Psyc 358: Cognitive Psychology
Lab Research Project Ideas
Please rank the your TOP 3 overall topic choices, with #1 being your top choice. You need only rank
your TOP 3 choices. If you have other project ideas, please add them to the list (and include them in
your rankings).
Time Use Decisions
Your Ranking: ____________
In many ways, time is our most valuable, unrecoverable resource. Yet there has been relatively little research
on how people make decisions about how to use their time. Some possible ideas:
● observational study of time use when in environments with different possible activities (e.g., what do
people do, and also do they actually make the best and most effective use of their time when faced
with multiple tasks and demands?)
● are people time use decisions actually consistent with their stated priorities? if not, what can bring
these into alignment (or perhaps are the stated priorities not their real priorities?)
● determining how often people are actually making conscious decisions about how to use their time
(vs. letting decisions be made for them); how often are decisions conscious and deliberate vs.
implicit?
● how often are we actually spending time doing something without having really made a decision to
do so? (e.g., students talk of rather automatically going to Facebook when seated at a computer)
● assessing what people actually perceive as their options in terms of how to spend their time on a
given day, vs. the range of options they can generate if given time and incentive to do so
● factors influencing the extent to which people consider the future in deciding how to spend time in
the immediate present
● how do decisions people make about how to spend their own time differ from the decisions they
would make for others?
● others you might think of?
Technology and Cognition
Your Ranking: ____________
The increasing role that technology plays in our lives raises questions about its potential effects on cognition.
How might the internet, smartphones, texting, tweeting, and more influence cognition itself? For example,
some studies suggest that with the increasing use of computers and the internet to find information, people
may be less likely to remember the information itself and rather more able to remember where to find the
information. Others have wondered about the possible effects of various technologies and their associated
applications on attention spans, executive control and ability to persist in solving a difficult problem, and
more. Technology could lead to an improvement in some cognitive abilities. Some possible ideas:
● investigate the influence of one or more aspects of technology on one or more aspects of cognitive
functioning
● investigate ways to potentially change the influence of one or more aspects of technology on one or
more aspects of cognitive functioning
● does technology lead to information overload, and what are the cognitive effects?
● others you might think of?
Perceived Options
Your Ranking: ____________
Cognitive psychologists studying decision making have investigated many aspects of the decision-making
process. Yet relatively little attention has been paid to an aspect that would be expected to play a rather major
role: in any decision-making situation, what are the perceived options, and what influences the perceived
options? So for example, if you are trying to decide what college to attend, your choice will be made from
among the schools you perceive as options. But might you be overlooking some other very viable options?
Or might you be considering options that aren’t really available? Some possible ideas:
● in any given decision-making situation (we could choose any topics of interest, ranging from foreign
policy to who to date or marry to what career to pursue to what to write a paper on), what do people
see as their options?
● in any given decision-making situation, what factors influence people’s perceived options?
● what can be done to shape the number and type of options that people perceive and consider?
● do perceived options differ when making decisions for oneself vs. others? what about for one’s
current vs. future self?
● others you might think of?
Aversion to Thinking/Mind-Wandering
Your Ranking: ____________
A very recent study has shown that when given the choice between being alone with their own thoughts and
an electric shock that they rated as unpleasant, a majority of men and a significant percentage of women selfadministered shocks during the thinking period rather than be alone with their thoughts. What is going on
here? (Note that some would conjecture this is linked to the ready availability of external stimulation in our
environment, including social media and smartphones.) Some possible ideas:
● replicate the study with some variations (e.g., try other aversive stimuli, alter the precise thinking
conditions to perhaps make thinking more appealing, include a condition where people are asked not
to use their electronic devices but where those are still available and monitor after how many minutes
people disobey the instructions)
● why might “just thinking” be so difficult and/or unappealing?
● what might make thinking more appealing?
● might there be certain groups that would find thinking more appealing?
● when given a range of possible tasks to engage in (vs. just thinking), what do people turn to?
● somewhat tangentially related — how long can people actually maintain their attention on a given
task? (e.g., if given a task to complete on the computer, we can possibly look at computer logs to see
what people actually did and when and for how long)
● how long can people be alone with their thoughts?
● others you might think of?
What Do Sewanee Students Think About X?
