Lily Assaad

Major: Psychology and Marketing

Classification: Senior

Hometown: Cairo, Egypt

Mentor: Dr. Ryan Jessup, Management Sciences

What I Study: I have enjoyed researching topics in the fields of cognitive psychology, marketing, and social psychology. Within cognitive psychology, I have assisted Dr. Jessup in researching factors affecting violations of stochastic dominance (what causes people to make irrational decisions). Within marketing, with Dr. Jessup’s guidance, I researched the relative effect of ratings and reviews on online shoppers’ purchase choices, using mathematical modeling with a Bayesian foundation. Finally, within social psychology and under the guidance of Professor Flanagan, I researched personality correlates of risk takers.

Why I do research:  As a child, I would spend hours a day thinking of reasons why people behaved the ways they did in social settings, and trying to logically verbalize them. Then, when I started middle school, I kept a journal of all my “theories,” and various “examples” that helped support them. Granted, this gave my friends infinite reasons to jokingly mock me, but i loved doing it ;)  As I grew older and studied research methods in 10th-12th grade, I discovered that I was actually attempting to engage in “psychological research,” and that it was my passion. As a result, I majored in psychology and further developed my research experience at ACU.

Conferences:  Lily has given three presentations (one in each of her research projects) at the Southwestern Psychological Association’s research conference. She also has presented her work at the ACU Undergraduate Research Festival.

Honors: Lily was one of two student speakers at the 2012 ACU Undergraduate Research Fall Dinner.