Shane WestfallIssue 7: October 2018

Many things have changed for me as I complete my Ph.D. at UNLV; however, one constant has been my involvement with the Interactive Measurement Group (IMG). During the first year of my graduate program, I served as Kim’s teaching assistant for her Introduction to Statistical Methods course: I ran the SPSS labs, graded assignments, emailed students about grades, and collaborated with Kim on a test bank for Dr. Hurlburt’s statistics text. This work laid the foundation for my later teaching experiences, influencing how I interact with students during office hours and how I structure my online courses.

After taking Kim’s graduate psychometrics course the next year, I collaborated with Kim, Stephen Benning, and other graduate students to develop a new measure of psychopathic meanness. We completed three rounds of item writing and data collection, wrote multiple conference posters, and we are now nearing completion of that publication. Most recently, I have worked with Kim, Leiszle Lapping-Carr, and several other lab members to develop the Perceived Social Intelligence scale. Through these projects, I mentored numerous undergraduate lab members: helping them design Qualtrics surveys, develop and conduct their own studies, and prepare conference presentations. These last two projects are continuing even as I graduate, so it seems that my work with the IMG will continue even after I have left UNLV.

I have been involved in many other projects during my time at UNLV, resulting in a diverse corpus of publications (please see references for a current listing); however, my research primarily focusses on physical attractiveness stereotypes. This is the human tendency to assume that more attractive individuals possess positive personality traits and less attractive individuals have negative traits. For example, I have published work finding that, if everything else is equal, students actually learn more from more attractive teachers compared to less attractive ones (Westfall, Millar, & Walsh, 2016). I have also published a pair of studies finding that physical appearance can predict how fair and just one thinks that the world is, such that more attractive people usually believe that the world operates in a more just fashion (Westfall, Millar, & Lovitt, in press). I have just completed my dissertation, which suggests that more attractive people receive better health care services in the United States, and plan to submit a publication based on this research in the coming months.

Despite my love of research, I believe that I make my largest contribution to psychology through my teaching. UNLV has given me the opportunity to teach a wide array of courses, covering Research Methods, History of Psychology, Foundations of Cognitive Psychology, Foundations of Social Psychology, and Introduction to Psychology. Building on this teaching foundation, I have accepted a full-time faculty position at Western Wyoming Community College for the upcoming year. This position offers what I was looking for – a supportive environment to continue my research while I am educating and nurturing the next generation of psychologists. As my time at UNLV ends, I want to thank all of the IMG lab members who supported me through my journey and also offer to help any lab members, past or present, as you navigate your own journey of grad school admissions, program choices, and those big decisions in life. Best of luck to each of you!

References

Walsh, M. Millar, M., & Westfall, R. S. (in press). Sex Differences in responses to Emotional and Sexual Infidelity in Dating Relationships. Journal of Individual Differences

Westfall, R. S., Millar, M., & Lovitt, A. (in press). The Influence of Physical Attractiveness on Belief in a Just World. Psychological Reports