Professional notes
Dr. John Tauer, College of Arts and Sciences (Psychology Department), published a paper with John Kingsbury ’07. Kingsbury is a second-year graduate student at Dartmouth University, where he is pursuing a Ph.D. in psychology. Their paper, “The ESPN Effect: How Slam Dunks Affect Individualism and Optimism for Athletic Success,” was published in the International Journal of Sport Communication. The data were collected at Tauer’s summer basketball camps at St. Thomas. Kingsbury and Tauer examined how the race of players and type of skills (passing or dunking) demonstrated by professional players affected youth basketball players. They found that both factors affected the young players’ optimism about their basketball careers.
