Dr. Sandra Webster, Westminster College professor of psychology, presented two posters at the American Psychological Association convention Aug. 12-15 in San Diego.

The first poster, "Inducing Dominant and Subordinate Emotions with E-Prime," was co-authored with senior psychology major Rachael Hoffman and 2010 Westminster graduate Adam Baker.

E-Prime is an experiment authoring system that allows researchers to present images and information via the computer screen and measure the way people react.

"The research shows that people can experience emotions again by typing answers into a computer. This works for emotions that are either positive or negative, and also that are more dominant or submissive depending on the instructions presented via the computer screen," Webster said.

The project, part of Webster's continuing research program on the dimensions of emotion, was funded through the psychology department's National Science Foundation grant for integrating E-Prime into the curriculum and by a Westminster Faculty Research Award.

Hoffman is a daughter of Walter and Patricia Hoffman of Transfer and a graduate of Reynolds High School.

The second poster, "God is Up: Undergraduate E-Prime Lab Activity Replicating Maier et al (2007)," documented the lab work using E-Prime in the fall semester 2009 "Research Design and Statistics" class.

Students, in teams of three or four, read a scientific article. They repeated the study described in the article using E-Prime to program the experiment to display on a computer; collected data from classmates participating in the experiment; analyzed the data; wrote a report of their results; and made a Flip video of the main outcomes.

"All of the teams were able to show that representations of God produced faster responses when associated with higher words ["up," "sky," "above"] or spaces and that satanic representations produced faster reactions when associated with lower words ["down," "below"] or spaces," Webster said.

Webster, who has been with Westminster since 1983, earned undergraduate and master's degrees and Ph.D. from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.

Contact Webster at (724) 946-7359 or e-mail websters@westminster.edu for additional information.

Dr. Sandra Webster