Social Cognition Lab Senior Honor’s Thesis Syllabus
Completing a Senior Honor’s Thesis will be an extremely valuable experience for you,
especially if you are considering the possibility of going to graduate school. It will lay
the foundation for a future career as an independent researcher, will be considered an
asset by graduate schools everywhere, and may allow you the opportunity to be first
author on a conference presentation at a professional conference or be included in a
publication in a professional journal.
Senior Honor’s Theses involve creating a research idea, designing a study, executing that
study, analyzing the results, and writing up a manuscript describing that study. You are
responsible for seeing that the study is completed from beginning to end. While the
graduate students in this laboratory are more than happy to guide you through that
process and assist you to the best of their ability, you are the one responsible for taking
the necessary steps to see that the project is completed. In this syllabus, you will find
general guidelines and a few specific deadlines for creating a Senior Honors project.
These guidelines will help you stay on track in completing this project, but will also
determine your grade at the end of the project.
Guidelines:
1. We ask that all of our undergraduate research assistants to provide us with
unofficial transcripts so we can have an idea of your previous academic
performance and a one-paragraph statement as to why you are interested in
doing research. Be sure to include a short statement regarding your career plans.
If you have already developed a curriculum vita (CV), provide us with a copy of
that as well. If you have not yet developed a CV, the members of the lab will be
happy to help you do so, but you should plan on having a working vitae before the
end of your first semester of Research Applications.
2. Everyone who completes a Senior Honor’s Thesis in this lab must be in a position
to dedicate at least two semesters to the project. In most cases, it is better to be
involved in the lab for at least a semester or summer as a volunteer or for
Research Applications credit before committing to a Senior Honors Thesis.
One semester is not enough time to complete a Senior Honors Thesis.
3. Before starting a Senior Honor’s thesis, you must have successfully completed
Introductory Statistics class, Experimental Methods, and have a GPA of 3.0
or better. This is non-negotiable. These courses will help you immensely in
executing your project.
4. Ensure that your research ideas are at least loosely related to research already
being conducted in the lab. This way Dr. Zárate and the graduate students will be
better able to guide you through the process. If your research interests do not
match those of the Social Cognition Lab, notify the graduate students and they
will be able to help you find another mentor in the Psychology Department.
5. After you have decided which program of research you are more interested in,
choose a graduate student adviser. You will be expected to meet with that
graduate student adviser at least once a week to ensure that you are
progressing on your project. Remember, this is your project and it is up to you to
see that it is completed in a timely fashion. Dr. Zárate will consult your graduate
student adviser at the end of the semester to determine your grade, so it is in your
interest to maintain contact with that person.
6. Unless you have an arrangement with the lab manager and your graduate student
adviser to stay abreast of the research in the lab, you must attend weekly lab
meetings.
7. Senior Honor’s Thesis students are required to spend a minimum of 9-12 hours
per week in the lab. It is preferable that you choose specific days and times and
notify the lab manager and your graduate student adviser of when to expect you in
the lab. Nonetheless, if you have a variable schedule for work reasons, these
times can be negotiated. You can spend that time reading articles, writing up your
research, or collecting data according to what phase of your project you are in.
Also, running subjects for other students, graduate student adviser meetings, lab
meetings, and meetings with Dr. Zárate can be included in that time requirement
8. While your primary purpose in the lab will be to complete your thesis, this is an
extremely collaborative lab. You will be trained in the protocol of all the lab’s
current projects and will be asked to assist the other members in the lab with their
projects. You will be asked to choose both a primary project (your thesis) and a
secondary project (another project of interest) to participate in. This is true for
everyone, including graduate students.
9. You will be asked to give at least two presentations to the lab over the course of
your project. The first will come when you and your graduate student adviser
have worked out an idea for your thesis and you will get feedback from the lab on
that idea. The second will be when you complete the project and you discuss your
findings with the lab.
10. You will be required to read roughly one journal article per week. These
articles may pertain to your research, your graduate student adviser’s research, or
another member of the lab’s research. There will be times when you are reading
more (e.g. when you are conducting your literature search) and less (during the
data collection phase). However, if you have gone several weeks without reading
an article, alert your graduate student adviser or the lab manager.
11. Read your email. You will receive several emails about research activities every
week and you will fall behind if you don’t check your mail daily.
Timeline:
Semester 1 (Optional)

Get involved in a pre-existing project in the lab to get accustomed to doing
research and experimental protocol.
Semester 2

Week 1- Decide which pre-existing program of research you want to be involved
in and identify a graduate student mentor.

