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B.A., (Honors), Philosophy, the �鶹ҹ��, 2011
M.S., General-Experimental Psychology, the �鶹ҹ��, 2016
Ph.D., Experimental Psychology, Texas Tech University, 2021

• Cognitive/quantitative psychology
• Judgment, decision-making, and belief processes
• Public health communication, vaccine hesitancy

• LaCour, M., & Bell, Z. (2024). Attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccines may have “spilled over” 
  to other, unrelated vaccines along party lines in the United States. Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Misinformation Review, 5(3). 
• *Farzana, T., Gilliland, S., & LaCour, M. (accepted). The overlooked role of social norms in 
  problematic smartphone usage. The Journal of Social Media in Society. 
• LaCour, M., Serra, M.J., *Duvall, M., & *Hislop, C. (accepted). Getting lost in the “realm of possibility”: Common phrases used to communicate rare events have substantially different effects on decision-making. Journal of International Crisis and Risk Communication Research. 
• Martis, J., Davis, T., & LaCour, M. (2023). Investigating how individual differences in selective 
  attention relate to schizotypy and altered states of consciousness. Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice. 
• LaCour, M., & Serra, M. J. (2021). Distinct heuristic strategies are triggered during online retail shopping depending on products’ average user ratings. Journal of Consumer Behaviour. 
• LaCour, M., Goldwater, M., Ireland, M., Worthy, D., Van Allen, J., Gaylord, N., *Van-Hoosier, G., & Davis, T. (2021). The double bind of communicating zoonotic origins: Describing exotic animal sources of COVID-19 increases both healthy and discriminatory avoidance behaviors. Risk Analysis. 
• Davis, T., LaCour, M., Goldwater, M., Hughes, B., Ireland, M., Worthy, D., Gaylord, N., & 
  Van Allen, J. (2020). Communicating animal susceptibility impacts human risk perceptions for diseases of zoonotic origin: The role of inductive reasoning principles. Behavioral Science & Policy. 
• LaCour, M. & Davis, T. (2020). Vaccine skepticism reflects basic cognitive differences in mortality-related event frequency estimation. Vaccine. 38(21), 3790-3799. 
• Taraban, R., Marcy, W., LaCour, M., Lakshmojee, K, Prasad, S, & Zaiekin, S. (2020). Using the web to develop global ethical engineering students. Advances in Engineering Education. 
• Davis, T., LaCour, M., Beyer, E., Finck, J.L., Miller, M.F. (2020). Neural correlates of attitudes and risk perception for food technology topics. Food Quality and Preference, 80.  
• LaCour, M., Cantú, N., & Davis, T. (2019). When calculators lie: A demonstration of uncritical calculator usage among college students and factors that improve performance. Plos One. 
• Taraban, R., Koduru, L., LaCour, M., & Marshall, P. (2018). Finding a common ground in human and machine-based text processing. East European Journal of Psycholinguistics, 5(1), 83-91.
• *Lewis, A., Gilliland, S., & LaCour, M. (2022). Parental stress of homeschool parents vs. nonhome school parents. The Oak Leaf, 3(1), 14-27. 
• *Scull, C., LaCour, M., & Gilliland, S. (2022). Inspiring or discouraging: The impact of fitness influencers on Body Image. The Oak Leaf, 2(1), 15-25. 
• *Phillips, E. & LaCour, M. (2022). The history of parapsychology and its influence on pop culture. The Oak Leaf, 2(1), 90-94. 

• November 2023 Advance Faculty Grant, Student Center for Research, Creativity, and Scholarship 
• May 2022 Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award, LSUA 
• March 2021 Department of Psychological Sciences Best Researcher Award in Experimental Psychology
• March 2021 Department of Psychological Sciences Research Funding Grant
• March 2018 Graduate Student Travel Award, 110th Annual Meeting of the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology, San Antonio, TX
• October 2017 Distinguished Research Poster, 26th Annual Meeting of ARMADILLO, The Southwest Cognition Conference, College Station, TX
• November 2016 Best in Panel Award, 2016 Arts and Humanities Graduate Student Research Conference, Texas Tech University
• August 2016 J.T. and Margaret Talkington Graduate Fellowship
• March 2012  Undergraduate Philosophy Essay Contest