Sacred Heart student to present at Association for Psychological Science Convention

Alexandra Sim, 17, a senior at Sacred Heart Academy, is one of nearly a dozen students from the all-girls Catholic preparatory school who has been selected to present her poster proposal at the Association for Psychological Science Convention in San Francisco, from May 25-27.

“Our girls are genuinely among the only high school kids there, and they are the first authors of their projects,” Dr. Stephen Sullivan, research director at Sacred Heart Academy, said. “One of the things I really liked about the APS program is that the projects are read blind. Most of the presenters will be undergraduates, graduate students, and the occasional assistant professor.”

Sullivan said that this process ensures fair evaluation based solely on the quality of research, regardless of the presenter’s academic status.

“Being able to stand next to undergraduate and graduate students and just gain that experience as a high schooler is so invaluable,” Sim said.

Sullivan also runs the Advanced Placement Capstone program, which is made up of the AP seminar and AP research students. This multi-year elective, teaches students as young as freshman to learn and practice independent research skills, and provides them with an opportunity to conduct their own research on any topic of interest.

“Our definition of science is very broad,” Sullivan said. “We have had economics programs, some archaeology, entomology, ontology, and a lot of psychology ones as well.”

For Sim, her interest lies in the psychology and dynamics of first impressions, including the ways verbal and nonverbal behaviors impact other people. Inspired by a professor at Virginia Tech, she remodeled a previous study about first impressions, and applied it towards high school students, specifically private school students versus public school students.

“What I found when I was doing my background research was that almost all first impression studies had been done on static pictures,” Sim said. “So you would show a picture of somebody and then ask if they look moral or if they would be a good worker at your company, things like that.”

What had been found, Sim shared, was that almost all the results of these studies were hindered by a person’s preconceived biases on race and gender. Having explained that face-to-face interactions through videos rather than pictures would have more accurate first impressions, Sim began her study by asking other students to take a video in response to the prompt, “tell me about yourself.”

Her innovative approach challenges existing research paradigms and contributes valuable insights to the field.

“I plan to have the Sacred Heart girls watch those videos and respond to a survey under the guise of trying to understand the variables of competence and morality,” Sim explained. “So the survey has questions asking if the speaker is approachable, warm, sociable, capable, and so on, and these will help me understand which behaviors, verbal or nonverbal, influenced those specific readings. It’s such a vast topic that I believe is very important to understands both sides of.”

Sim, who will be going to college to study political science in the fall, mentioned how first impressions can be applied to any career. Whether it’s college or the workforce, the way people judge and interact with others is evident.

“That’s the beauty of psychology,” Sim said, “That there’s psychology in every field and I think that what is probably the most remarkable thing about what I have been able to do over the last three years is that there’s such flexibility. You can really see everybody’s completely different interests because each girl’s project is tailored to what they like and want to do in the future.”

Sim and her classmates will be attending two of the four convention days, and plan to visit the many historical sites in San Francisco on the others.

Sullivan, their mentor and chaperone, emphasized the importance of this project towards the future.

“Of course, I am always incredibly impressed by what [my students] accomplish, but what I’m really looking forward to is receiving an email from them next year telling me what they have been up to,” Sullivan said. “I’m less interested in them getting into a certain college than I am with them doing well at that college.”

In regards to what she has learned over the past four years of high school, Sim said, “what I’ve been able to do through this research program will impact me throughout whatever career path I choose.”