Hana Olof ’22 and Soha Munir ’23 joined Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology Alex Wooten in representing Hollins at the 68th Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Psychological Association (SEPA), held March 23 – 26 at Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.
Olof and Munir presented a poster on eyewitness memory research they conducted over the past year entitled, “The Influence of Prior Suspect Familiarity on the Cross-Race Effect.”
“Their work was motivated by the large number of wrongful convictions that have been due to the cross-race effect, which is the finding that witnesses to a crime are worse at correctly identifying a suspect of a different race than their own,” Wooten explained. “This has unfortunately led to a disproportionate amount of innocent Black individuals being falsely identified.”
Wooten noted that Olof and Munir’s research is significant in that it establishes that “the cross-race effect also applies to situations where the suspect is casually familiar, which has yet to be shown before. The findings suggest that just because an eyewitness says they are familiar with a suspect following a crime does not guarantee they will make an accurate identification, particularly when the suspect is of a different race.”
Preliminary data from Olof and Munir’s work was presented by Olof at the Virginia Tech Summer Undergraduate Research Conference, while Munir will do a poster presentation at Hollins’ Student Performance and Academic Research Conference (SPARC) on May 8. Their research will also be featured as part of the celebration of President Mary Dana Hinton’s inauguration on April 22. Currently, they are working on a follow-up study and plan to submit it to a peer-reviewed journal, either this summer or in early fall.
A senior from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Olof is a biology major and psychology minor. She is also working on a research project that examines how glucose levels influence eyewitness accuracy. Her other interests include host-microbe interactions, specifically how microflora and dietary factors interact with the immune system to shape response to diseases. She plans on continuing her research in immunology after graduating from Hollins this spring.
Munir, a junior from Lahore, Pakistan, is majoring in psychology with a minor in biology. Eyewitness identification issues, evaluating risk taking in decision making, and developing better treatments for neurodegenerative diseases are among her research interests. This summer, she will attend a research internship program in neuroscience at the University of Florida.
SEPA is a regional psychological association affiliated with the American Psychological Association. Founded in 1955, its purpose is to advance psychology as a science, as a profession, and as a means of promoting human welfare. SEPA is the largest psychological organization in the southeast and one of largest in the United States.
Top photo (left to right): Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology Alex Wooten, Soha Munir ’23, and Hana Olof ’22 at the 68th Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Psychological Association.
