In the spirit of celebrating achievements, this past year has seen a handful of Singapore Management University (SMU) School of Social Sciences (SOSS)’ psychology undergraduate students demonstrating their research prowess on an international platform. Psychology major undergraduates Ng Hok Shan, Matthew (Year 4), Nadyanna Binte Mohamed Majeed (Year 4), and Verity Lua Yu Qing (Year 3) were up against competitors from renowned universities all over the world when they clinched the top spot in the 2021 Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) Research Paper Competition for the Undergraduate Category. In addition, Gloria Lai Junyan (Year 3) and Nadyanna Majeed made their mark at the 2021 Society for Personality and Social Psychology's (SPSP) Annual Convention when they filled both the Winner and Runner-up spots for the Undergraduate Student Poster Award.

The ICPSR Research Paper Competition aims to highlight exemplary research papers based on quantitative analysis that uses ICPSR data. This prestigious international competition draws participants from various disciplines in the field of social sciences in universities around the world. The trio’s paper titled “Is trait self-esteem a resilience factor against daily stressors? A multilevel analysis” explores the role of self-esteem resilience as a protective factor against the effects of the daily experience of stressors (e.g. missing the bus or forgetting to charge one's phone) and how it affects one's emotional reactivity. The results of the paper showed that self-esteem did not help to reduce emotional reactivity to daily stressors.

The SPSP Annual Convention took place from 9 to 13 February 2021, on a virtual platform where both Gloria Lai and Nadyanna Majeed presented their posters based on research papers they had previously written. As the only SPSP award at the undergraduate level, the Undergraduate Student Poster Award reviews submissions from students internationally to screen for poster presentations that are characterised by excellence in research, clarity in presentation, and personal knowledge demonstrated in a discussion with judges at the Annual Convention.

As suggested by the title, Gloria’s poster, “Who’s a good boy? A multilevel meta-analysis on human-animal interaction and human prosociality” is based on a research paper that took into consideration all previous research on the topic of human and animal interaction, and its effect on whether humans were more prosocial or not. The paper concluded that animals do play a small, albeit significant role in promoting prosocial traits and behaviours in humans.  

Also clued in by the title “Always look on the bright side of life? Optimism as a resilience factor against emotional reactivity to daily stress”, Nadyanna’s poster summarised findings from a research paper that looked into whether optimists are less emotionally reactive to daily stressors compared to pessimists. The eight-day daily diary study that utilised multilevel analyses revealed that optimism attenuated the impact of daily stressors on positive, but not negative, feelings. The nuanced findings were further parsed out when taking into account the role of neuroticism.

Commenting on their achievements, Assistant Professor of Psychology (Education) Andree Hartanto said, “We are very proud of Gloria, Matthew, Nadyanna, and Verity’s inspirational achievement in winning 3 prestigious international awards from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) and the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). Despite the fierce competition from leading universities around the world, they managed to top the international competitions with exceptionally advanced research works that have strong theoretical and practical implications. It is amazing to witness undergraduates’ works that can bring novel insight to the global research field.

Again, I would like to thank Gloria, Matthew, Nadyanna, and Verity for making us proud as well as their strong commitment, dedication, and never-give-up attitude while working on their respective research projects. They were able to successfully complete the projects on time despite many situational challenges. In fact, during the projects, they never stopped impressing me with their passion, deep content knowledge, creative research ideas, high-quality writing, as well as careful and sophisticated statistical analyses such as random-effects meta-analysis and multilevel modelling. I am glad that our undergraduate programme at SMU has produced very strong students like them who are resilient, critical, highly competent, and able to make a meaningful impact through their research.”

The students, who all belong to Prof Andree Hartanto’s lab, DawnLab, credit their achievement to Prof Andree himself. They agreed that “without Prof Andree’s guidance and constant reassurance, we wouldn’t be able to get this far. Prof Andree was the one who would push us to take part in various competitions and conferences. He would constantly encourage us when we meet various challenges in the course of implementing and understanding complex statistical analyses for the first time. It’s reassuring and motivating to know that we have his support and that he believes in our ability to go up against other competitors from around the world and to stand out amongst them.”

Congratulations Nadyanna, Matthew, Verity, and Gloria, on winning these prestigious Awards and flying SMU’s flag high.