Poster Award - Minita Franzen
Hello everyone,
First of all, I would like to say that I am very excited to have been chosen as the winner of the poster award. As I am still at the beginning of my research career it feels like a great encouragement. This year’s SITAR meeting was my first and I very much enjoyed being there and learning how the interpersonal circumplex can be applied in so many different research areas.
The project I presented was about how interpersonal functioning is affected when people drink alcohol. More specifically, we looked at whether there are within-person and between-person differences in how people react to drinking. We also examined the influence of between-person differences in drinking on the association between within-person drinking and interpersonal functioning. We asked our student sample to report their daily social interactions for 2 weeks using an online software (TEMPEST; RoboticBit, NL) accessible via an app on their smartphones. Interpersonal behaviors and perceptions were assessed in terms of dominance-submissiveness and agreeableness-quarrelsomeness. Participants also reported how many drinks they had consumed within 3 hours of each interaction.
The most novel findings were that between-person differences in drinking moderated the association between within-person drinking and interpersonal functioning. When more frequent drinkers drank, they perceived others as more dominant than less frequent drinkers. Moreover, when frequent drinkers drank more than usual, they reported behaving more dominantly and experiencing less pleasant affect.
This study was part of a traineeship that was required for my Research Master programme which I completed at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. Prof. Debbie Moskowitz was very kind to invite me to her lab at Mcgill University. I was able to work with her and Dr. Gentiana Sadikaj, who taught me a lot about multilevel modelling which I applied to analyse the data of this alcohol study. I am very grateful for this opportunity and greatly enjoyed working with Debbie and Genta.
I am back in Groningen now and started my PhD position on 1st September. Under the supervision of Prof. Peter de Jong and Dr. Marije aan het Rot, I will study the role of interpersonal functioning in explaining the increased depression risk in victims of bullying. As in the alcohol study that I presented at this year’s SITAR meeting, I will use the interpersonal circumplex to characterise interpersonal functioning.
I look forward to continuing to apply the interpersonal circumplex in my research and hope that I will soon be able to present findings of my PhD project at future SITAR meetings. If you would like to know more about my research please feel free to email me.
Best,
Minita Franzen