Students, faculty and an alumna from the Long Island Campus’ psychology department won the Eastern Psychological Association’s inaugural gun violence essay competition.
Brit Vincent ’24, Kaleigh Keenan ’24, Courtney Pisano ’23, Anthony Loiacono ’25 and Thomas DiBlasi, Ph.D., will present their research while being honored at the EPA’s 95th annual conference in Philadelphia in February.
“Two students saw the call for papers on gun violence and felt passionate about bringing about change, and they asked me to supervise the work,” Dr. DiBlasi, assistant professor of psychology, explained. “They were discussing their ideas with other students who were interested and asked to join.”
The proposal for the essay will be published in a forthcoming special issue of Psychological Reports on gun violence.
The essay, titled “Examining the Effect of Threatened Masculinity on Gun Violence,” focuses on a topic the group felt was an area that hadn’t been explored in terms of where gun violence stems from.
“This study is novel in that it examines the effect of threatened masculinity on gun violence, and it offers a unique, experimental approach to examining gun violence without placing anyone in harm’s way,” Dr. DiBlasi said. “Students spent hours synthesizing the research, meeting and writing drafts.”
