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Psychology expirement help.

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pomme-de-terre
Posts: 3915 - Karma: 703
in the upcoming week or so, i have to plan and execute a psychology experiment for my psych class.
basically, i have to have an idea about a certain human behavior, then perform a test on real, living people to see if the idea on human behavior is true or not.

i have a few ideas of my own for the assignment, but i dont think any of them are that great, and i was wondering if any of you newschoolers might have a suggestion of an experiment for me to do. maybe even one that involves newschoolers.com?




p.s. i searchbarred this, but didnt find anything super great, and im also looking elsewhere on the internet for ideas, but i figured i might as well make a post on NS for the hellofit.
Nov 4 2009 11:01AM
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.frenchy
Posts: 18212 - Karma: 12,257
i have an F in science lol
Nov 4 2009 11:03AM
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Rachy
Posts: 4355 - Karma: 2,761
I did my absolute favorite psychology experiment in highschool and then again in college.


What is your better side? Based on the idea that people always turn their face a certain way and so forth.

The idea is that if you are right handed, the right side of your face is preferred, and left handed the left side is preferred.

The more symmetrical you are the more healthy you are and youre less likely to get cancer and blah blah blah.

Anyway the experiment I did was to take 1 left handed male, 1 left handed female, 1 right handed male and 1 left handed male and make RR and LL composites of their faces.

Then I would hold up the RR and LL of the first person and ask which the person viewing preferred and then would continue on with the other 3.

it was something like like 78% of people preferred the composite corresponding to the handedness of the person they were viewing.

I got 100% on it in highschool and something like 98% in college.

The actual term for the type of psychology is called evolutionary psychology and it is really really interesting.
Nov 4 2009 11:13AM
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afrocentric
Posts: 707 - Karma: 29

Thats a pretty awesome experiment, how did you come up with the idea for that one?

Nov 4 2009 11:27AM
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sk1er
Posts: 614 - Karma: 10
ive always wanted to do this.

Take a piece of pie/cake and put it at a table in a cafeteria/lounge area, with and without utensils. and see who eats it vs how many people see it. Social instincts should tell people not to eat it, but i think in a group people might chomp it.
Nov 4 2009 11:31AM
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Rachy
Posts: 4355 - Karma: 2,761
I took the class as a senior in highschool and had spent a lot of the summer looking at anthropology programs through out the US and stumbled across an Evolutionary Psychology program with in one of the anthropology programs and thought it was really interesting. Then I learned how small of a field it is and that there isn't too much real life application and opted for archaeology.

But in researching their program I happened across a similar experiment in which I modified it a bit.


The science of physical attraction and how the body is built is absolutely amazing.

The larger a woman's breasts are, the more likely they are to be symmetrical. The more symmetrical they are, the high the correlation to not having breast cancer.

The length of our elbow to our hand holds a baby in the exact location it needs to be in to breast feed.

Women with larger lips have a higher fertility rating. Lips are essentially going, hey, you want my vagina.

The larger a woman's hips, the easier it is to give birth and women with large hips are less likely to go through sever labor that used to cause many deaths. But now with modern treatment it doesn't really matter.

Then there are tons of stats on how wide your eyes should be apart and so forth. Basically, the more average the measurements are on your face the more likely you are to be pictured as beautiful.

Of course there are cultural influences on this as well.... body modifications, perception of weight, things like large eyes and such.

They psychology of it is amazing!
Nov 4 2009 11:47AM
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sconniestyle
Posts: 3945 - Karma: 26

very cool project, evolutionary psych is super fascinating.

Nov 4 2009 1:19PM
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