The research in my lab emphasizes the factors that influence decision making in different settings. Two areas that we are currently researching are: 1) Decision making among jurors (e.g., what determines whether jurors will attempt to influence other jurors during a deliberation), and 2) Decision making among patients as they interact with doctors (e.g., what type of information do people pay the most attention to and believe). In these research projects we are typically interested in the interaction between some individual difference variable (such as degree of pretrial bias) and an experimental variable (such as the level of certainty in a verdict, as controlled through the manipulation of evidence). Other ongoing projects in our lab include the assessment of memory functioning, with an emphasis on early detection of memory problems like dementia (see Memory Assessment and Research Services), and the creation of algorithms to better estimate validity coefficients for dichotomous outcomes.

If you have an interest in joining the lab and obtaining research experience, please contact me and/or look for the posting of interview times in early November (for the Spring semester) and April (for the fall semester).

Select Publications

Lecci, L., & Cohen, D. J. (In press). Altered processing of health threat words as a function of hypochondriacal tendencies and experimentally manipulated control beliefs. Cognition and Emotion.

Lecci, L. & Wirth, R. J. (2006). Methodological and practical issues in the experience, induction and assessment of mood states. In A. V. Clark (Ed.) Psychology of moods: New Research (pp. 37-55). New York: Nova Science Publishers, Inc..

Lecci, L., & Myers, B. (2002). Examining the construct validity of the original and revised JBS: A cross-validation of sample and method. Law and Human Behavior, 26, 455-463.