research studies for psychology students

15 Famous Experiments and Case Studies in Psychology

Psychology has seen thousands upon thousands of research studies over the years. Most of these studies have helped shape our current understanding of human thoughts, behavior, and feelings.

The psychology case studies in this list are considered classic examples of psychological case studies and experiments, which are still being taught in introductory psychology courses up to this day.

Some studies, however, were downright shocking and controversial that you’d probably wonder why such studies were conducted back in the day. Imagine participating in an experiment for a small reward or extra class credit, only to be left scarred for life. These kinds of studies, however, paved the way for a more ethical approach to studying psychology and implementation of research standards such as the use of debriefing in psychology research .

Case Study vs. Experiment

Before we dive into the list of the most famous studies in psychology, let us first review the difference between case studies and experiments.

• It is an in-depth study and analysis of an individual, group, community, or phenomenon. The results of a case study cannot be applied to the whole population, but they can provide insights for further studies.
• It often uses qualitative research methods such as observations, surveys, and interviews.
• It is often conducted in real-life settings rather than in controlled environments.
• An experiment is a type of study done on a sample or group of random participants, the results of which can be generalized to the whole population.
• It often uses quantitative research methods that rely on numbers and statistics.
• It is conducted in controlled environments, wherein some things or situations are manipulated.

See Also: Experimental vs Observational Studies

Famous Experiments in Psychology

1. the marshmallow experiment.

Psychologist Walter Mischel conducted the marshmallow experiment at Stanford University in the 1960s to early 1970s. It was a simple test that aimed to define the connection between delayed gratification and success in life.

The instructions were fairly straightforward: children ages 4-6 were presented a piece of marshmallow on a table and they were told that they would receive a second piece if they could wait for 15 minutes without eating the first marshmallow.

About one-third of the 600 participants succeeded in delaying gratification to receive the second marshmallow. Mischel and his team followed up on these participants in the 1990s, learning that those who had the willpower to wait for a larger reward experienced more success in life in terms of SAT scores and other metrics.

This case study also supported self-control theory , a theory in criminology that holds that people with greater self-control are less likely to end up in trouble with the law!

The classic marshmallow experiment, however, was debunked in a 2018 replication study done by Tyler Watts and colleagues.

This more recent experiment had a larger group of participants (900) and a better representation of the general population when it comes to race and ethnicity. In this study, the researchers found out that the ability to wait for a second marshmallow does not depend on willpower alone but more so on the economic background and social status of the participants.

2. The Bystander Effect

In 1694, Kitty Genovese was murdered in the neighborhood of Kew Gardens, New York. It was told that there were up to 38 witnesses and onlookers in the vicinity of the crime scene, but nobody did anything to stop the murder or call for help.

Such tragedy was the catalyst that inspired social psychologists Bibb Latane and John Darley to formulate the phenomenon called bystander effect or bystander apathy .

Subsequent investigations showed that this story was exaggerated and inaccurate, as there were actually only about a dozen witnesses, at least two of whom called the police. But the case of Kitty Genovese led to various studies that aim to shed light on the bystander phenomenon.

Latane and Darley tested bystander intervention in an experimental study . Participants were asked to answer a questionnaire inside a room, and they would either be alone or with two other participants (who were actually actors or confederates in the study). Smoke would then come out from under the door. The reaction time of participants was tested — how long would it take them to report the smoke to the authorities or the experimenters?

The results showed that participants who were alone in the room reported the smoke faster than participants who were with two passive others. The study suggests that the more onlookers are present in an emergency situation, the less likely someone would step up to help, a social phenomenon now popularly called the bystander effect.

3. Asch Conformity Study

Have you ever made a decision against your better judgment just to fit in with your friends or family? The Asch Conformity Studies will help you understand this kind of situation better.

In this experiment, a group of participants were shown three numbered lines of different lengths and asked to identify the longest of them all. However, only one true participant was present in every group and the rest were actors, most of whom told the wrong answer.

Results showed that the participants went for the wrong answer, even though they knew which line was the longest one in the first place. When the participants were asked why they identified the wrong one, they said that they didn’t want to be branded as strange or peculiar.

This study goes to show that there are situations in life when people prefer fitting in than being right. It also tells that there is power in numbers — a group’s decision can overwhelm a person and make them doubt their judgment.

4. The Bobo Doll Experiment

The Bobo Doll Experiment was conducted by Dr. Albert Bandura, the proponent of social learning theory .

Back in the 1960s, the Nature vs. Nurture debate was a popular topic among psychologists. Bandura contributed to this discussion by proposing that human behavior is mostly influenced by environmental rather than genetic factors.

In the Bobo Doll Experiment, children were divided into three groups: one group was shown a video in which an adult acted aggressively toward the Bobo Doll, the second group was shown a video in which an adult play with the Bobo Doll, and the third group served as the control group where no video was shown.

The children were then led to a room with different kinds of toys, including the Bobo Doll they’ve seen in the video. Results showed that children tend to imitate the adults in the video. Those who were presented the aggressive model acted aggressively toward the Bobo Doll while those who were presented the passive model showed less aggression.

