In the Motivation and Goal Pursuit Lab, we take an interdisciplinary social scientific approach to studying how people’s social contexts and identities influence their motivation to pursue their goals, and their success in goal pursuit efforts. We explore the context-sensitive, and experiential nature of motivation and goal pursuit processes in a variety of domains in life. This include studies of student experiences as they pursue their academic goals, the experiences of everyday people as they pursue their health goals, and studies of how people experience the environmental conditions that surround them, conditions that affect their ability to pursue and achieve a broad range of goals in the present and future.

Our studies focus not only on what happens inside people’s heads, but also on how broader features of our social environments affect people’s experiences and how they make sense of them. These include studies of how threats from governments affect people’s psychological well-being, how the framing of issues in the media affect people’s understanding of social crises, and how the language used in legal systems affect citizens’ judgments of public officials who are meant protect and serve them.  

We study these processes in the multi-level, and multi-method ways that we do in hopes that the knowledge we build can enable us and others to develop and test interventions that have the potential to equitably improve societal outcomes. 

The work that we do cannot be done successfully by any “lone genius” toiling away in a laboratory. Instead, it is only possible when dedicated people—with a broad range of experiences and expertise—come together and work collaboratively as a team. The bios below introduce current members of that team, and provide brief snapshots of some of the specific research questions and topics they are exploring. 

Current Lab Members

Steven Kim is a sophomore pursuing a double major in Government and the History of Art. He is interested in how the changing experiences of marginalized communities influence the purpose and manner in which they are depicted by others and themselves in various media.

 

 

Dr. Eunyoung Myung is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Action Research Collaborative. Her research interests focus on media use and its consequences in the context of health. Within this domain, her research specifically focuses on two topic areas: (a) what individual characteristics, such as sociodemographic and psychological factors, affect the actions of media use for health information seeking and (b) identifying mechanisms that explain relations between mass media health information exposure and health behavior outcomes. 

Teairah Taylor is a sixth year PhD student in Communication. Her research interests are largely centered around the influence of racial/ethnic identity on interactions with the healthcare system, health behaviors, health perceptions, and health-related goals. Teairah is interested in improving the health of racial and ethnic minorities in America through translational health messaging and communication research for health promotion programs and interventions. You can follow Teairah and her work on personal website: https://www.teairahtaylor.com/

Dr. Kari Waters is a research associate in the Department of Communication. She is interested in how political institutions and processes affect people’s lived experience. More specifically, she wants to understand why certain policy choices are pursued, while others are not, and what the implications of these choices are, both for individuals and society as a whole. 

 

Alex Zhang is a second year Communication student. His research interests focus on the intersection between equity, social media, and communication. He hopes to further explore how government policy can step in to successfully and equitably manage media communications in the modern age. Outside of research he is also involved with Cornell’s Student Equity Centers.

 

A Note About Graduate Admissions

Prospective students periodically email to inquire about whether Professor Lewis is taking new graduate students, and which program they should apply to if they wish to work with Professor Lewis during their Ph.D. studies at Cornell. Here are a few answers. First, Professor Lewis is a member of both the Graduate Field of Communication and Graduate Field of Psychological Sciences and Human Development—those are the two fields in which he is able to serve as a primary advisor/dissertation chair. That being said, he frequently serves on dissertation committees of a broad range of social scientific fields, including: Information Science, Natural Resources, and Organizational Behavior. 

Second, it is important to know that admissions decisions in the fields in which Professor Lewis is a member are a collective process. Whether a particular applicant gets admitted is a field-wide decision. Therefore, Professor Lewis recommends looking at the broader faculty in the program you are interested in, and applying if there are multiple people you could envision working with. If Professor Lewis is one of those people, simply mention that in your application materials (e.g., in your statement of purpose). There is no need to email him, nor will emailing him have any influence on the admissions process. 

Professor Lewis cares deeply about fairness in admissions processes, and therefore has a policy of not meeting with any applicant in advance of admissions decisions. He does not have the bandwidth to meet with all of the prospective students who email to request meetings every year, and therefore he does not meet with any of them in order to avoid giving any applicant an unfair advantage in the admissions process.

Professor Lewis has some general advice about applying to Ph.D. programs that is freely available to anyone that is interested. That advice is summarized in this Letters to Young Scientists article on applying to Ph.D. programs that he co-authored a few years ago with Drs. Jay Van Bavel and June Gruber. He wishes you all the best in your application process!

Frequent Collaborators

In addition to the members of the lab featured above, we frequently collaborate with several groups whose diversity of expertise and experiences enrich our collective understanding. We spend a lot of our time collaborating with members of the Action Research Collaborative and Collaborative on Media and Messaging for Health and Social Policy. In addition, we also frequently collaborate with the people listed below.  

