Reid Searls

I recently graduated summa cum laude from Syracuse University with majors in Psychology and Advertising and a minor in LGBT Studies. I have been involved in research with the SU branch of the Media, Interface, and Network Design Lab (M.I.N.D. Lab), studying human-computer interaction, psychophysiology, and emotions in virtual environments. I have also worked at the Social Perception, Action & Motivation Lab (SPAM Lab) at New York University, where I assisted with the creation, implementation, and analysis of multiple studies dealing primarily with victim blame and motivated perception. For my Honors Capstone project, I designed and implemented an online study examining the effects of mood, perspective, and just-world beliefs on victim blame in the context of human trafficking.

My goals, most broadly, are to learn more about human behavior, to share this knowledge with others, and to produce socially beneficial applications from this research. More specifically, I am interested in studying motivational influences on social judgments, as well as the underlying cognitive processes of these decisions. I have taken an interdisciplinary approach to investigating these topics, combining research experiences in cognitive and social psychology with concepts and themes of advertising and sociology explored in my undergraduate studies.