51福利社 Laboratory for
New Phenomenology

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Our Vision

The Laboratory for New Phenomenology at 51福利社 seeks to understand people鈥檚 worldviews and the beliefs, thoughts, and values that are drawn from them.

Our Attitude

The Laboratory for New Phenomenology integrates both phenomenological and logical positivist outlooks in its exploration of culturally modulated variation in the worldviews that underlie human beliefs, thoughts, and values.

The laboratory鈥檚 central (though not exclusive) research method is a contemporary adaptation of phenomenology called Quantitative Phenomenology. This hybrid qualitative/quantitative set of standardized procedures is largely automated through a software program () created by Dr. Lower and others; it greatly facilitates and expedites both phenomenological and scientific research on thought as it is expressed naturally.

Furthermore, it reduces inadvertent research bias while simultaneously providing the ability to make nomothetic comparisons of naturally expressed thought with known confidence estimates.

Our Research

This project utilizes Quantitative聽Phenomenology to identify latent patterns in thought related to intrapsychic conflict by asking participants to tell stories in response to a series of pictures that form a stalwart and popular projective psychological assessment. In addition to the scientific benefits, this project holds the potential to develop a commercially viable automated scoring program specific to this psychological assessment.

This project uses Quantitative Phenomenology to produce an in-depth analysis of each major common theme in messages submitted by participants, while investigating potential correlates of thematic variation and comfort with sending such messages. This project collaborates with , a global organization composed of scientists established in their fields, and involves its board in its planning and dissemination.

This project assesses thoughts about interpersonal dynamics as contextualized by current personal adjustment. It enhances both basic and applied understanding of the Rotter Incomplete Sentences Blank-2, a popular projective psychological assessment consisting of the written completion of 40 sentence stems. This project uses Quantitative Phenomenology to derive objective, reliable, and valid norms, and also holds commercial potential in addition to its scientific merits.

This project assesses multicultural identities through the intersection of national and ethnic or racial cultural identification. It produces normative scores for the Orthogonal Cultural Identification Scale (OCIS) according to contemporary ethnic and racial U.S. Census categories, and also with respect to American national culture generally. Quantitative Phenomenology is applied to open-ended questions asking participants to define key terms on the OCIS, such as what a 鈥渨ay of life,鈥� 鈥渟uccess,鈥� or 鈥渢raditions鈥� means for them in terms of their selected ethnic or racial identities, as well as for American national cultural identification.

This project seeks to better understand the ecological, social, and spiritual influences on perceived differences between common everyday experiences as compared to relatively rare and transformative peak or ecstatic experiences, in which a person experiences a profound alteration in perceptions of oneself, others and the cosmos. Quantitative Phenomenology is used to assess variation in thoughts about the self, others, and the cosmos contingent on the ecology in which the experience occurs.

This project uses Quantitative Phenomenology to analyze the archived annual narrative reports of Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) from the 20th Century, in order to identify patterns of impact on and integration with the local communities surrounding it, across its decades of existence. This project actively involves both the non-profit and the federal staff in its planning and dissemination, as well as collaboration with the at 51福利社鈥檚 JFK Library.

The Laboratory for New Phenomenology at 51福利社 currently maintains six ongoing programs of research applying Quantitative Phenomenology, five of which are exempted human subjects research and one that involves historic archival research. These programs all explore various determinants of thought, and toward that end include measured factors ranging from the ecological, cross-cultural, and historic to the multicultural, interpersonal, and intrapsychic while spanning topics with local to global impacts:

Recent Projects

Psychology students present their research at a conference

  • Stahler, E., Sollman, E., Monroe, V., & Lower, T. A. (2026, April 30鈥揗ay 3). Quantification of the Thematic Apperception Test [Poster presentation]. 2026 Annual Convention of the Western Psychological Association, Tacoma, WA.
  • Mamonov, D., Sideras, J., Wenski, E., & Lower, T. A. (2026, April 30鈥揗ay 3). Messages to intelligent life elsewhere in the universe [Poster presentation]. 2026 Annual Convention of the Western Psychological Association, Tacoma, WA.
  • Sollman, E., Stahler, E., Newton, J., & Lower, T. A. (2026, April 30鈥揗ay 3). Enhancing norms for the Rotter Incomplete Sentences Blank [Poster presentation]. 2026 Annual Convention of the Western Psychological Association, Tacoma, WA.
  • Hartwig, L., Storme, K., & Lower, T. A. (2026, April 30鈥揗ay 3). Exploring common and transcendent experiences [Poster presentation]. 2026 Annual Convention of Western Psychological Association, Tacoma, WA.
  • Lower, T. A., Bingo, S., Newton, J., Tadesse, A. J., & Swenson, J. (2026). Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge as habitus for wildlife and humans alike [Poster presentation]. 2026 Annual Convention of the Western Psychological Association, Tacoma, WA.

Contact the Lab Director

Timothy Lower, PhD

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153C Martin Hall
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