Marjorie Prokosch Headshot

Marjorie Prokosch

Assistant Professor

Department of Psychology
College of Liberal Arts

585-475-2841
Office Location

Marjorie Prokosch

Assistant Professor

Department of Psychology
College of Liberal Arts

Bio

I am PI of the Social Cognition Across People and Environments (SCAPE) Lab at RIT. I am an experimental Social Psychologist who broadly speaking, studies motivated social cognition. I examine how aspects of our environments (e.g., social, physical, structural, or built factors) impact people’s perceptions, attitudes, and decision-making. I am especially interested in the ways that people attend to, interpret, and react to threats to health and safety. I also examine the intersections between people’s individual differences and environment that produce shifts in social cognition. For example, I have been involved in projects that investigate relationships between bodily immune function (e.g., inflammation) and behavioral immune function (e.g., disgust).  In another line, I examine individual differences (e.g., in worldview) that shape people’s political decisions about how we should mitigate disaster risk and approach climate change. 

SCAPE Lab is an interdisciplinary friendly Social Psychology lab: covering topics relevant to health, politics, climate change, and disaster mitigation.

Currently Teaching

PSYC-101
3 Credits
Introduction to the field of psychology. Provides a survey of basic concepts, theories, and research methods. Topics include: thinking critically with psychological science; neuroscience and behavior; sensation and perception; learning; memory; thinking, language, and intelligence; motivation and emotion; personality; psychological disorders and therapy; and social psychology.
PSYC-225
3 Credits
This course explores topics related to behaviors and mental processes of individuals in social situations. Topics include: methodology, social perception, social cognition, the self, attitudes, prejudice, attraction, social influence, pro-social behavior, aggression, and behavior in groups. Course activities include lecture, class demonstrations, and assignments.
PSYC-250
3 Credits
This course will serve as an introduction to research methods in psychology, with the goal of understanding research design, analysis and writing. Topics include examining the variety of methods used in psychology research, understanding research ethics, developing empirical hypotheses, designing experiments, understanding statistical concepts, interpreting results, and writing research and review papers in APA style. This is a required course for all psychology majors, and is restricted to students in the psychology program.
PSYC-251
3 Credits
This course will serve as an advanced research methods course in psychology, and will build on the foundational knowledge presented in Research Methods I. Topics and tasks for this course include designing single and multi-factor experiments, interpreting correlational research, completing statistical analyses appropriate to design, completing and analyzing an IRB application, understanding observational and survey research, and presenting results in APA style. This is a required course for all psychology majors, and is restricted to students in the psychology program.
PSYC-510
3 Credits
This course is intended for students in the psychology major to demonstrate experimental research expertise, while being guided by faculty advisors. The topic to be studied is up to the student, who must find a faculty advisor before signing up for the course. Students will be supervised by the advisor as they conduct their literature review, develop the research question or hypothesis, develop the study methodology and materials, construct all necessary IRB materials, run subjects, and analyze the results of their study. This course will culminate in an APA style paper and poster presentation reporting the results of the research. Because Senior Project is the culmination of a student’s scientific research learning experience in the psychology major, it is expected that the project will be somewhat novel, will extend the theoretical understanding of their previous work (or of the previous work of another researcher), and go well beyond any similar projects that they might have done in any of their previous courses.
PSYC-540
1 - 4 Credits
This course is for students involved in a faculty-led laboratory research experience in psychology that can be considered original in nature. Note that this course cannot be used in place of the co-op requirement. This course is graded as pass/fail only. This course can be taken as 1-4 credits. Each credit is worth 37.5 hours of research during the semester (examples include testing human or animal subjects in the lab, participating in lab meetings, presenting research at conferences, working on a publication, etc.).