Our social ties as human beings affect our behavior and emotions, but freshman psychology major Rachel Murphy will look at the extent to which this occurs through her Research Rookies project with her mentor, Angela Grippo, assistant professor in the psychology department.

Murphy and Grippo’s research project involves multiple steps to reach their final goal.

“I will pair prairie voles with the opposite sex to allow them time to bond,” Murphy said. “I then will separate half of them and isolate them into their own cage.”

Grippo said she and Murphy are using prairie voles because they do have some similarities to humans.

“These animals form life-long social bonds and live in family groups, like humans,” Grippo said.

The prairie voles will then be put through different types of stressors, Murphy said.

“After all the stressors are complete, each prairie vole will go through depression tests,” Murphy said. “Each test will be taped, and we will score them. After that, we will take blood and organ samples and analyze the difference in stress hormones in the isolated and paired groups.”

Murphy said their ultimate goal is to see how isolated and paired animals handle stress.

“We are studying how the social bonds between male and female prairie voles influence their ability to cope with stress by studying behaviors that are related to depression along with hormonal and cardiovascular responses to stress,” Grippo said.

In the end, Grippo and Murphy’s research could provide insight into how social bonds in humans affect our behavior, emotion and stress-coping abilities.

Murphy said she enjoys being able to work in her field of study.

“To me personally, Research Rookies means that I get to work with an amazing mentor and do research in psychology,” Murphy said.

Grippo said she views the role of the mentor is to provide the Research Rookie with an “integrative” and “well-rounded” experience.

“I believe the role of the mentor should be to provide the Research Rookie with a comprehensive, integrative experience so that he or she can learn what it means to conduct research in a particular area of science and how the research will contribute important knowledge to society,” Grippo said.