Pranathi Shankar

• SOAR Position: Member; Alumni
• Major: Psychology
• Faculty Mentor(s): Dr. Jessica Gaby

Current Focus: Can priming information about body odor affect perceptions of competence in a virtual interview?

Project Description

This project is about observing how providing information about someone could impact their perception of the person. We essentially aim to identify if just by suggesting someone has a certain type of body odor, people's perception about them could be impacted in a virtual interview setting.

Why does this topic interest you?

The idea of learning that before we even know a person, we have a certain type of image about them which could impact our interaction with them was very interesting to me. This project has also allowed me to learn how much details we unconsciously observe about a person when we know nothing about them to create a mental database about the person.

What are your professional aspirations?

I'm currently applying to doctoral programs in Counseling Psychology, and I hope to become a counseling psychologist after completing that.

Do you have any advice for future researchers?

My one advice would be to not be discouraged no matter what results your research yields. Every piece of data you receive tells you something, it may be not what you were investigating but it still useful information.

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