Math and social science collide

To understand human behavior, you need to know your numbers. That intersection of social science and statistics fuels Jacob Coutts to look for mediators that influence a person’s self-compassion. “We posit that greater self-compassion leads to greater sense of self-concept clarity,” the NAU senior in the psychological sciences said. “You know yourself better when you are self-compassionate because you’ve worked through your faults, your flaws. It’s composed of mindfulness, common humanity, and self-kindness. When you express all three of those, you have a high level of self-compassion. I think it’s one of the ways of the future in research. The reason I like that study is because I get a greater look at statistical analyses like mediation and moderation. It’s the most statistically savvy project I’m working on right now.”

Coutts has worked on many. To him, psychology and math are intertwined and a constant source of discovery. It is why, as an undergraduate, he has been able to research a construct that has only been studied for the past 15 years. It is why he has worked in four labs, and been involved in projects analyzing anxiety, grit, and sexuality. “I am spoiled getting to work with a number of different people because they want to know how to use a program or how to do that certain analysis. That’s what drives me the most. I love so many topics within psychology.”

Coutts will begin a graduate career in quantitative psychology in the fall armed with a strong research foundation: “What NAU has is faculty who care about their students. You get to meet professors who teach graduate courses your very first semester if you want. In 2,500-person classes, you don’t get that experience, this one-on-one that we kind of take for granted. I ended up with a better CV than friends who graduated from other programs just because I was able to talk to professors and get in labs and do what I really wanted to do and work with. Research opportunities have definitely, unequivocally changed me for the better. I don’t think I could have gotten this experience at another university just because I wouldn’t have had that interaction. What you can do at NAU far exceeds what you can do at another institution.”