When Jordan Kotch started studying disease and medicine at Lehigh, she didn’t think the topics would hit so close to home. Pursuing a dual degree in behavioral neuroscience and health, medicine, and society (HMS), with a minor in Asian studies, Kotch has a vast array of research experience—all of which is culminating in a deeply personal podcast about breast cancer.
During her first two years at Lehigh, Kotch researched how people interpret different concepts in Jessecae Marsh’s psychology lab. The Categorization and Casual Reasoning Lab researches how people’s beliefs influence the way they reason and make decisions. Kotch explored the psychology of language, investigating the causality between how people interpret words and how those interpretations shape their worldview.
“We would look at connections between the words that they use and how they describe things to see how people interpret and view different concepts.” After coding responses and combing through data for patterns, she gained her first real insight into how cognitive theories translate into real-world beliefs. “It was also just a really good experience to learn the process of running trials.”
Spotlight Recipient
Jordan Kotch
Undergraduate Student