Facilities

Instilling Know-How—and an Understanding of How to Use It

The role of research and teaching facilities is to inspire students to not only acquire knowledge, but also to gain an awareness of how to apply it to meeting real-world challenges. The Social Science & Policy Studies department benefits from sharing top-notch facilities with several other academic departments and programs.

Social Psychology Inquiry (SPI) Lab

This lab supports a variety of methodologies for conducting human participant research—particularly social psychological experiments. The emphasis is on research that examines how environmental factors influence attitudes, decisions, interactions, and cultural understanding. 

Experimental Economics Lab

Located within WPI’s Salisbury Laboratories, this expansive facility is designed for conducting computerized economics experiments—and remains available for use by faculty members and students from all disciplines.

The Educational Psychology Laboratory

Here the research focus is on the intersection of educational data mining and human-computer interaction. This facility develops and deploys methods for mining data that helps researchers understand how students respond to educational software, and how these responses impact their learning.

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