Simine wrote the following:

I'm currently in my fourth year of a Ph.D. program in personality/social psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. My research focuses on methods of assessing personality, specifically comparing self-reports, reports by informants, and direct behavioral measures. I have done some work on assessing personality in non-human animals, but I focus mostly on humans. I am interested in self-knowledge - what people do and don't know about themselves, and how feedback (e.g., learning how others see you or observing your own behavior) can affect self-perceptions.

My work with the tamarins at Carleton influenced my interest in assessment and methods, particularly in non-human animals. Observing and coding the behavior of the tamarins gave me first-hand experience with behavioral measures. The mirror self-recognition test we conducted with the tamarins contributed to my interest in the origin and function of self-knowledge. Feeding them at 8am on Saturday mornings and scrubbing their cages also prepared me for the challenges of graduate school!