James Steele participated in Celebration of Learning

2012 May 7

More than 75 Augustana students from all academic areas shared their advanced research projects on Saturday, May 5, at the Celebration of Learning. This on-campus research symposium annually gives students an opportunity to show off their academic accomplishments to their families and the Augustana community.

Among the students involved:

James Steele, a senior from Naperville, Ill., majoring in neuroscience. The research was titled Are We Actually Empathetic?  Relationship between Physiological Arousal and Self-Reported Personality Measures Produced by Images of Others Experiencing Discomfort. The mirror neuron hypothesis suggests that brain systems involved in sensing one's own situation also are activated when perceiving another in a similar situation. We measured participants' implicit arousal via skin conductance responses and explicitly via accredited narcissism and empathy scales. Participants looked at images of hands and feet in uncomfortable to comfortable situations. We measured the amplitude of the changes in the conductance responses and correlated the results to the respective image and the rating of comfort. We expected that scores on explicit emotional empathy and narcissism scales would be inversely related: those scoring higher for narcissism will show less physiological arousal when viewing pictures of others in simulated pain than those who score lower (or higher on empathy). This research will provide further insight to the relationship between empathy, narcissism, and the perception of pain in others using both self-reports via standard personality measures and physiological measures.

Celebration participants presented their research through a poster display or an oral presentation. Many students expounded on the results of their Senior Inquiry, a multiple-term research project required for most academic programs. Other students shared honors capstone projects or student-faculty research findings. Because of the advanced level of research involved, most of the presenters are upperclass students.

Anne Earel and Stefanie Bluemle, Augustana reference librarians and the event's co-directors, said the Celebration of Learning provided an outlet for students to showcase their accomplishments.

Presentations topics varied greatly and included anthropology, biology, physics, geography, gender studies, theater and more.