Spring 2002 -- results of experiments.
The Effects on Activities in the Absence of Television---RP Television consumes most of our leisure time. Therefore four participants, a male and female adult and a male and female child, were chosen to keep a log sheet for the first week to record their normal daily routines. The second week they did not watch any television and filled a log sheet of their daily routines. The study wanted to see the effects of activities among adults and children in the absence of television. The results from the dependent t-test all were shown to be not significant due to the lack of participants in the study. So a comparison of means was used and can be seen that there was an effect on activities when there was no television present. The children read about a half an hour and the adults read a couple of hours a day. And in comparing means with playing outdoors with friends resulted in children playing for 4 hours a day and the adults for about 45 minutes to an hour day. This concluded the hypothesis to be correct, when in the absence of television children tend to play more in outdoor activities with friends, while adults read more.
The Effects of Exercise on Body Image and Self-Esteem - KM This study addressed the effects that exercise has on self-esteem. A survey consisting of self-esteem issues, opinions of one’s body, health issues and body satisfaction was given to thirty-five participants. The results indicate that males wish to increase their weight, while females yearn to decrease their weight. Also, it was shown that a positive correlation exists between self-esteem and the number of times one exercises per week, i.e., the more often one exercises per week, the higher the self-esteem
A.C. - Prominence Of Emotion in Posed Versus Genuine Facial Expressions
Previous
research suggests that emotion is displayed primarily in the left hemisphere of
the face and that emotions appear to be more prominent in posed facial
expressions than in genuine. This
project combines both hypotheses by having models express the emotions of:
happy, sad, anger, fear, disgust, and surprise in both a “posed” and a
“genuine” portrait. The pictures were scanned and transposed so that two left
hemispheres of the face were paired together as were two right hemispheres.
Participants were asked to rate emotion prominence of each portrait in
the normal and in the transposed faces. It is believed that there will be
significant differences in emotion prominence scores based on hemispheres,
participant handedness, the gender of the models, and whether or not the
emotions are positive or negative. The results of the experiment are discussed
in this paper.
K.C. - The purpose of this study was to identify the effects that the appearance of a text may have on short-term recall. Two independent variables were focused upon: text structure (narrative vs. structured) and color (black and white vs. color). Each of the four groups contained 13 college students. They were given five minutes to read the text assigned to them. The text was then taken up and a questionnaire testing their short-term recall was administered. Significantly, those who read the structured texts correctly recalled more information than those who read the narrative texts. Color, however, did not play a significant role on short-term memory.
K.F. - This study was conducted to review the effects of positive and negative responses of an aggressive child in a daycare setting. The participants were children, three years old, in a local daycare. The acts of aggression, time in between each act and the responses from the teacher and the other children in the room were recorded. It was hypothesized that aggressive behavior followed by a negative response is more likely to occur again. This hypothesis was tested by twenty hours of observation to collect the necessary data. The hypothesis was not supported. Although there were longer periods of time in between acts of aggression with positive responses, the results did not support the extinction of the act.
A.M. - This study examines the determination of sex roles by participants. The participants of the experiment were read a story about two individuals at a bar, the individuals were known by the color of their shirt buttons, Gray Buttons and Brown Buttons. The participants were then asked to answer questions about Gray Buttons and Brown Buttons gender, whether they were male or female. The participants’ answers could change throughout the story because initiation was taken at different times by each of the individuals in the story. This study was a direct replication done by John & Sussman in 1985. There were 12 male participants and 15 female participants ranging in ages from 18-29 obtained from the University of Southern Indiana. The results of the study were significantly different than the results that were obtained in the original study. The results of the study showed significance at one point in the story, the significance was accounted for by the male participants. The implications that can be made is that the view of sex roles is taking a turn in modern day when compared to over 15 years ago.
S.S. - This experiment studied the effects of game playing and aggression levels in males and females of various ages, by filling out a Buss and Perry Aggression Questionnaire (1997) before and after participating in two games, Scattergories and Spoons. This study found that playing these games did not affect the participant’s levels of aggression.
L.S. - Movie preference and personality were looked at in this study. 128 participants were used with 93 of them females and 35 males. They were given a short version of the Big Five personality test and a quick movie preference survey. Results supported the hypothesis that people’s personalities help determine what types of movies they prefer.
