Senior psychology major Tara Nolan recently received a Palumbo grant to assist in her senior research. She had the following to say about her research:

“Positive emotions have been shown to be elicited by facilitating the zygomaticus major used for smiling by having participants hold a pen with their teeth (Strack, Martin & Stepper, 1988; Soussignan, 2002). Unlike this past research the purpose of my study was to find the extent to which this involuntary smiling elicits a positive mood enhancement by studying how altruistic intentions and behaviors change. Participants viewing a positive movie segment while holding a pen with their teeth were expected to experience a greater positive mood change than participants holding a pen with their lips and inhibiting the facilitation of a smile, and were thus expected to choose more altruistic answers on a questionnaire and exhibit an altruistic behavior by fulfilling a request that I gave at the end of the experiment. Although my results indicated that there was not a significant difference between groups, there were implications that encourage researching the relationship between altruism and mood.”