Psychologists are always interested in predicting behavior.
Eight students discussed their research in oral or poster presentations at the University of Scranton Psychology Conference this year. In separate research projects, Miller and Adams discovered that people respond to the same joke differently, depending on whether they are told in advance how funny it is. That is, a joke turns out to be as funny as a person expects it to be. People who feel embarrassed for others, she suggested, may be better at putting themselves in the others' place, so the humor in a joke hits home for them and they like it more. Meanwhile, from the cognition research team, Cain and Fadia reported on their research with infants and toddlers.