While the Bobo Doll Experiment can no longer be replicated because of ethical concerns, it has laid out the foundations of social learning theory and helped us understand the degree of influence adult behavior has on children.

5. Blue Eye / Brown Eye Experiment

Following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, third-grade teacher Jane Elliott conducted an experiment in her class. Although not a formal experiment in controlled settings, A Class Divided is a good example of a social experiment to help children understand the concept of racism and discrimination.

The class was divided into two groups: blue-eyed children and brown-eyed children. For one day, Elliott gave preferential treatment to her blue-eyed students, giving them more attention and pampering them with rewards. The next day, it was the brown-eyed students’ turn to receive extra favors and privileges.

As a result, whichever group of students was given preferential treatment performed exceptionally well in class, had higher quiz scores, and recited more frequently; students who were discriminated against felt humiliated, answered poorly in tests, and became uncertain with their answers in class.

This study is now widely taught in sociocultural psychology classes.

6. Stanford Prison Experiment

One of the most controversial and widely-cited studies in psychology is the Stanford Prison Experiment , conducted by Philip Zimbardo at the basement of the Stanford psychology building in 1971. The hypothesis was that abusive behavior in prisons is influenced by the personality traits of the prisoners and prison guards.

The participants in the experiment were college students who were randomly assigned as either a prisoner or a prison guard. The prison guards were then told to run the simulated prison for two weeks. However, the experiment had to be stopped in just 6 days.

The prison guards abused their authority and harassed the prisoners through verbal and physical means. The prisoners, on the other hand, showed submissive behavior. Zimbardo decided to stop the experiment because the prisoners were showing signs of emotional and physical breakdown.

Although the experiment wasn’t completed, the results strongly showed that people can easily get into a social role when others expect them to, especially when it’s highly stereotyped .

7. The Halo Effect

Have you ever wondered why toothpastes and other dental products are endorsed in advertisements by celebrities more often than dentists? The Halo Effect is one of the reasons!

The Halo Effect shows how one favorable attribute of a person can gain them positive perceptions in other attributes. In the case of product advertisements, attractive celebrities are also perceived as intelligent and knowledgeable of a certain subject matter even though they’re not technically experts.

The Halo Effect originated in a classic study done by Edward Thorndike in the early 1900s. He asked military commanding officers to rate their subordinates based on different qualities, such as physical appearance, leadership, dependability, and intelligence.

The results showed that high ratings of a particular quality influences the ratings of other qualities, producing a halo effect of overall high ratings. The opposite also applied, which means that a negative rating in one quality also correlated to negative ratings in other qualities.

Experiments on the Halo Effect came in various formats as well, supporting Thorndike’s original theory. This phenomenon suggests that our perception of other people’s overall personality is hugely influenced by a quality that we focus on.

8. Cognitive Dissonance

There are experiences in our lives when our beliefs and behaviors do not align with each other and we try to justify them in our minds. This is cognitive dissonance , which was studied in an experiment by Leon Festinger and James Carlsmith back in 1959.

In this experiment, participants had to go through a series of boring and repetitive tasks, such as spending an hour turning pegs in a wooden knob. After completing the tasks, they were then paid either $1 or $20 to tell the next participants that the tasks were extremely fun and enjoyable. Afterwards, participants were asked to rate the experiment. Those who were given $1 rated the experiment as more interesting and fun than those who received $20.

The results showed that those who received a smaller incentive to lie experienced cognitive dissonance — $1 wasn’t enough incentive for that one hour of painstakingly boring activity, so the participants had to justify that they had fun anyway.

Famous Case Studies in Psychology

9. little albert.

In 1920, behaviourist theorists John Watson and Rosalie Rayner experimented on a 9-month-old baby to test the effects of classical conditioning in instilling fear in humans.

This was such a controversial study that it gained popularity in psychology textbooks and syllabi because it is a classic example of unethical research studies done in the name of science.

In one of the experiments, Little Albert was presented with a harmless stimulus or object, a white rat, which he wasn’t scared of at first. But every time Little Albert would see the white rat, the researchers would play a scary sound of hammer and steel. After about 6 pairings, Little Albert learned to fear the rat even without the scary sound.

Little Albert developed signs of fear to different objects presented to him through classical conditioning . He even generalized his fear to other stimuli not present in the course of the experiment.

10. Phineas Gage

Phineas Gage is such a celebrity in Psych 101 classes, even though the way he rose to popularity began with a tragic accident. He was a resident of Central Vermont and worked in the construction of a new railway line in the mid-1800s. One day, an explosive went off prematurely, sending a tamping iron straight into his face and through his brain.

Gage survived the accident, fortunately, something that is considered a feat even up to this day. He managed to find a job as a stagecoach after the accident. However, his family and friends reported that his personality changed so much that “he was no longer Gage” (Harlow, 1868).

New evidence on the case of Phineas Gage has since come to light, thanks to modern scientific studies and medical tests. However, there are still plenty of mysteries revolving around his brain damage and subsequent recovery.

