Get Involved
Currently we do not have any open positions for in-person or remote research assistants, summer research assistants, highschool students or post-doctoral researchers. Please reach out to debbie.lim@yale.edu with any inquiries!
Prospective Research Assistants
We currently do not have any paid and/or remote RA positions available for 2024-2025. We do not allow volunteer (unpaid) summer internships, in line with Yale Department policies.
We are also limited in our capacity to provide mentorship and support for highschool projects. As of right now, we do not have any open positions available for highschool students. Please check back in the future for any available opportunities!
Prospective Undergraduate Research Assistants
Unfortunately, we currently do not have any open undergrad RA positions for Spring Semester 2025, but feel free to contact us if you are interested in being involved in the future!
Come join us in studying how people form and then update their implicit attitudes and beliefs about individuals, groups, academics, artwork, and robots (and more).
We recruit Yale undergraduate students to become research assistants (RAs) in the Implicit Social Cognition Lab in the Psychology Department at Yale University. We have ongoing projects on the implicit and explicit cognitive processes underlying first impressions, self-control, and prejudice. We focus on how and when we can change implicit cognition toward individuals and groups, and in particular how we might reduce implicit prejudice and bias.
What are we looking for in prospective RAs? You do not need to have any prior experience working in a research lab and you do not need to be a psychology major. We are looking for students who are interested in learning about how psychological science is conducted. As an RA, you will be working with me as well as with graduate students and postdoctoral researchers working in the lab. Every week, you will be a part of our lab meeting where we discuss all the nuts and bolts of identifying an interesting idea, testing it, and generating conclusions. Some of the tasks you might gain experience in include generating and testing research ideas, designing studies, data collection and coding, statistical analysis, scientific writing and presenting, and more.
Becoming an RA in the lab can be a springboard to doing an honors thesis or preparing to apply to graduate school in psychology, or other social sciences, medical school, or law school.
We are committed to creating and participating in a supportive, diverse, and welcoming lab environment where everyone’s ideas and experiences are respected. We are interested in RAs with diverse backgrounds, interests, and skills. We also strive to make our science as transparent as possible, and are committed to open science best practices, including pre-registration and sharing of data, code, and materials.
Please contact melissa.ferguson@yale.edu or debbie.lim@yale.edu with any questions about the lab!
Prospective Graduate Students
We are recruiting doctoral students at the Implicit Social Cognition Lab in the Psychology Department at Yale University. Our lab has ongoing projects on the implicit and explicit cognitive processes underlying first impressions, self-control, and prejudice. Our main projects right now are about how and when people change their implicit cognition toward individuals and groups (and other targets, such as artwork and robots). We are also actively working on when and how people can reduce implicit prejudice and bias toward outgroups. For descriptions of our current research and papers, please see PAPERS.
What are we looking for in prospective grad students? The graduate students in the lab have had very different backgrounds and routes to graduate school. There is no specific template that a student needs to fit. That said, there are some basic themes that I look for in prospective students. We are looking for applicants with at least some experience doing independent research, for example through completing an honors thesis project during undergraduate or through some other experience. We are especially interested in applicants who can show that they are passionate about psychology and about figuring out how to translate ideas into testable studies that will contribute to theory about how the mind works.
Our lab studies implicit social cognition, and we are focusing now on ideas related to changing implicit social cognition. If you think you might want to study a topic that could be related to this, please get in touch!
We are committed to creating a supportive, diverse, and welcoming lab environment where everyone’s ideas and experiences are respected. We also strive to make our science as transparent as possible, and are committed to open science best practices, including pre-registration and sharing of data, code, and materials.
The deadline for applying is December 1, 2024. Please see our Psychology Department website for more information about the doctoral program, https://psychology.yale.edu, with details about applying here, https://psychology.yale.edu/graduate/admissions/applying-admission.
Here is the link for submitting your application through the graduate school: https://gsas.yale.edu/admission
Please contact Fredericka Grant (Fredericka.Grant@yale.edu) for any questions about the application process.