Weeks 2-3- Conduct a search of a relevant body of research and formulate 3
possible research ideas and report these ideas back to your graduate student
adviser.

Week 4- Have a workable, relevant, and realistic research idea identified with a
rough outline of the theoretical foundation of the research, your hypotheses, and
the methodology you intend to use.

Week 6-7- Complete and submit an Internal Review Board (IRB) proposal to the
Office of Research and Sponsored Projects.
****Note- This is something your graduate student adviser will help you with
a lot. Most likely you will be presented with a template for this proposal
and your graduate student adviser will review it before it is submitted.
Also, the IRB approval process can take as much as one month to six
weeks to approve a project. It is important that you continue to be
engaged in the lab while you are awaiting approval.

While you are waiting for IRB Approval- Continue to refine the methods (stimuli, manipulations, and measures) of
your experiment.
- Write a rough draft of the introduction and methods section of your Senior
Honors Thesis
- Continue to assist other members of the lab with their projects.

When you get IRB approval- Begin data collection.
****Data collection will most likely continue until the end of the semester,
except in specific circumstances. If it looks like you will complete the data
collection phase of your experiment before the end of the semester, you
are welcome to continue to the “Semester 3” timeline. This is something
that should be discussed with you graduate student adviser.
Semester 3

Continue data collection until it is complete.

When the data collection phase is completed, you will statistically analyze the
data and write the results and discussion sections of your thesis. This should be
turned into your graduate student adviser and Dr. Zárate a month before the
semester is over to give them time to review it for revisions.

At the end of your third semester, you will be asked to present your final project
to, at the very least, the lab. Depending on the project, you may be asked to also
present your findings to the department or at a professional conference.
Sample grading guidelines:
____Met weekly with graduate student adviser.
____Attended weekly lab meetings.
____Completed weekly readings.
____Gave feedback presentations (first presentation).
____Gave final presentation.
____Spent 9-12 hours in the lab weekly.
____Assisted at least one other member of the lab on another project.
____Was conscientious about research ethics (e.g. showing up on time for data
collection, etc.)
____Completed the steps of the research project in a timely fashion (literature search,
design, data collection, write-up, etc.)
Final Notes:

THIS LAB IS YOUR LAB! We encourage you to come here and use the
resources and equipment in this lab for your studies. If you need to come in
during your off time to work, type up or print out a paper, heat up your lunch, etc.
feel free to do so. Undergraduate research assistants are very valued members of
our lab and we are happy to have you. If you need guidance through the
application process for graduate school or academic assistance in any other way
we are here to help.

It is never OK to stand up participants in your research! If you need to cancel
an experiment ahead of time, it is appropriate to do so through experimetrix. If
you have an emergency, contact the members of the lab to substitute for you or
meet with (who will give you their phone numbers and email addresses) the
participants to get their information so you can give them credit. It is never
acceptable to simply not show up. This is Dr. Zárate’s biggest rule and a
question of ethics and respect.

Some projects are more demanding and time consuming than others. While it is
important to be realistic about your goals, it is not uncommon to accept an
incomplete if the project is waylaid for some reason or another. If that is the case,
you will just finish the project after the semester is over and will be given a
retroactive grade upon completion. However, granting of incompletes is left to
Dr. Zárate’s discretion and simply not doing your work may not lead to an
incomplete, but to a low grade for your Senior Honor’s Thesis Credit.