Improving Care and Well-Being, One Experiential Research Project at a Time

How do our beliefs affect what we see? For Jida Haddad, College of Arts and Science Class of 2025, this question led to a thesis exploring visual confirmation bias in criminal investigations. “I wanted to do something at the intersection of law and psychology,” the Psychology major says. So, she worked alongside Professor Emily Balcetis in her Social Perception Action and Motivation Lab. There, Jida investigated whether people who tend to justify existing systems interpret police evidence in ways that align with their beliefs.

In a simulated investigation, participants viewed a police sketch and a man’s photo. Additionally, they learned this photo was supposedly identified through AI as a potential match. Then, they were told a background story. One group learned he’d pushed someone onto subway tracks, another read he’d saved someone, and a control group received no contextual information. “We wanted to look at how many similarities they focused on, and whether that aligned with their beliefs about the man’s guilt,” Jida explains. The results? Two people looking at the same image could interpret it completely differently—evidence for visual confirmation bias. Now headed to a law firm, Jida says studying psychology “provides a really strong foundation for legal work.”

Maame Adwoa Sey, Liberal Studies Class of 2025, found that the effects of foreign aid aren’t just economic—they’re political. Her project compared how Ghana, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Haiti have used foreign aid to develop their health systems and infrastructure. “Aid is usually tied to a specific agenda, and oftentimes that agenda doesn’t match what the country needs,” she says. As a result, countries may accept aid only to find that the donor’s priorities shape the outcome.

Maame’s interest was sparked during a year abroad at NYU Accra, where she interned with Concern Health Education Project. “I looked at the gaps between policies and what community members are experiencing,” the Global Public Health/Global Liberal Studies major explains. What’s more, conversations with local health workers, policymakers, and her professor, Roger Atinga, helped her understand how communities work around limited government support. “That made me want to look into why nongovernmental organizations have to go outside of their own country to receive money.” Inspired by the experience, she worked on public health in Namibia with the Peace Corps this August. “After that,” she continues, “I want to be a diplomat.”