Members
Monique Mitchell Turner Ph.D.
Dr. Monique Mitchell Turner is Professor and Chair of the Department of Communication at Michigan State University. Turner is trained in persuasion and employs that expertise in applied arenas like political, health and risk communication; with a particular focus on cognitive processing of persuasive communication. Turner’s main focus is on the role that emotions play in the underlying psychosocial processes explaining message effects (including risk perception, judgment and decision making); her work has examined the effects of guilt, shame, anger, and fear (etc) in the cognitive, attitudinal and behavioral impacts of persuasive messaging.
Turner is the author of the Anger Activism model—a behavioral theory explaining when anger leads to prosocial vs antisocial outcomes. Turner’s research has been funded by organizations such as Health and Human Services, the Food and Drug Administration, the Joint Institute for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (JIFSAN), and the Centers for Disease Control. Turner is the former Senior Editor of Health Communication and is the former associate editor of Communication Research Reports. She is the past chairperson of both the Communication and Social Cognition Division of the National Communication Association and the Health Communication Division of the International Communication Association.
Turner is the Director of the National Social Norms Center (#MSUSOCIALNORMS) and is a core member of the Health and Risk Communication Center at MSU.
Ralf Schmälzle Ph.D.
Dr. Ralf Schmälzle (SHMAL-ts-lee) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at Michigan State University. His interdisciplinary expertise spans communication, psychology, and cognitive neuroscience, providing a unique perspective on human interaction and information processing.
Dr. Schmälzle’s research focuses on decoding the intricate relationship between messaging and brain function. He employs bio-behavioral and neurocognitive methods to measure collective audience responses in various communication contexts, including media entertainment, health, and mass communication.
His most recent work harnesses Virtual Reality technology to create immersive communication environments in which message exposure, reception, and effects can be studied with unprecedented precision. This VR-based approach allows for real-time capture of user responses, offering new insights into the mechanisms of information exchange and the future of (human-human and human-AI) interaction.
Jacob T. Fisher Ph.D.
Jacob is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication in the College of Communication Arts & Sciences at Michigan State University. He completed my Ph.D. in Communication at the University of California Santa Barbara, where he conducted research in the Media Neuroscience Lab, and served as a trainee in the NSF IGERT program in Network Science and Big Data.
Jacob’s primary research interests lie at the intersection of digital technology, attention, and decision making. His current work in this area uses functional neuroimaging, behavioral measures, and computational modeling to explore how effort requirements, perceptual complexity, and motivational factors in digital contexts influence attention and goal pursuit, especially in a multitasking context. You can find a full list of Jacob’s recent publications and preprints here.
Jacob’s work also aims to build theory and refine methods in media psychology and adjacent domains. As a part of these efforts, He has played a role in creating a few publicly available research tools, including a command-line tool for applying the Extended Moral Foundations Dictionary (eMFD), and an interface for the Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone (GDELT).
Undergraduate Members of
CASE lab
Undergraduate Research Team
Maggie Casper – Freshman Sumayah Williams – Senior
Brenna Paw – Sophomore Caitlin Prince – Senior
Owen Polanich – Junior Azor Ashley – Senior
Bella Wiseley – Junior Griffin Schoener – Senior
Mackenzie Brown – Junior Samantha Adams – Senior
Cass Thorman – Junior Skylar Swartz – Senior
Ryan Stewart – Junior Isabella Wiseley – Junior
Caroline Butcher – Sophomore
