Become an Undergraduate Research Assistant through PSY 5993
Getting involved in research is a good way to see whether psychology is for you, and if it is, to obtain the research experience and training that you will need to gain admission to psychology (or related) graduate programs.
As a research assistant in this lab, you will be working closely with other members of the laboratory on one or more of our ongoing research projects. You may be supervised by Dr. Mann, one or more of the graduate students, and/or the lab manager. Every semester is different and hard to predict, but your involvement will likely include some or all of the following: recruiting, scheduling, and running subjects, creating surveys, coding free-response data, conducting basic data analysis, preparing materials for projects, or doing literature searches. In addition, you may do odd one-time tasks that are unique to a particular study. In the past, these have included: making different sized packets of sugar, creating homemade lottery scratcher cards, boxing chocolate candies, putting different colored toothpicks in different types of food, tracking down every bag of baby carrots in the Twin Cities, finding and (sometimes) baking the favorite comfort food for each research participant, and a whole lot of tasks involving measuring, weighing, and sometimes sorting m&ms.
We do an application process every spring (late march) to fill the lab for the entire next school year. That means that if you approach us over the summer, or in the early fall, you will be too late for any part of that school year.
We are sorry we cannot accommodate every interested student, but we recommend applying early in your time here (such as during your sophomore – or even freshman–year). A slight preference is given to students who have taken PSY3206 (Health Psychology).
We do not require previous lab experience or a particular GPA to be in the lab, but we do require a two-semester commitment and a little enthusiasm.
Please e-mail [email protected] for an application.
Become a Volunteer Research Assistant
Generally the only volunteers we have in the lab are former research assistants who decide to stay on after being in the lab for course credit for a year.The main exception is for students from other universities whose families live in the Twin Cities and who are here for the summer.
Please e-mail [email protected] for an application.
Become a Graduate Student
Interested students must apply to our Social Psychology program, not our Clinical program or our Counseling program. Dr. Mann only advises students in Social.
Acceptance to the University of Minnesota Department of Psychology is highly competitive. Successful applicants usually have a strong GPA, as well as research experience in some kind of human research lab. The most impressive applicants have completed (or are currently conducting) their own independent research project.
The application to the psychology graduate program can be found here.