By: Muthaira Abid, Maheep Chalwa, Christine Seo
C: Could you tell us where you’re from?
T: White Rock, BC
C: What are your preferred pronouns?
T: She/her/hers
C: Tell us one fun fact about yourself:
T: My go to answer for this question is going skydiving in Cuba when I was 16. It was an unforgettable experience! It was my very first time and I had an instructor guiding me throughout the whole process. We had a 30-second free fall right after we jumped off the plane and for the rest of the trip we slowly glided down. It was really fun- imagine a rollercoaster going straight down!
MA: That sounds so cool! I want to do that one day!
MA: When did you conduct your research?
T: I started in September 2019 and completed it in April this year.
MA: Could you give us a short outline of your directed studies research project. Starting off with what your research project was about and how you started it?
T: Last academic year, I worked at the Social Health Lab with a graduate student – Charlotte. My specific research topic looked into the relationship between loneliness and heart rate variability (HRV). Charlotte had based the research hypothesis on a previous research paper that looked at the relationship between heart functioning and different factors such as loneliness, depression, stress and anxiety. In that research paper, a sample of older men and women showed there was a correlation between loneliness and HRV. Charlotte wanted to look into the relationship between loneliness and HRV because the feelings of chronic loneliness is in the long term very detrimental to one’s health. She wanted to find out why this is the case and how exactly loneliness might affect one’s physical health.
There is a robust correlation between loneliness and HRV. Our heart rate doesn’t have a constant rhythm, there are slight variations between each beat. There is also a correlation between the amount of variation and overall cardiovascular health. Based on previous research, the higher the variation is between heartbeats, the better health outcome a person has. This was the overall trend that was observed. Charlotte had looked at a sample of young women and their connection between loneliness and HRV the year before. I wanted to see if the same trend she found applies to young men. This is the study I started to work on and based my Directed Studies research on. My research question was “Is there an association between chronic loneliness and HRV reactivity in young men”.
One other thing that I looked into in my study is HRV Reactivity, is how your heart reacts from one situation to another situation. So for example, if you are sitting on a chair and just relaxing, then a stranger comes up to you and strikes a conversation with you – your body has to respond to physically prepare yourself for that conversation. Your parasympathetic system has to make you feel calm so that you can better engage in the social interaction. I looked at whether lonelier people would have a worse adaptation to social interactions in changing environments. HRV reactivity can be an indicator of how well one’s body can adapt to changing surroundings. HRV reactivity is operationalized by the difference between one’s HRV in a calm environment and an environment that mimics the physiological reaction mobilized during a social engagement.
*HRV is defined as changes in time between subsequent heartbeats.
C: What sparked your interest in your research topic?
T: When I began as a student at UBC in my first year, my transition from high school to university was difficult. In high school, I was a part of a tight knit community, but at university I found myself having to put myself out there and make new friends. This change made me experience a sort of isolation that I never had to go through before. It impacted my mental health, my motivation and my overall happiness level. This experience sparked my interest in loneliness – particularly how this subjective feeling affects one’s physical health. When I came across Charlotte and her research, I wanted to find out more and have an active role in it.
MA: Is there anyone in the field who has inspired you?
T: My overall interest in psychology is based on the strong foundation some of my professors in first year and second year laid out, that affirmed my interest in exploring topics in psychology. They were very supportive of my overall academic learning. To name a few, my introductory psychology professors Dr. Catherine Rawn who taught PSYC 101 and Dr. Darko Odic who taught PSYC 102. Additionally, Dr. Kalina Christoff taught me PSYC 260, which involved cognitive neuroscience. I was always so intrigued by how she related many real-life examples to the theoretical frameworks we were learning in class.
C: What was your favorite part of the process?
T: I enjoyed the entire process. Data collection can become a little monotonous sometimes, but what made me come to the lab all the time is that I had a real contribution to the research. This is because being a Directed Studies student means you have more responsibility as you partake in the designing of the methodology as compared to a research assistant. I was given the platform to think on my own, and I found this independent thinking process quite valuable.
C: Having an active role really makes a difference! You come to realize all the work going into tiny details of the project.
MA: Is there anything you can share with us about the results that you found? What were the trends/conclusions you observed?
T: I remember being in the lab during the data analysis stage of my research and the anticipation was building up. In short, the results I found did not concur with results from previous literature. Although I had hoped to have the results support my hypothesis, this new finding provided new directions for me to venture into. Through this study, we realized that young men and women could potentially have differences in terms of how their autonomic systems are impacted by chronic loneliness. As this is an ongoing study, I unfortunately can’t provide more detailed results at the moment.