L.B. - My study looked at whether or not people with color deficiency could see the afterimage. I had 27 participants from introduction to psychology class. I gave the Ishihara test for colorblindness to all 27 participants. The participants stared at three pictures-an American flag, a boat scene and tiger-for thirty to sixty seconds. Each picture was in the inverse color (for example, the American flag had green and black stripes, black stars and yellow where the blue is normally). Therefore, the afterimage would be in the correct color. Of the 27 participants only four where categorized as color deficient. None of the four color-deficient participants could see the correct colors of the afterimage. However, some of the participants that had normal color vision could not see the correct colors of the afterimage.
L.E. - The Mother-Daughter Relationship and its Effect on Adolescent Self-Esteem The role of a mother as a model or source of identification in the development of an adolescent girl’s self-esteem was the focus of this study. Issues such as peer relationships, body-image, and perception of intelligence were addressed. Twelve pairs of mothers and their middle school daughters were asked to participate in a survey to determine if there was a relationship between the level of the mother’s self-esteem and that of her adolescent daughter. Each pair filled out a questionnaire that included questions about themselves and questions that would require them to make predictions about the level of self-esteem of their partner. A positive relationship was found between the mother’s and the daughter’s answers. Mothers proved to be strong predictors of daughter’s answers when paired. Daughters did not predict mother’s answers quite as accurately, but still displayed moderate knowledge of their mother’s level of self-confidence. A fairly high level of self-esteem was found in both the mothers’ and the daughters’ answers.
H.D. - This study looked at how gender stereotypes relate to toy preference by testing different age groups on three measures. The measures were called the toy-choice test, the birthday party test, and the gift test. I was interested in the differences between male and female answers on these measures and also in changes over time. My participants ranged in age from two-years-old to 89-years-old. A two way ANOVA was run and significance was found mostly between the different age groups.
E.K. - A correlational study between Personality and Spirituality. This study was run to determine if there was a correlation between spirituality, as tested by the Spiritual Experience Index (SEI), and personality traits of extroversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, neuroticism, and conscientiousness. Participants were gather from an introductory to psychology class (N=75) and completed the SEI, and the Big Five personality test. Significant positive correlations were found between the SEI and agreeableness and conscientiousness.
A.S. - The Effects of Genders Affect on Interpretation
This
study investigates the effect of gender on the interpretation of ambiguous
messages. 18 females and 13 males
completed anonymous questionnaires that contained two sections.
The first section contained demographic information and the second
section described four scenarios that contained ambiguous messages.
The participants were asked to select from several answers, which were
either supportive or controlling (unbeknownst to the participant), the answer
that most resembles how they interpreted the ambiguous message.
It was hypothesized that the participants gender would affect their
interpretation of the message. However,
the findings were insignificant and failed to support the hypothesis.
Suggestions for future research are discussed.
A.T. - There are many types of emotions a person can experience when they see a certain color. The purpose of this experiment is to determine how a persons emotions are influenced by color. This experiment also considers the fact that the shape of the color may influence the emotion one experiences. The participants include males and females of different ages. The participants were given an emotion rank sheet which asked them to rank the level of emotion they felt for each emotion word when shown a certain color. The emotions were ranked on a level from one to ten with one being the highest, and ten being the lowest. One day later the participants where give another emotion ranking sheet just like the first sheet, but they where shown the color in an abstract form. The colors included orange, blue, green, red, and yellow. After running this study, the results show that the shape of a color does effect a persons emotion. The participants of this study were more effected by the abstract shaped colors than the square colors.
T.C - The purpose of this experiment was to determine the correlation between time spent in day care and children’s vocabulary. There were twenty-two participants in all ranging from the ages three to six. Eleven of the participants are full-time day care children (40+ hours/week) and the other eleven participants are part-time day care children (less than 25 hours/week). Each participant received the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT). The PPVT is a standardized vocabulary test that takes approximately 30-45 minutes to complete. None of the participants were given a pre-test to determine any outside variables that might construe the results. The results were not significant, indicating no difference in test results between the full-time group and the part-time group.
B.H.--This study was done to compare the stereotypes of mothers based on age and marital status. An 18-year-old single mother, an 18-year-old married mother, a 28-year-old single mother, and a 28-year-old married mother were the four different types of mothers that were compared. The information was gathered by surveys to see how people judge the income level, education, occupation, some personality characteristics, and family background of the person they see and read about on the survey. The results indicated that the 18-year-old married mothers were rated lower on education level and rated higher on the likelihood of their parents being divorced. Between the 28-year-olds, however, the married one seemed to be ranked more positively than the single mother. Overall, the results indicate there is a difference in how mothers are viewed based on their age and marital status.
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