavior inform contemporary research and practices.

Goals

Write your goals. What do you want to know, understand, and be able to do by the end of Division II?

By the end of Division II, I aim to achieve a deeper understanding of the psychological and cultural dimensions of morality, ritual, and social change, while also developing practical skills in research, critical analysis, and communication. Specifically, I have the following goals:

• Gain a comprehensive understanding of how people perceive and respond to social change, with a focus on moral decline and other societal shifts.
• Explore the role of rituals in the processes of dying, death, and grieving across diverse cultural contexts.
• Understand the historical and cultural influences on psychological practices and research, particularly about marginalized and W.E.I.R.D. populations.
• Learn about the barriers to public accessibility in academic research and strategies for addressing them effectively.
• Develop proficiency in designing, conducting, and analyzing psychological research, with attention to internal and external validity.
• Strengthen my ability to critically evaluate research from a methodological and ethical standpoint, particularly in terms of inclusivity and diversity.
• Hone my ability to communicate complex psychological concepts in accessible and engaging ways to a variety of audiences.
• Build skills in interdisciplinary collaboration, drawing on fields like sociology and anthropology to inform my psychological research.
• Complete a comprehensive literature review related to my research interests, laying the groundwork for an IRB proposal in Division III.
• Produce at least one piece of publicly accessible writing, presentation, or project that translates academic research into a format that resonates with broader audiences.
• Engage in internships that deepen my understanding of the practical applications of psychology in real-world settings.
• Identify gaps in current psychological research and propose ways to address these gaps, particularly around cultural and ritualistic practices in end-of-life care and grief.

By the end of Division II, I want to not only be well-versed in the theoretical and methodological foundations of psychology but also feel confident in applying this knowledge to real-world questions and challenges. This will prepare me to take on more independent and impactful work in Division III and beyond.

Division II Plan

How will you achieve your goals and answer your questions? Describe the sequence of courses learning activities and possibly internships, independent work, and field study that will shape your Division II. (Some advisors recommend writing a semester-by-semester plan): 

Classes and their Purposes:

Experimental Psychology: Built foundational skills in experimental design, relevant to future research.

Global Insecurity: Broadened understanding of global contexts, useful for situating culture in broader societal issues.

Elementary German: Introduced linguistic and cultural diversity, potentially applicable to research involving international or German-speaking populations.

History of Psychology: Gaining historical perspective to contextualize modern practices in psychology.

Negotiation: Developing interpersonal and conflict-resolution skills, valuable for fieldwork or counseling roles.

Psychology of Memory: Exploring cognitive mechanisms relevant to the psychological study of memory. 

Creative Nonfiction: Refining writing skills to effectively communicate research findings and personal reflections.

Reading and Writing in Psychology: Enhancing skills in psychological writing and analysis, supporting the literature review and proposal process.

Statistics with Python: Gaining technical and statistical skills, critical for analyzing research data.

Teaching Assistantships: Deepening knowledge in cognitive development and speculative nonfiction writing while building mentoring, teaching, and organizational skills.

Learning Activities:

Continue building the literature review with insights from courses on memory and the history of psychology.

Draft initial research questions based on course and self-motivated learnings.

Multiple Cultural Perspectives

How do you plan to engage with multiple cultural perspectives in Div II? 

My Division II will explore how cultural practices and systemic inequalities shape end-of-life experiences, focusing on non-Western perspectives, race in the U.S., and the relationship between knowledge and power. I will study diverse grieving rituals, such as Indigenous traditions and African diasporic practices, to challenge dominant Western frameworks of bereavement. I will also examine how systemic racism affects access to culturally specific rituals in healthcare settings. Through coursework, independent research, and fieldwork with diverse communities, I will analyze how power dynamics shape knowledge about grief and mourning. This will probably be done more so in Division III however, I will get started by analyzing research for a literature review and research proposal. My portfolio will include this research proposal, preparing me for a Division III project on how rituals help people process death in diverse cultural and socio-economic contexts. 

Community Engagement and Learning

What are your initial ideas for the kinds of experiences you might complete for CEL-2? You must meet with your committee to discuss this and complete the CEL-2 online forms:

For my CEL-2, I interned at the Gilbert Psychology Lab at Harvard, where I gained hands-on experience in psychology research while exploring ways to make academic findings more accessible beyond scholarly circles. My work focused on the replication of “The Illusion of Moral Decline”, a study examining the widespread but often inaccurate perception that societys moral standards are worsening over time. This research was particularly meaningful to me, as I had grown up in a fundamentalist religious community that reinforced the belief that the world was becoming increasingly immoral. Engaging with this study allowed me to critically examine the psychological mechanisms behind these perceptions, exploring how cognitive biases, selective memory, and media narratives shape beliefs about moral and social change. Throughout my internship, I worked on data collection, literature review, and statistical analysis, which strengthened my research skills in experimental design, data interpretation, and academic writing. Beyond the technical aspects, I became increasingly interested in how psychological research is communicated to the public, particularly how misconceptions about moral and societal decline persist despite empirical evidence. This experience reinforced my commitment to making psychological research more accessible and applicable, particularly in areas like grief, memory, and cultural narratives around morality and loss. The perspectives I gained through this internship will directly inform my Division III project, as I explore ways to make research on death rituals and hospice care more widely understood by both academic and non-academic audiences.