11. Anna O.

Anna O., a social worker and feminist of German Jewish descent, was one of the first patients to receive psychoanalytic treatment.

Her real name was Bertha Pappenheim and she inspired much of Sigmund Freud’s works and books on psychoanalytic theory, although they hadn’t met in person. Their connection was through Joseph Breuer, Freud’s mentor when he was still starting his clinical practice.

Anna O. suffered from paralysis, personality changes, hallucinations, and rambling speech, but her doctors could not find the cause. Joseph Breuer was then called to her house for intervention and he performed psychoanalysis, also called the “talking cure”, on her.

Breuer would tell Anna O. to say anything that came to her mind, such as her thoughts, feelings, and childhood experiences. It was noted that her symptoms subsided by talking things out.

However, Breuer later referred Anna O. to the Bellevue Sanatorium, where she recovered and set out to be a renowned writer and advocate of women and children.

12. Patient HM

H.M., or Henry Gustav Molaison, was a severe amnesiac who had been the subject of countless psychological and neurological studies.

Henry was 27 when he underwent brain surgery to cure the epilepsy that he had been experiencing since childhood. In an unfortunate turn of events, he lost his memory because of the surgery and his brain also became unable to store long-term memories.

He was then regarded as someone living solely in the present, forgetting an experience as soon as it happened and only remembering bits and pieces of his past. Over the years, his amnesia and the structure of his brain had helped neuropsychologists learn more about cognitive functions .

Suzanne Corkin, a researcher, writer, and good friend of H.M., recently published a book about his life. Entitled Permanent Present Tense , this book is both a memoir and a case study following the struggles and joys of Henry Gustav Molaison.

13. Chris Sizemore

Chris Sizemore gained celebrity status in the psychology community when she was diagnosed with multiple personality disorder, now known as dissociative identity disorder.

Sizemore has several alter egos, which included Eve Black, Eve White, and Jane. Various papers about her stated that these alter egos were formed as a coping mechanism against the traumatic experiences she underwent in her childhood.

Sizemore said that although she has succeeded in unifying her alter egos into one dominant personality, there were periods in the past experienced by only one of her alter egos. For example, her husband married her Eve White alter ego and not her.

Her story inspired her psychiatrists to write a book about her, entitled The Three Faces of Eve , which was then turned into a 1957 movie of the same title.

14. David Reimer

When David was just 8 months old, he lost his penis because of a botched circumcision operation.

Psychologist John Money then advised Reimer’s parents to raise him as a girl instead, naming him Brenda. His gender reassignment was supported by subsequent surgery and hormonal therapy.

Money described Reimer’s gender reassignment as a success, but problems started to arise as Reimer was growing up. His boyishness was not completely subdued by the hormonal therapy. When he was 14 years old, he learned about the secrets of his past and he underwent gender reassignment to become male again.

Reimer became an advocate for children undergoing the same difficult situation he had been. His life story ended when he was 38 as he took his own life.

15. Kim Peek

Kim Peek was the inspiration behind Rain Man , an Oscar-winning movie about an autistic savant character played by Dustin Hoffman.

The movie was released in 1988, a time when autism wasn’t widely known and acknowledged yet. So it was an eye-opener for many people who watched the film.

In reality, Kim Peek was a non-autistic savant. He was exceptionally intelligent despite the brain abnormalities he was born with. He was like a walking encyclopedia, knowledgeable about travel routes, US zip codes, historical facts, and classical music. He also read and memorized approximately 12,000 books in his lifetime.

This list of experiments and case studies in psychology is just the tip of the iceberg! There are still countless interesting psychology studies that you can explore if you want to learn more about human behavior and dynamics.

You can also conduct your own mini-experiment or participate in a study conducted in your school or neighborhood. Just remember that there are ethical standards to follow so as not to repeat the lasting physical and emotional harm done to Little Albert or the Stanford Prison Experiment participants.

Asch, S. E. (1956). Studies of independence and conformity: I. A minority of one against a unanimous majority. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 70 (9), 1–70. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0093718

Bandura, A., Ross, D., & Ross, S. A. (1961). Transmission of aggression through imitation of aggressive models. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 63 (3), 575–582. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0045925

Elliott, J., Yale University., WGBH (Television station : Boston, Mass.), & PBS DVD (Firm). (2003). A class divided. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Films.

Festinger, L., & Carlsmith, J. M. (1959). Cognitive consequences of forced compliance. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 58 (2), 203–210. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0041593

Haney, C., Banks, W. C., & Zimbardo, P. G. (1973). A study of prisoners and guards in a simulated prison. Naval Research Review , 30 , 4-17.

Latane, B., & Darley, J. M. (1968). Group inhibition of bystander intervention in emergencies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 10 (3), 215–221. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0026570

Mischel, W. (2014). The Marshmallow Test: Mastering self-control. Little, Brown and Co.

Thorndike, E. (1920) A Constant Error in Psychological Ratings. Journal of Applied Psychology , 4 , 25-29. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0071663

Watson, J. B., & Rayner, R. (1920). Conditioned emotional reactions. Journal of experimental psychology , 3 (1), 1.