MA: What was the most surprising observation from your study?
T: We measured the correlation between loneliness and HRV, as well as the correlation between stress, anxiety, depression and HRV. Both these results for men were different with the previous literature and Charlotte’s research.
MA: What did you do with your data and conclusion? How did you present it?
T: Since I completed my project in the winter term of 2020, COVID 19 has limited me from sharing what I found. I was planning on presenting my research at the Psychology Undergraduate Research Conference last academic year, but I didn’t get the chance to., I am still looking for opportunities to share my findings with other colleagues.
C: How do you see the results of your study being applied in the real world?
T: Right now, the study on HRV reactivity does not have many previous literatures for a solid foundation for one to dive into more specific areas. The project itself is a pretty general explorative study. In the long run, other studies can be built upon ours and add to this body of literature in health psychology. I think that this research topic can help one to come up with effective interventions targeting chronic loneliness for improved cardiovascular and physical health.
C: If you could do your study again, what would you do differently and why?
T: I would conduct a more comprehensive literature review before I dive into the logistics and planning of the experimental procedure of my research. The comprehensive theoretical knowledge would have helped me design the methods more efficiently. Moreover, I think it would have made the study as replicable as it could be.
C: How do you feel the directed studies program helped you grow, both professionally and personally?
T: Professionally, I’ve cultivated ways to think critically, especially when I was participating in the methodology design process. This program required me to think through the participants’ perspectives and critically evaluate the information being presented to me. I think this thinking process has been very helpful for when I’m being presented with academic information.
Personally, I think it has helped me clarify my career goals and made me realize what kind of work I enjoy doing. I think I have really cherished the continuous growth the opportunity of working in a lab has presented me with. There was always something for me to learn.
MA: What course(s) do you think were most helpful in gaining background knowledge about your research topic?
T: I would say that in research, you will need to dive deeper into journals and read, read, read to get the kind of information required to conduct research on specific topics. Many courses can be useful if you are sure about what you want to conduct your research on, but in most cases, psychology courses will provide you with the introductory information and you must read up in more detail on the specific topic yourself. I would say that any psychology course that trains you to think and evaluate can be extremely useful. For example, a statistics psychology course will be very useful for data analysis. I did not know how to code (although I wish I did!) so it took me a long time to analyse my data. I would highly recommend the Psychology 218 SPSS introductory textbook. It is very detailed and comprehensive to understand the software.
MA: Have you been a part of any other research related projects?
T: In second year, I volunteered at another research lab, and that experience also helped build the foundation for me to conduct my directed studies research. It made me want to truly explore the topics that I was interested in. I also did another remote research project this summer with a team of like-minded individuals at UBC ORICE (Office of Regional International Community Engagement). In this research project, our team worked with the local NGO to design mental health interventions for adolescent students in India.
MA: Tell us about how you stayed organized and managed your time while doing a directed studies project. How do you prioritise? How do you motivate yourself?
T: I do not have the best time management skills, but I am working my way through it. One thing that has been really helpful for me is scheduling all my lab work for the same day so I can get through the day with my mind focused on only one thing. This helps save a lot of cognitive resources too. In terms of how I find my motivation, I think focusing on what I am able to achieve at hand has worked for me. It is normal to slack off but weighing the long-term consequences of each task has turned out to be a good way to motivate myself.
MA: What was the most challenging part about doing directed studies? What was most rewarding?
T: I think the most challenging part for me was also the most rewarding part. I had started working at a new lab so I was not familiar with how things worked there. I needed to communicate my abilities in an effective way and learn about the operations in a short amount of time. I found that there were always new things to learn, which was sometimes challenging, but also incredibly motivating. I was continuously being equipped with knowledge by working with people or reading up literature on my own. It was never a boring process.
C: Do you have any other interests outside of BNS and Psychology? If so, are you a part of any other clubs?
T: I like creating music! It excites me because music gives me another way to communicate with people, so I have devoted a lot of my time to it. I like to come up with melodies on my piano and ukulele. (I love my ukulele because it is so convenient – I can take it anywhere with me!)
C: What do you see yourself doing in 10 years?
T: Throwing the big questions! I don’t have a structured plan as of now but what I know for sure is that I enjoy doing research (academic and design based). I want to incorporate research into my professional path later on. I know that I enjoy working with people in the lab so I want to combine these interests of mine with a cause that I care about and make some tangible changes. I think my plan is vague because I am still open to many other opportunities and I do not want to restrict myself to anything.