Reconciling with Research: Psychologist Tackles Gap Between Theory and Everyday Experience

Reconciling with Research: Psychologist Tackles Gap Between Theory and Everyday Experience

By Travis Miller, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Psychology

Dr. Miller has recently received a Dunlop Spark grant for his research into evaluating established methods in psychology used to describe individuals’ desires to change aspects of their personality. He has proposed new methods that fit with our everyday understanding of ourselves and our goals.

There is sometimes a disconnect between how we each come to understand the world and the way research seeks to describe it. Through my teaching and research, I often find myself trying to reconcile these discrepancies. In my teaching, this often manifests by explicitly having students connect research methods and findings to their lives. Introductory psychology students can have a hard time understanding the different psychology theories in the abstract, so I ask them to apply these concepts to their own experience. For example, after covering material on learning and memory I ask what advice they would give to a friend who wants to do better in school. Their answers often touch on the importance of sleep for storing information in long-term memory and various strategies for enhancing our memory such as elaborative rehearsal (linking new information to information we know well) and chunking (grouping information into manageable chunks, like a phone number).

In my personality course, students can often struggle to understand the nuances of the things that are a part of our everyday lives, like perceiving the personalities of others. To show how quickly we make accurate evaluations of others, I ask them to assess my personality. I then spend time with them applying psychological concepts of personality to their judgments of who I am, discussing where they are accurate and where they are not. Together we connect these to the different theories of personality judgement. Students often tell me that they come away from my classes with a better understanding and appreciation of themselves and those around them.

In my research, I often develop tools to align the science and our experience. One stream of my research focuses on how we evaluate our days. As we live our lives, we tend to do this in the unit of days. We ask how each other’s day was and we answer by describing the day on the whole (good, bad or otherwise). Prior research zoomed further in—describing the day hour to hour or activity to activity—or further out—describing a life history. I worked to align the research with our experience by creating a rigorous instrument that can be used to describe the day as we do normally. For example, we have all had days where we spent our time doing objectively productive things in classes, meetings, or at work, but did not feel that our day was productive. My research demonstrates what we all know to be true: when we spend time in tasks that we see as a good use of our time, we evaluate our day as having been more productive.

My students are eager to learn about themselves and psychology can give them tools for clearer introspection and better understanding of those around them. In my research, I try to improve the tools we have, and in the classroom, I enjoy conveying the excitement of researching human experience. I hope my students will take this new understanding with them to enhance their lives, succeed in their chosen careers, and make a lasting positive impact on the world.

Meet The Author

What is your most important tip for anyone tackling difficult research projects?

When doing research, be sure that you’re inherently interested in something about the content. Research projects are often long and hard. They’re often solitary and rewards are few at first. You may spend hundreds of hours of work on your project and initially receive mostly criticism. So be sure that you have a personal interest driving you.

How do you keep a good work/life balance? i.e. What keeps you sane?

I have strict rules for myself and would advise students to have their own rules that are enforceable. This is when I work; this is when I don’t. For example, I only check emails up to 6 p.m., not after, and most weekends, I try not to respond immediately.

What surprised you most about Menlo College? What has given you a moment of joy?

Going into my first faculty meeting, I ran into President Steven Weiner, and he recognized me and knew exactly who was. Through my entire academic career, he’s the only president I’ve met. The administrators I’ve met are accessible; the faculty and students are accessible. It’s a Menlo thing.

Is there a memory of Menlo College that you will always treasure?

I love the diversity of experience and the differences of backgrounds that Menlo students bring to the classroom. When I ask a question, they bring their particular experiences and so I get broader answers than I anticipated. With the small classes, I’m able to know my students and all that they have to bring. Here, I’ll have about 25 students in my Personality Theory class and I know them all by the second week. At my last institution, I had 250 and there were some I never knew. Menlo suits me much better.