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Online Research Guide

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Updated August 17, 2022

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The advent of the internet has changed the way students go about conducting academic research. Before online research, students had to make the trip to their university library; comb through the stacks of physical research materials or microfiched content; read through the sources for relevant information; and manually include quotations, citations, and bibliographical entries. The internet has enabled students to access research materials digitally from anywhere in the world. Researchers can zero in on the content most pertinent to their work and automatically generate citations and bibliographies. The internet has made academic research and manuscript construction unbelievably faster and more efficient, resulting in higher-quality work.

Though online research offers many benefits, students may encounter significant drawbacks. Academic journals and books go through editing and review to vet the contents for reliability and accuracy; however, anyone can post something on the internet. As a result, researchers must learn how to discern a credible source from a non-credible one. Additionally, the wealth of information available online can make students feel overwhelmed about where to start.

The research methods in this psychology study guide can help students learn how to conduct online research. The guide includes information on search tools, strategies, and accuracy.

Methods of Psychological Research

There are several methods for conducting research in psychology. The particular type a researcher chooses often depends on the type of data they wish to obtain and whether this data should be qualitative or quantitative. Researchers can then determine whether they will base their study on descriptive, correlational, or experimental research. From there, they decide which methods of data collection best suit their study.

The following section provides an explanation of these types of data, research, and collection methods. Students conducting online research may find that they lean heavily on descriptive and correlational research. Students also often use case studies and archival data collection. No matter your preferred methods of psychological research, online sources usually provide enough data for students' research papers and literature reviews.

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Quantitative Data

Quantitative data is obtained through research based on a mathematical model and statistical inferences. Researchers manipulate variables to determine causal relationships. Quantitative data includes numerical values, percentages, and statistics.

Qualitative Data

Qualitative data uses non-numerical data such as personal accounts, descriptions, observation, and interviews. This method of research often studies behavior in a natural setting.

Psychological Research Methods

Correlational research.

Correlational research is a form of non-experimental research that studies the relationship between two factors. In this method, the researcher does not manipulate any variables. This method of data analysis can help identify whether and how two factors may be associated with each other.

Descriptive Research

Descriptive research uses methods such as case studies, observation, and surveys to build an assessment of target cognitions or behaviors. Researchers do not manipulate variables or identify correlations. Instead, they describe current circumstances in order to gather information for later study.

Experimental Research

Experimental research develops more definitive conclusions about causal relationships. Researchers manipulate an independent variable and measure the effect it causes on a dependent variable. However, some variables cannot be experimentally controlled in a realistic setting, especially in the field of psychology.

Data Collection Methods

Archival data collection refers to the review of pre-existing materials or secondary sources. Researchers consult data that others have collected in order to answer questions relevant to the research subject. Researchers also use archival data to construct an understanding of a phenomenon that may require further study in the form of a direct experiment.

Case Studies

Content analysis.

Researchers in psychology frequently use content analysis to quantify findings from qualitative research. The analyst develops coding units to identify and track data points of interest. For example, content analysis may document the number of positive versus negative signifying words from a subject's qualitative response to a stimulus.

Experience Sampling

Experience sampling relies on self-reporting from participants. Participants describe their subjective perception of the study's focus. Participants may document their experiences at the request of a researcher, at pre-set intervals, or each time they encounter a specific stimulus.

Experimental Psychology

Experimental psychology endeavors to answer a theoretical question using the scientific method. In general, researchers begin with a question, propose a hypothesis, and develop an experimental study to prove or disprove their hypothesis. Usually, researchers manipulate a particular variable in a controlled setting in order to determine its effect.

Participants in a survey answer questions that may be objective, such as demographic information, or subjective, such as opinions on a topic. Surveys may come in the form of questionnaires or structured in-person interviews.

Using Google for Online Research

A simple Google search yields a plethora of information, but not all of it is reliable, applicable, or relevant to students' research. Altering search engine settings can help filter out unreliable sources and provide you with search results that are more relevant to your topic. The following section outlines some ways you can tweak your searches to net the type of results you want. We use Google for these examples, as it is the most commonly used search engine.

Refining Your Search Results

Combing through a seemingly interminable list of websites to find the information you need is a painstaking and inefficient endeavor. In order to narrow down your search results and focus on sources that fit your needs, you can take advantage of several tools Google offers. Search shortcuts allow you to target specific search results. These symbols or words allow you to indicate precisely which phrases or keywords you would like to include or exclude from your results. Shortcuts can also help you search for results on a particular site or related pages.

Site search allows users to search within a particular domain. To perform this function, simply type "site:" (without quotation marks) followed by the domain you want to search within. Note that there should be no spaces between "site:" and the domain name that follows. You can add a keyword before the site search to find information about a specific topic within that domain. For example: "psychology certification" followed by "site:apa.org." This will bring up information about psychology certification on the official website for the American Psychology Association. Using the site function, you can filter results to a particular class of site (such as .edu, .gov, .org).

You can use also the advanced search function to refine your searches without shortcut text. Advanced search allows you to add filters to control for the types of results you get, such as articles published within a certain timeframe.

