In recent years, there has been a movement to revisit the kinds of methods and statistical practices used in Psychology. For example, scholars have advocated for registering research designs and hypotheses before data collection, taking statistical power more seriously, and finding ways to make research findings more open and available to people across the world. As an emerging scholar, I engage in open science practices and have a strong background in a multitude of research designs and methods.

My primary line of research takes an attachment theoretical approach to studying the psychology of donor-conception. How does attachment style contribute to peoples’ willingness to incorporate donor-conception into their identities? How does attachment relate to curiosity about donor-conception and attempts made to contact one’s donor? These types of questions motivate my research agenda and inspire ideas for future streams of research.

In my Master’s thesis study, we found that donor-conceived (DC) adults who were anxiously attached to their parents were more curious about their donor conception compared to their less-anxious counterparts; however, they were not more likely to search for their donor or establish contact (Lozano, Fraley, & Kramer, 2019). For more information about this work, see my invited blog post from SPSP Character and Context. Moreover, recent qualitative research suggests that individual differences in attachment may predict language use in adults’ self-narratives about their donor-conception, particularly the extent to which some people endorse the term “social parent” to discuss their experiences (Lozano, Fraley, & Kramer, 2020).

Another related line of work with my collaborators involves the accurate enumeration of assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) and infertility services in the United States (Arocho, Lozano, & Halpbern, 2019; Arocho et al., in prep). Broadly speaking, my long-term goal is to develop basic and applied research in this area. It is my hope to draw attention to public policy issues on donor conception and one day implement interventions aimed at facilitating secure parent-child attachment in families that utilize assisted reproduction. With this, I’d like to find ways to connect families with the necessary resources to ensure effective family communication (e.g., early disclosure) and more satisfying relationships.

Other projects that I’m actively working on:

Dissertation research. The topic that I’ve explored is lie detection. Specifically, previous research has found that people who are insecure-anxious in their attachment styles are better able to detect lies than others. What is unknown, however, is whether that finding reflects differences in anxious people's ability to discriminate lies from non-lies or whether they have more liberal thresholds for classifying a statement as a lie. These alternative accounts have vastly different implications for understanding insecure attachment. This research attempted to replicate previous work and then extend that work using tools from signal detection theory to test alternative explanations for the phenomenon.

Self-reports of attachment were collected from 254 adults who were asked to watch a series of videos in which they had to determine whether the people in them were lying or telling the truth. The findings suggest that highly anxious participants did not demonstrate superior discrimination compared to their less anxious counterparts. Rather, attachment anxiety was positively associated with a tendency to detect lies regardless of trial type, revealing that highly anxious participants were more biased to detect deceit. This work is currently in press at Attachment and Human Development.

Grant-funded research.

1. Together with a team of undergraduate research assistants, I am investigating whether attachment style predicts lie detection ability, as well as feelings of betrayal and rejection in donor-conceived adults. A sample of over 500 participants were recruited from the Donor Sibling Registry (DSR) and asked to complete a two-part study; they first responded to demographic questions, performed a lie detection task, and completed a self-report measure of attachment. They were also asked to complete a semi-structured interview about themselves, the discovery of their donor-conception, and their close relationships.

   Part 1: Betrayal trauma is the result of lies and broken commitments within a relationship of trust. Oftentimes, donor-conceived people (DCP) are lied to about their genetic origins in an attempt to ‘protect’ the family. Although disclosure is highly encouraged, some parents do not tell their donor-conceived children the truth and they inadvertently discover their birth status through other means such as genetic testing. The purpose of this research was to investigate whether attachment style predicts lie detection ability in a sample of donor-conceived adults. Results from Part 1 of this investigation replicate my dissertation finding (see above; Lozano & Fraley, forthcoming) suggesting that highly anxious participants are more biased to detect deceit. This finding is useful insofar as it may help connect DCP (especially those who are high in attachment insecurity) with the appropriate support services.

   Part 2: The results of this qualitative study are in progress!

2. Collaboration with Dr. Parisa Jazbi: Group work is one of the most widely used and deeply researched teaching approaches in the college classroom. It not only promotes students’ collaboration to achieve shared learning goals, but has been shown to increase student achievement, persistence, and attitudes toward science. Although this method has been used in many disciplines, there is evidence of disciplinary variation in students’ learning approaches. This work seeks to address the following question: Do students in a Psychology class have the same perception of learning compared to students in a Biology class when group work teaching pedagogy is used? A mixed-methods approach will be utilized. In addition to completing self-reports to assess students’ perceptions, qualitative data will also be collected to investigate linguistic content (e.g., clout/confidence, authenticity, and emotional tone/affect).