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“Professor Shulman shows me what directions to take and allows me to develop new ideas on my own,” says Cynthia Lee ’00 of Lansdale, Pa., a graduate of North Penn High School. “He is very confident in my abilities. He has taught me how to organize my thoughts into concise and elaborate hypotheses.”
What a summer for Cynthia Lee. Full of deception and fraud. But she’s OK with that.
As a full-time EXCEL research assistant, Lee’s helping David H. Shulman, assistant professor of anthropology and sociology, study the dark side of consumer behavior.
“Aside from the attention paid to crimes like shoplifting and insurance fraud, few studies explore the everyday deceptions that consumers use in the business and service environment,” Shulman explains. “Examples of such deceptions include homeowners misrepresenting a home’s condition to real estate agents, diners not paying their checks, and shoppers who swear the product they are returning ‘didn’t work when I tried it.’
“In this project, Cynthia will work on a range of research tasks, including designing questions, conducting interviews, and developing hypotheses.”
“Professor Shulman and I are interested in developing a theory about how consumers deceive businesses,” says Lee, who’s majoring in psychology and minoring in anthropology and sociology. “We’re looking at how people rationalize their behavior, what businesses are likely to be hit and why, and in what ways do consumers deceive.”
Shulman says Lee’s well-suited to take on the project (but not because of any proclivity for fraud).
“She has an unusual creativity and intelligence in reading and reflecting on scholarly work,” he says.
After performing an extensive review of the literature, Lee and Shulman are developing a series of questions as a framework for interviews to be conducted with people and businesses. They hope the interviews will lead to conclusions about what he terms “everyday fraud.”
Lee says, “Professor Shulman shows me what directions to take and allows me to develop new ideas on my own. He is very confident in my abilities. He has taught me how to organize my thoughts into concise and elaborate hypotheses.”
“Cynthia’s getting a sophisticated sense of planning and conducting research from inception to completion,” Shulman says. “In addition to reviewing the literature, she’s conducting the preliminary interviews, and she will eventually co-author a paper that we’ll submit for publication by a scholarly journal.
“It’s really unusual for students and professors to work cooperatively at this level. EXCEL work is more than just giving students a task to complete,” he continues. “It offers students a flavor of professional work. College is, after all, a place to lead your mind into new possibilities. EXCEL offers students a chance to challenge themselves and see if they want to pursue a particular activity at a professional level.”
Lee says, “I think the EXCEL program is a wonderful opportunity for all students at Lafayette. Many may initially be intimidated by the thought of doing research, but EXCEL allows you to become comfortable with research and with professors.”
A member of Psi Chi, the national honor society in psychology, Lee plans to attend graduate school following graduation from Lafayette.
“Regardless of the research direction I choose in grad school, the experience I’m having now is invaluable,” she says. “I have learned so much about the work that goes into a research project.”