Google Scholar

Students conducting psychological research online can also benefit from using Google Scholar. This tool allows you to limit your search results to scholarly sources. These sources may include articles, theses, books, and court opinions. Results from academic journals, universities, and professional societies have been vetted by their respective publishers and are highly likely to be reliable sources.

Search results from Google Scholar are sorted by relevance and ranked according to where they were published, who they were written by, and how frequently and recently they have been cited in other academic works. Information about the origins and credentials of your search results can help you to ensure your sources are as reputable and accurate as possible.

Additionally, students can set up their Google Scholar Preferences to access resources available through their college or university library. Patrons of a particular library can provide their login information and indicate that their library's resources are to be included in Google Scholar search results. The Google Scholarship Search Tips page features more details on getting the most out of Google Scholar.

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Beyond Google

Psychology students interested in conducting online research do not have to use Google as their only search tool. In fact, many academic search engines and databases offer free or discounted services to students. The following section describes some common resources for general academic research, including several options that may prove especially helpful for psychology students.

• AMiner: AMiner allows users to access a variety of curated research materials. Students can search by subject, top-ranked papers, experts on the topic, and relevant related subjects.
• BASE: BASE is an academic search engine operated by Bielefeld University Library. Students can access about 60% of the indexed documents for free.
• CGP: The Catalog of U.S. Government Publications enables users to view descriptions of current and historical federal publications. Some publications include the full text.
• CIA World Factbook: The CIA World Factbook includes information about the people, government, history, and cultures of 267 world entities. The site also features a collection of world maps.
• ERIC: The Educational Research Information Center features approved content from sources that have gone through a formal review process.
• iSeek Education: iSeek Education specifically assists teachers, administrators, students, and caregivers. Users can access access editor-reviewed content from governments, universities, and noncommercial providers.
• National Archives: The National Archives Catalog gives users access to digitized, electronic, and authority records. Users can also view web pages from Archives.gov and the Presidential libraries.
• OCLC: OCLC provides resources through cooperation with members in more than 100 countries. Researchers can search for academic sources across the collections of all member libraries.
• CORE: CORE strives to collect all freely available research materials from digital libraries and journals across the internet. The site presents information to the public through their search engine.

For Psychology Students

• ProQuest: ProQuest provides a database of journals, newspapers, e-books, dissertations, theses, and digitized content on a wide range of academic topics, including subjects within psychology.
• American Psychological Association: The APA compiles a list of articles published in more than 90 APA journals across various subdisciplines of psychology. Students can search through psychological research articles online.
• Elsevier: Elsevier participates in the revision and dissemination process for 17% of scientific articles worldwide. The business publishes about 2,500 journals in healthcare and open science.
• Wiley Online Library: Wiley Online Library features over 1,600 journals, 21,000 books, and 200 reference works. Psychology students may access original research in all areas of psychology, including cognition; health and clinical psychology; and developmental, social and occupational psychology.
• Sage Journals: Sage Journals makes teaching and research materials available globally by removing obstacles to access. Sage directly publishes over 1,000 journals and 800 books every year.
• Frontiers in Psychology: The academic journal Frontiers in Psychology features current, peer-reviewed research in psychology. Subjects that appear in the journal include clinical and cognitive science, imaging studies, animal cognition, and social psychology.
• Springer Link: Springer Link gives students and other researchers access to over 10 million scientific documents, including books, journals, series, reference works, and protocols.
• The Online Books Page: The Online Books Page lists more than two million books that are freely available on the internet. Hosted by the University of Pennsylvania Libraries, the site also provides access to thousands of research journals.
• American Journal of Psychiatry: The American Journal of Psychiatry website hosts all of the journal's research articles before they appear in a print issue. Users can access the current issue and an archive of older issues.
• Scientific Research: Psychology students can use Scientific Research Publishing to browse open access journals by subject or title. Researchers can search for articles related to their particular topic or manuscript.

Evaluating Sources

Since the internet features hundreds of both reliable and unreliable sources, it is important to screen your sources to ensure the research is accurate and dependable. Determining whether a source provides helpful and relevant information can seem confusing. However, you can analyze certain aspects of a piece to determine its accuracy. Check whether your source has a qualified author, honorable purpose, professional appearance, objective tone, current data, and relevant links. The following list features tips from Georgetown University and the University of Chicago Press .

• Who Is the Author? When evaluating a source, you should first identify the author. Search their name and try to determine any credentials that could indicate their expertise or qualifications on the subject.
• What Is Its Purpose? Once you have determined the author, look for any clues as to the purpose of the writing. Check any affiliations the author has with the sponsor of the source. You may be able to ascertain the author's motive or the intended audience of the piece.
• Does It Look Professional? The overall appearance of the site may provide you with some information about its reliability as a source. An updated and well-constructed site looks clean and organized, and does not contain spelling or grammatical errors. The page should not contain profanities. Look for coherent, concise, and professional language.
• Is It Objective? An objective source relies on facts and does not use emotionally suggestive language that indicates bias. An appropriate source does not serve as propaganda, but rather attempts to present both sides of the issue at hand. If an author makes a judgement, it should rely on sufficient, impartial evidence.
• Is It Current? Make sure your information is current as possible so any conclusions you draw from your findings are still relevant. Check data reports and statistics for the year of publication. You may also ascertain when the website was last updated.
• What Sites does it Link to? Lastly, take some time to review the citations your source provides. Make sure that the author's information comes from reputable, relevant sources. You may follow these links to ensure that they are still active and up-to-date.