At Cornell:

Marlen Gonzalez, Department of Psychology

Rene Kizilcec, Department of Information Science

Tashara Leak, Division of Nutritional Sciences & Division of General Internal Medicine

J. Nathan Matias, Department of Communication

Jamila Michener, Department of Government & Brooks School of Public Policy

Jeff Niederdeppe, Department of Communication & Brooks School of Public Policy

Erica Phillips, Division of General Internal Medicine, Weill Cornell Medicine

Jonathon Schuldt, Department of Communication & Brooks School of Public Policy

Andrea Stevenson Won, Department of Communication

Elsewhere:

Erika Franklin Fowler, Wesleyan University

Sarah Gollust, University of Minnesota

Katy Milkman, University of Pennsylvania

Steven Moore, Wesleyan University

Ivuoma Onyeador, Northwestern University

Adam Pearson, Pomona College

Rainer Romero-Canyas, Environmental Defense Fund

Walter Sowden, University of Michigan

Lab Alumni

Current lab members stand on the shoulders of those who were part of the lab before them. Below are links to profiles of alumni who have worked in the lab over the years. 

Jennifer Allen (University of Michigan, B.A. 2016, now PhD student in Social Work @ Michigan State University)

Saarah Anjum (University of Michigan, B.A. 2015, now Lead Product Owner @ Renaissance Learning)

Dr. Marissa Bell (Cornell University Postdoc, now Social Scientist @ U.S. Department of Energy)

Dr. Zachariah Berry (Cornell University, Ph.D. 2024, now Assistant Professor at University of Southern California).

Wendy Cortes (University of Michigan, B.A. 2015, now Licensed Clinical Social Worker @ Headway)

Rachel Cultice Geoffroy (University of Michigan, B.A. 2017, now Quantitative User Experience Researcher @ Meta)

Alessandra Cruz (Cornell University, B.A. 2022, now Operations Associate @ Vision Radiology)

Dr. Monica Ellis (University of Michigan, B.A. 2016, now Internal Medicine Resident @ Inova)

Anjuli Fink (Cornell University, B.A. 2021, now Law Student @ Harvard Law School)

Dr. Ryan Foley (University of Michigan, B.A. 2015, now Postdoctoral Fellow @ McLaren Flint)

Daniel Geda (Cornell University, B. A. 2022, now Data Analyst @ Deloitte)

Nora Greenstein Jacober (University of Michigan, B.A. 2015, now Program Officer @ Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies)

Alex Grombala (University of Michigan, B.A. 2016, now Senior Customer Success Professional @ ABM Marketing & Advertising)

Sara Helmer (University of Michigan, B.A. 2014, now Clinical Social Worker @ The Children’s Center of Wayne County)

Dr. Zeynab Jouzi (Action Research Collaborative Postdoc)

Mariam Khan (University of Michigan, B.A. 2015, now Clinical Research Assistant @ Kellogg Eye Center)

Andrew Khouri (University of Michigan, B.A. 2017, now Associate Attorney @ Honigman LLP)

Elena Khutoretsky (University of Michigan, B.A. 2015, now Technical Recruiter @ Datadog)

Dr. Joel Le Forestier (Cornell University Postdoc, now Assistant Professor @ University of Pittsburgh).

Dr. Nicholas Michalak (University of Michigan, Ph.D. 2020, now data scientist @ Lumen Technologies)

Saachi Pawa (University of Michigan, B.A. 2021, now Clinical Research Coordinator @ Brigham and Women’s Hospital)

Dr. Bharathy Premachandra (Cornell University, Ph.D. 2024)

Celina Romano (University of Michigan, B.A. 2016, now Associate Attorney @ Jenner & Block)

Fangyi (Lexie) Shi (Cornell University, B.A. 2025, now M.S. student @ University of Pennsylvania)

Dr. Mikaela Spruill (Cornell University, Ph.D. 2023, now postdoctoral fellow @ Stanford University)

Alaina Stevenson (University of Michigan, B.A., 2017, now Product Lead @ Clutch.co)

Elizabeth Stewart (University of Michigan, B.A. 2016, now MSW Student @ University of Chicago)

Dr. Stephanie Tepper (Cornell University, Ph.D. 2023, now Associate Fellow at U.S. Office of Evaluation Sciences)

Lucus Tse (Cornell University, B. A. 2019, now CX Analyst @ Hubspot)

Caiwei Zhu (Cornell University, B. A. 2020, now PhD Student in STEM education @ Delft University of Technology)

Current Research Sponsors:

The work that we do would not be possible without the support of our funders. Below is a list of institutions currently supporting our work. 

City of Rochester, New York

Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences

Cornell University College of Human Ecology

Mother Cabrini Health Foundation

New York State

New York State Council on Children and Families

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

United States Department of Agriculture