Question by picklestix7866: Whats a good topic in psychology to design an experiment on?
I have to write a paper on how I would design and carry out a psychological experiment/study. Any ideas on a good topic? I was hoping to find something to do with the relationship between people and animals.
This is an easy 10 points!

Best answer:

Answer by Alison M
do it on what your interested in you’ll find it easier. ie why do women like chocolate?

Answer by Skythre
It kind of depends on what level of psychology you are in. The topic of relationships between people and animals might be pretty difficult since there are many variables to consider, which may lead to an extraneous variable influencing your results rather than your independent variable. However, if this is an entry psychology class, you might get away with it. Possibly, consider whether animals may improve people’s self-reported happiness after “pet therapy” sessions. Your study could take place in a nursing home. Randomly select a sample from the population at the nursing home. Have participants fill out a survey on their reports of their self esteem, happiness, etc. You could use a standardized test that has been used in previous experiments in order to increase the external validity of your study. Then create 2 groups in your sample of participants: experimental group and control group. Experimental receives “pet therapy” sessions with a dog and the pet owner, control group receives sessions with just the pet owner. After so many sessions, re-survey the participants and see whether the “pet therapy” sessions significantly improved participants’ self-reports of happiness in comparison to participants’ reports that had sessions just with the owner. I encourage you to do some reading on “pet therapy” since it has become a popular and relevant topic these days, especially in programs like Hospice, etc. You might want to address the problems with control of other variables, e.g. the owner and their influences, the effects of simply having a visitor in a god awful place like a nursing home, the type of animal used and whether the participant has previous biases towards it or even likes animals, the participant’s senility and awareness, informed consent and permission from IRB, etc

This just popped in my head. I can’t really think of anything else with the people and animals. Here are some unrelated topics that you could pursue if the people/animal thing doesn’t work out:

1) The effects of the presence of another motor vehicle in the adjacent lane on a driver’s initial acceleration at the change of a red light.

2) The effects of light brightness/number of windows/number of plant foliage on a worker’s self-reported happiness and enthusiasm while at work.

3) The effects of pressure and/or intimidation on a participant’s ability to memorize a speech.

4) The effects of anonymity on a participant’s critical and complimentary responses when reviewing a boss.

If any of these sound interesting to you, google around and read about these branches of psychology– you may think of a great experiment that appeals to you: perception, cognition, motivation, social behavior, animal behavior, physiological psychology, developmental psychology, abnormal psychology, personality…

Hope this helps :)

Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!

 

 

The ABLE Study – Psychological Therapy for Bipolar Disorder – The ABLE (Assessing Bipolar Lifestyle Experiences) study is a Manchester-based research trial aiming to investigate the benefits of an integrated psychologic…