Organizing Your Research

Finding, managing, and organizing sources for a research paper can seem like a daunting task. A disorganized research process and haphazard filing system can result in wasted time and a sloppy paper. Some forethought and a methodical approach may help you save time and work more efficiently. The following list provides some tips for organizing your research.

Use Reviews and Abstracts: Reading reviews and abstracts for academic papers and journal articles can help you quickly evaluate a source. If the abstract does not contain relevant information, you can avoid reading the full text.

Follow the Trail to its Source: When you find an article you think may be a good source for your research, follow the links provided in the citations. This may help you identify the original data, evaluate credibility, and find additional sources.

Stick to One Topic at a Time: In order to avoid distraction and disorganization, stick to one topic at a time. Make sure you address each one sufficiently.

Bookmark Folders: It may be helpful to create individual bookmark folders for each topic or section in your research paper. This way, you can find the right source when you need it.

Complete the Bibliography as You Go: Instead of waiting until you've finished writing the body of your paper to craft your bibliography, add citations as you go. This may help streamline the process.

Online Tools to Manage Your Research

• EasyBib: EasyBib is an app that creates citations for the bibliography of your research paper. You can select the citation style required for your paper and input your source information by book title, ISBN, or by scanning the barcode and the app will automatically generate an accurate citation.
• Endnote: Endnote allows users to search for academic sources, automatically insert citations and references from their library into their papers, and store documents and files.
• Mendeley: Mendeley is a site that enables you to build a customized library of the research you want to review and cite, upload and share your documents with collaborators, and network with fellow researchers.
• RefWorks: RefWorks is a tool with which researchers can create their own resource database, manage and share references, and create a bibliography.
• Zotero: Zotero automatically searches the web for material relevant to your saved selection. Users can create instant citations and bibliographies, and easily collaborate with colleagues.

Citing Online Resources for Psychology Students

Students and researchers use many different citation styles and writing formats. The style you use generally depends on the subject about which you are writing. Students conducting online psychology research studies usually use APA Style . Most science and social science disciplines follow this style. When writing research papers and creating presentations, psychology students should expect to follow APA's general format and citation rules.

Each type of source material requires a different citation format. It can be confusing for students to try and figure out how to cite their various sources. The following section provides examples of some common sources psychology students might cite. The Purdue Online Writing Lab offers excellent resources for students who need information on how to cite various sources in their academic papers.

Articles From Online Periodicals

What is a doi.

A DOI , or Digital Object Identifier, is a longer-lasting alternative to a URL link to particular document. You may include a DOI in your citation as a way to direct your readers to the precise location where they can find the source material you used. Most publishers of online scholarly journals provide the article's DOI on the first page of the document.

Without DOI

Newspaper articles, electronic books, latest posts.

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Introducing students to diverse scientists through virtual interviews can help..

Posted January 26, 2021

How do we engage students in psychological research? The future of scientific research depends upon us answering this question. Many students report feeling that they don’t belong in the science field (Berdan Lozano & Tilman, 2016), and this is particularly true for students with minority identity statuses. Yet, as Peifer (2019) notes, research draws from individuals’ lenses, identities, and experiences. Diversity in psychological research is necessary for the field to address vital questions and incorporate key perspectives. So, how do we engage all students in psychological research?

For students majoring in psychology, understanding research is a significant part of the academic journey. APA guidelines for the undergraduate psychology degree emphasize research skills, as do organizations accrediting graduate programs. Most programs require a course in research methods as part of the curriculum, and many institutions offer (or require) participation in research studies (Norcross et al., 2016). Some undergraduate students may have an opportunity to work in a research lab or even create their research study under the guidance of a faculty mentor.

Despite the importance of research in the academic curricula, students do not seem to be responding well to it. A recent study (Branch & Dubow, 2020) analyzed whether small weekly recitation groups in an introductory psychology course would improve students’ perceptions of psychology as a science. Unfortunately, they did not. Furthermore, when it comes to participating in research laboratories to gain direct experience, students with minority identity statuses face more barriers than do White students participating in publishable research opportunities (Peifer, 2019).

Scholars have documented many reasons why this diversity problem exists, as well as opportunities to address it. In a special issues paper, Neblett (2019) points to the lack of racial/ethnic diversity among teaching faculty, and a lack of representation among LGBTQ populations, as well. Also noted is a lack of diversity-science events on campus. Peifer’s paper (2019) addresses the historical context of psychological research and particularly points to the alienation of people of color. Many faculty members, knowingly or unknowingly, continue to participate in practices that exclude minority students from research experiences.

