Center for Applied Behavior Systems (CABS)

Pedestrian Gratuity:

You’re waiting to cross the street, and a car stops to let you cross the crosswalk. Do you give them a “wave” to express your gratitude? When we ask people this question, nearly everyone says that they do. However, we have been studying pedestrian behavior at crosswalks for the last 3 years, and we have observed that only around 14% of people crossing the street “wave” at the person letting them cross. This project focuses on implementing interventions which intend to increase the level of pedestrian gratuity at crosswalks at Virginia Tech.

Bagless Blacksburg (Greeks Go Green):

Our center’s leading environmental-protection project intends to reduce plastic waste in our community by increasing reusable bag use at grocery stores here in Blacksburg, VA. Preliminary data collection over the last two years suggests that young people (particularly young men) are disproportionately contributing to plastic bag waste. Considering that Blacksburg is made up of primarily young Virginia Tech students, this is especially problematic. To address this issue, the center is launching an intervention called Greeks Go Green, which targets members of Greek organizations (fraternities and sororities) at Virginia Tech. The intervention involves a competition between members of various Greek organizations at Virginia Tech to use the most reusable bags. A sign displaying a “leaderboard” of the organizations which use the most reusable bags will be placed outside of Kroger locations in Blacksburg, incentivizing members of these organizations to use more reusable bags than their peers. The competitive environment created by this intervention intends to increase the overall level of reusable bag usage and environmental conscientiousness of Blacksburg residents.

Psychological Safety:

Have you ever felt nervous asking your classmates for help on an assignment? Or perhaps felt uncomfortable challenging a view held by your professor that you disagree with? If so, you likely lacked psychological safety in these scenarios, a concept which refers to how comfortable one feels at expressing one’s thoughts, feelings and/or attitudes in a given situation. This concept has been explored extensively in industry, and higher psychological safety has been shown to increase creativity (Castro et al., 2018), engagement (Frazier et al., 2016), and reduce distress (Obrenovic et al., 2020) within the workplace. Despite these benefits, the concept has seldom been studied outside the workplace. This discrepancy led our center to develop a project exploring this concept throughout higher education at Virginia Tech, studying how variance in psychological safety is impacted by the type of class a student is taking (i.e., engineering course vs. biology course).

Thank You Professor:

Gratitude expression (i.e., doing things like saying “thank you”) is one of the most powerful tools we have to improve well-being. Gratitude expression is especially powerful because it results in a “win-win”—both the person expressing gratitude and the person receiving the gratitude feel better after an interaction in which one expresses gratitude. This project focuses on evaluating the impact of gratitude expressions on the mood states of students, using a customized thank-you card (TYC) delivered to a professor after their class. Our research findings suggest that the act of giving a professor a TYC significantly increases mood states in students, with our most recent study showing a 36% increase in the average self-reported mood states of students who had given the TYC.

Misogyny Online:

The advent of social media has led to the ability to spread information and ideas across populations with unprecedented ease. However, this rise in social media popularity has facilitated an increase in misogynistic content, spreading its influence among young populations. The negative impact of misogynistic social content extends beyond emotion, increasing the prevalence of violent acts against women. Using a range of TikTok videos, this study explores the gender differences between men and women concerning the identification of misogyny online. The primary aim of this exploratory study is to provide evidence of gender differences that could be used to inform future studies about misogyny online.

Emotion Perception:

Accurately predicting the emotions of others is an important skill. Whether a doctor is trying to assess the wellbeing of a patient, a teacher is trying to gauge a student’s understanding of class material, or a police officer is attempting to de-escalate a situation, correctly interpreting the emotions of relevant others can help assess the situation and decide how to best proceed. Misperceptions of the emotions of others can cause miscommunication and interpersonal conflict, making emotion perception a crucial part of facilitating positive interactions between people. However, people’s ability to correctly interpret emotions can be adversely impacted by stressful situations. Therefore, it is important to study how different levels of stress can affect perceptions of emotion and nonverbal communication. This project explores relations between stress and one’s ability to accurately perceive emotional expressions.