When senior Isabella Mangano was settling on a major at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, she was immediately drawn to communication studies as the public speaking component suited her career aspirations to be a preacher or motivational speaker. As the semesters passed, she began to see the many career paths one could take with a major from the School of Communication Studies, and it made it all the more appealing to her.
“Once I started taking classes I learned what the discipline actually was and I just fell in love with it. I really enjoy communication studies as a discipline, I enjoy all the topics within it, so for me I was very excited to go further and more in-depth with exploring the field,” she said, noting that her new career goals are to work in human services or with a nonprofit.
To go more in-depth into the discipline, she entered the major’s honors track, which means taking graduate-level courses, doing additional academic reading, and conducting her own research for an honors thesis. Her presentation on her thesis won first-place in the undergraduate category at the College of Communication and Information 46th Annual Research Symposium and a proposal on the same topic earned her the Advanced Undergraduate Research Activity (AURA) award from the office of Undergraduate Research and Fellowships.
While one of the most difficult parts of a thesis is often narrowing down the topic, Mangano already had one in mind: attachment theory. A self-described “relationship person,” the interpersonal communication aspect of communication studies greatly appeals to her, and attachment theory is all about how people interact with each other in relationships.
“It actually was a topic that felt like the only thing that made sense for me to do, the only topic I could do. I’m so interested in attachment theory. It’s probably the most relevant, applicable theory that I’ve seen in my life and my friends’ lives. I’ve read a lot of research on anxious attachment in specific and I thought it was all very fascinating and I loved how the findings were all so consistent,” she said.
As Mangano consumed attachment theory research, she saw a gap that new scholarship could fill—and that’s when she began looking for a faculty advisor to assist her research and approached School of Communication Studies Assistant Professor Jessica Frampton. Frampton has expertise in interpersonal relationships and previously had Mangano in a class, and was impressed with her as a student. They teamed up to get the ball rolling on Mangano’s work and Frampton suggested the senior apply for the AURA award, which will fund incentives for study participants and provide a stipend for Mangano.
First, they built the framework for the research and Mangano created her winning presentation, titled Understanding Communicative Anxious Attachment Triggers and Reactions. While current research on attachment theory stems back to its inception in the 1960s and exhaustively studies behaviors of people with an anxious attachment style, the path to new research Mangano saw was exploring what can either trigger or pause negative behaviors in those relationships.
“What I saw missing in the research is that a lot of people might be anxious in relationships but not everyone looks that way or they may not act that way all the time. So, what is happening in a relationship that pauses those negative behaviors?” Mangano said.
She plans to conduct individual interviews with study participants to gain qualitative data and insight to answer that question. While she has conducted research with a group via surveys before, this is her first foray into this research methodology. Frampton helped her craft and submit an Institutional Review Board (IRB) request to allow them to use human subjects in a study, and once that is approved, the senior will start recruiting and interviewing participants.
While Mangano generally knows what type of work she would like to do upon graduating in May, this research experience is tempting her to consider going to graduate school for psychology or counseling. Regardless of what career path she takes, her experience at the School of Communication Studies has cemented the core of what she desires to do with her life.
“I want to be helping people and utilizing the communication knowledge that I’ve learned to further that,” she said.