Furthermore, there are well-documented gender gaps in representation and career advancement in the sciences, including the psychological sciences (Gruber et al., 2020). As with other identity groups mentioned, a sense of belonging is significant. It may shape women’s choices to enter psychological science, their retention, and opportunities to advance. If women in academic report feeling like they do not belong, what can be said for their students?

To address these issues, my colleague and I were inspired to create a project that would offer a range of virtual guest speaker interviews with renowned psychological scientists that could be accessed and integrated into courses. The result is the Making Research Personal project . Rather than concentrate on the research expertise of each scientist, the interviews focused on their personal lives, both to inform and inspire students. We want to replace students’ negative views of science and research with positive ones and create a sense of belonging in the scientific field.

To ensure that students could (literally) see their place in the field, we intentionally selected 10 scientists who were truly diverse. Included in these interviews are female and male scientists. We have researchers in the early stages of their careers, and researchers with many years of experience. There are researchers who identify as ethnic/racial minorities and others who do not. Most of our scientists did not provide their sexual identity; one did identify herself as a queer woman. While most of our scientists consider the United States their home, we do have international researchers included, too. In terms of research areas, the included scientists represent many different areas of focus. Finally, there is closed captioning provided for each video and they are housed on YouTube, free of charge, to improve access.

In addition to the interviews, we also provide educational resources to accompany each interview to assist faculty in integrating them into courses. These resources included:

• Learning check-ins that ask students to view a video interview and respond to reflective questions. This activity helps them learn about the life of a prominent psychological scientist.
• Article analyses that ask students to read one of the scientist’s publications so that they can practice their technical reading skills and broaden their knowledge of current psychological research.
• Website reviews that ask students to analyze the scientist’s laboratory website to expand their awareness of different component of psychological research, and to appreciate the organizational aspects of it.

While each video interview can be viewed on its own, there is value in watching several (or even all!) of them. As a whole, they emphasize that research is another way of helping people. When students contribute to research, they help broaden our understanding of human beings. As I conducted these interviews, I was felt such joy in connecting with people whose work I admire, and having an opportunity to share their stories. I hope students viewing them also feel inspired and know that they do belong in psychological research.

Berdan Lozano, J., & Tilman, T.S. (2016). Research Brief: 2016 College Senior Survey (CSS). Retrieved from https://www.heri.ucla.edu/briefs/CSS/CSS-2016-Brief.pdf

Branch, J. G., & Dubow, E. F. (2020). Research experience in recitation sections within introductory psychology courses: The effectiveness of a semester-long laboratory component. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology.

Gruber, J., Mendle, J., Lindquist, K. A., Schmader, T., Clark, L. A., Bliss-Moreau, E., ... & Borelli, J. L. (2020). The future of women in psychological science. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 1-34. DOI: 10.1177/1745691620952789.

Neblett Jr., E. W. (2019). Diversity (psychological) science training: Challenges, tensions, and a call to action. Journal of Social Issues, 75(4), 1216-1239.

Norcross, J.C., Hailstorks, R., Aiken, L. S., Pfund, R. A., Stamm, K. E., & Christidis, P. (2016). Undergraduate study in psychology: Curriculum and assessment. American Psychologist, 71(2), 89- 101. DOI: 10.1037/a0040095

Peifer, J.S. (2019). Context and reasons for bolstering diversity in undergraduate research. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 336, 1-3. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00336

Allison Buskirk-Cohen, Ph.D., chair of the department of counseling psychology at Delaware Valley University.

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• The 25 Most Influential Psychological Experiments in History

While each year thousands and thousands of studies are completed in the many specialty areas of psychology, there are a handful that, over the years, have had a lasting impact in the psychological community as a whole. Some of these were dutifully conducted, keeping within the confines of ethical and practical guidelines. Others pushed the boundaries of human behavior during their psychological experiments and created controversies that still linger to this day. And still others were not designed to be true psychological experiments, but ended up as beacons to the psychological community in proving or disproving theories.

This is a list of the 25 most influential psychological experiments still being taught to psychology students of today.

1. A Class Divided

Study conducted by: jane elliott.

Study Conducted in 1968 in an Iowa classroom

Experiment Details: Jane Elliott’s famous experiment was inspired by the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the inspirational life that he led. The third grade teacher developed an exercise, or better yet, a psychological experiment, to help her Caucasian students understand the effects of racism and prejudice.

Elliott divided her class into two separate groups: blue-eyed students and brown-eyed students. On the first day, she labeled the blue-eyed group as the superior group and from that point forward they had extra privileges, leaving the brown-eyed children to represent the minority group. She discouraged the groups from interacting and singled out individual students to stress the negative characteristics of the children in the minority group. What this exercise showed was that the children’s behavior changed almost instantaneously. The group of blue-eyed students performed better academically and even began bullying their brown-eyed classmates. The brown-eyed group experienced lower self-confidence and worse academic performance. The next day, she reversed the roles of the two groups and the blue-eyed students became the minority group.

At the end of the experiment, the children were so relieved that they were reported to have embraced one another and agreed that people should not be judged based on outward appearances. This exercise has since been repeated many times with similar outcomes.