Your Ranking: ____________
We can use more qualitative approaches such as open-ended interviews to get a sense of how Sewanee
students think about a particular issue. This might be an important social or political issue, or perhaps an
issue relevant to campus life (e.g., alcohol use, smoking, honor code, sexual assault, …). We would be
interested not only in what students explicitly say but in how their choices about what they say reveal
information about their understanding of and modeling of the relevant issues and priorities. Some ideas:
● how do Sewanee students think about and understand some particular issue?
● what might change how Sewanee students think about and understand some particular issue?
●
what do the results suggest about how best to message about these issues to students?
Implicit Influences
Your Ranking: ____________
A vast number of studies show that information can influence us without us being consciously aware that this
is happening. So, for example, your impression of a person can be influenced by whether you are holding a
cup of warm coffee vs. a cup of iced coffee. And your evaluation of a resume can be influenced by whether
the gender of the applicant is male or female, even when everything else about the resume is identical. Some
possible ideas:
● explore other possible and as yet unexplored implicit influences—race and gender are often explored,
but other distinctions (e.g., poor vs. rich) might be interesting and have important implications
● explore what people can learn implicitly—again, this is an area where much work has been done but
where new findings continue (e.g., a study from about a year ago shows that people who clearly know
the layout of a keyboard based on their typing accuracy and speed cannot explicitly create the
keyboard layout)—what else not already investigated and perhaps unexpected might be largely based
on implicit learning?
● might the computer password you use influence your mindset, memory, or future decisions?
● what influence might t-shirt slogans, bumper stickers, and the like actually have on people’s attention,
memory, and decisions? do these things have an influence regardless of people explicitly remember
them?
What Impairs or Improves Cognitive Function
Your Ranking: ____________
Studies show that walking in nature has restorative effects for certain cognitive abilities. And some studies
show that social interactions can help executive cognitive function. What other easily manipulable factors
might have effects on cognitive functioning? Some ideas:
● Is surfing the web (or texting, or…) helpful or harmful to immediately following cognitive tasks?
● Does mindfulness (or other) meditation help immediate cognitive functioning?
● Does a message you see or type in shortly before affect cognitive functioning?
● others you might think of?
Scarcity and Decision Making
Your Ranking: ____________
Some people argue that those who are poor don’t have the right values, don’t plan ahead, and make poor
decisions. Yet research suggests that it may be the context that is the key factor. Studies show that cognition
is impaired when people feel they lack something (i.e., under conditions of perceived scarcity), be it money,
time, food, friends (and probably other things too). That is, we can create situations where well-educated,
wealthy individuals make the same “poor” decisions that those in poverty do. These issues are particularly
important given the large number of people in this country and in others who are struggling financially
and/or with time.
● What can be done to reduce the effects of scarcity on decision-making?
● What are the mechanisms by which scarcity affects decision-making?
● What are the effects of abundance on decision-making?
●
●
How does perceived scarcity compare with actual scarcity in its effects on decision-making? e.g.,
could one take an actual condition of scarcity and change people’s interpretation of it, so as to create
less perceived scarcity, and what effects would that have on cognition?
others you might think of?
Decision Fatigue
Your Ranking: ____________
Studies show that the very act of making decisions depletes our ability to make them well and reduces selfcontrol/willpower. Some ideas:
● What are some effective ways of reducing decision fatigue (and hence improving willpower and selfcontrol)?
● What factors result in the most decision fatigue?
● How does decision fatigue differ for decisions made for oneself and others?
● How does decision fatigue differ for decisions with immediate vs. delayed consequences?
● How do group decision processes contribute to or reduce decision fatigue?
● others you might think of?
Mindfulness, Mindset, and Re-Framing
Your Ranking: ____________
Research (much of it conducted by Ellen Langer, the author of The Power of Mindful Learning) suggests that
mindset is critical to experience. For example, older individuals from cultures that do not expect memory
decline with age perform better on memory tests (and sometimes no different from their younger
counterparts) than do individuals from cultures that expect age-related memory decline. Thinking of
something as “play” vs. “work” can drastically alter one’s experience, enjoyment, and time spent at the
activity. And getting hotel housekeepers to think of their work as exercise actually led to improved physical
health. Some ideas:
 What other changes in mindset might affect aspects of our experience (e.g., labeling someone as
“cured” vs. “in remission” or as “single” vs. “divorced” or “widowed,”)?
 What are the most effective ways for getting people to reframe (change mindset)?
 What other (perhaps seemingly unlikely) aspects of our experience and/or cognition might be
influenced by a change in mindset?