As a new professor, the only students willing and able to join a new lab were undergraduates, so I took a mixed approach, training students in quantitative methods by having them run participants in a lab-based "proof of concept" type study and conducting ethnographic participant-observation at local churches as part of our Religious Ecology Study Tuscaloosa. It makes it more difficult to train undergraduates for some elements of anthropology. Anthropology works a little different, given our tendency to conduct fieldwork outside of campus lab settings. Of course the other members of that lab worked together in their lab during the week, conducting research for their various dissertations and theses. My aim had simply been to have a one-hour meeting at the end of the week to brainstorm research like I did with the Gallup Evolutionary Psychology Lab in grad school. I used the idea behind the fireside relaxation study as the basis of setting up my lab. Engaging undergraduates through neuroanthropological research. For more details and to participate, see our current study page.ĬD Lynn, MJ Stein*, APC Bishop*. Participants receive a $20 gift card and opportunity to win a Napoleon Grill. We are recruiting adults in the Tuscaloosa area. Having demonstrated that people find watching DVD fires relaxing, we received gift funding and resource support from Napoleon Fireplaces & Grills to determine if similar benefits accrue for an electric fireplace. We are currently collecting data for a new iteration of the Fireside Relaxation Study. This project utilizes a biopsychocultural model, and all HBERGers participate as experimenters as part of their neuroanthropology training. Through the Fireside Relaxation Study, we test the role of the elements of fire on blood pressure, and skin conductance through use of simulated fire and potentially analogous media conditions. Hearth and campfires are multi-sensory phenomena that have played an important role in human evolution, including possible effects on cognition. Since 2010, my lab has been investigating cognitive mechanisms associated with relaxation response and prosociality that may underlie proclivity for religious experience and derive from over 800,000 years of human manipulation of fire.
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