CURI Academic Year Student Researcher 26 - Valdesolo

St. Olaf Student•Northfield, MN

35d•$12 - $13•Onsite

About The Position

Students work together with a faculty member on scholarly or artistic projects. Project Title: Gratitude and Immigrant Identity. Project Description: The vast majority of research on gratitude has explored its positive effects on prosocial behavior, relationship building and well-being. A relatively unexplored dimension of this emotion is its relationship to power dynamics (c.f Bartlett, Valdesolo & Arpin 2019) and its potential to promote submissiveness to high-power individuals and groups, and entrench hierarchy. In short, gratitude towards others is expected of, and disproportionately expressed by, the less powerful (Anicich et al 2022). Societal narratives about whom should be grateful can even serve a system-justifying function (Eibach et al 2015), disadvantaging individuals or groups in positions of lower power via imposing social costs upon them if low levels of gratitude, or dissatisfaction with existing social structures, is expressed (c.f. Tsang et al 2021). For example, recent research from critical migration studies on resettlement affect has described the prevalence of gratitude-towards-country narratives in migrant communities, and the ways in which these themes can conflict with well-being. These narratives can reflect a “fragile obligation” to one’s country in which “the lingering pressure of gratitude” regulates the expression of negative emotions (Iqbal et al 2021). We have completed three studies (Total N = 1400) that support the hypothesis that experiences of gratitude towards one's country vary across immigrant identity and that this difference predicts both patriotism as well as willingness to critique and challenge existing social structures. Work during the Spring semester will follow-up on these findings. Students will aid in literature review, programming experiments into online data collection software, executing data collection, organizing and analyzing data (depending on experience with statistics), designing follow-up studies, and preparing poster presentations.

Requirements

A student interested in applying for the CURI academic year program must be enrolled as an on-campus St. Olaf student.
There is no GPA requirement that must be met in order to apply for the program, but a student’s academic record will be considered during the selection process.
Skills are dependent on individual projects.
If you don’t have a work award and select, No, to the application questions your application will be automatically rejected by the system.
If you apply and are rejected please contact Erin Eltonga to resolve this for you.