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2. Asch Conformity Study

Study conducted by: dr. solomon asch.

Study Conducted in 1951 at Swarthmore College

Experiment Details: Dr. Solomon Asch conducted a groundbreaking study that was designed to evaluate a person’s likelihood to conform to a standard when there is pressure to do so.

A group of participants were shown pictures with lines of various lengths and were then asked a simple question: Which line is longest? The tricky part of this study was that in each group only one person was a true participant. The others were actors with a script. Most of the actors were instructed to give the wrong answer. Strangely, the one true participant almost always agreed with the majority, even though they knew they were giving the wrong answer.

The results of this study are important when we study social interactions among individuals in groups. This study is a famous example of the temptation many of us experience to conform to a standard during group situations and it showed that people often care more about being the same as others than they do about being right. It is still recognized as one of the most influential psychological experiments for understanding human behavior.

3. Bobo Doll Experiment

Study conducted by: dr. alburt bandura.

Study Conducted between 1961-1963 at Stanford University

In his groundbreaking study he separated participants into three groups:

• one was exposed to a video of an adult showing aggressive behavior towards a Bobo doll
• another was exposed to video of a passive adult playing with the Bobo doll
• the third formed a control group

Children watched their assigned video and then were sent to a room with the same doll they had seen in the video (with the exception of those in the control group). What the researcher found was that children exposed to the aggressive model were more likely to exhibit aggressive behavior towards the doll themselves. The other groups showed little imitative aggressive behavior. For those children exposed to the aggressive model, the number of derivative physical aggressions shown by the boys was 38.2 and 12.7 for the girls.

The study also showed that boys exhibited more aggression when exposed to aggressive male models than boys exposed to aggressive female models. When exposed to aggressive male models, the number of aggressive instances exhibited by boys averaged 104. This is compared to 48.4 aggressive instances exhibited by boys who were exposed to aggressive female models.

While the results for the girls show similar findings, the results were less drastic. When exposed to aggressive female models, the number of aggressive instances exhibited by girls averaged 57.7. This is compared to 36.3 aggressive instances exhibited by girls who were exposed to aggressive male models. The results concerning gender differences strongly supported Bandura’s secondary prediction that children will be more strongly influenced by same-sex models. The Bobo Doll Experiment showed a groundbreaking way to study human behavior and it’s influences.

4. Car Crash Experiment

Study conducted by: elizabeth loftus and john palmer.

Study Conducted in 1974 at The University of California in Irvine

The participants watched slides of a car accident and were asked to describe what had happened as if they were eyewitnesses to the scene. The participants were put into two groups and each group was questioned using different wording such as “how fast was the car driving at the time of impact?” versus “how fast was the car going when it smashed into the other car?” The experimenters found that the use of different verbs affected the participants’ memories of the accident, showing that memory can be easily distorted.

This research suggests that memory can be easily manipulated by questioning technique. This means that information gathered after the event can merge with original memory causing incorrect recall or reconstructive memory. The addition of false details to a memory of an event is now referred to as confabulation. This concept has very important implications for the questions used in police interviews of eyewitnesses.

5. Cognitive Dissonance Experiment

Study conducted by: leon festinger and james carlsmith.

Study Conducted in 1957 at Stanford University

Experiment Details: The concept of cognitive dissonance refers to a situation involving conflicting:

This conflict produces an inherent feeling of discomfort leading to a change in one of the attitudes, beliefs or behaviors to minimize or eliminate the discomfort and restore balance.

Cognitive dissonance was first investigated by Leon Festinger, after an observational study of a cult that believed that the earth was going to be destroyed by a flood. Out of this study was born an intriguing experiment conducted by Festinger and Carlsmith where participants were asked to perform a series of dull tasks (such as turning pegs in a peg board for an hour). Participant’s initial attitudes toward this task were highly negative.

They were then paid either $1 or $20 to tell a participant waiting in the lobby that the tasks were really interesting. Almost all of the participants agreed to walk into the waiting room and persuade the next participant that the boring experiment would be fun. When the participants were later asked to evaluate the experiment, the participants who were paid only $1 rated the tedious task as more fun and enjoyable than the participants who were paid $20 to lie.

Being paid only $1 is not sufficient incentive for lying and so those who were paid $1 experienced dissonance. They could only overcome that cognitive dissonance by coming to believe that the tasks really were interesting and enjoyable. Being paid $20 provides a reason for turning pegs and there is therefore no dissonance.

6. Fantz’s Looking Chamber

Study conducted by: robert l. fantz.

Study Conducted in 1961 at the University of Illinois

Experiment Details: The study conducted by Robert L. Fantz is among the simplest, yet most important in the field of infant development and vision. In 1961, when this experiment was conducted, there very few ways to study what was going on in the mind of an infant. Fantz realized that the best way was to simply watch the actions and reactions of infants. He understood the fundamental factor that if there is something of interest near humans, they generally look at it.

To test this concept, Fantz set up a display board with two pictures attached. On one was a bulls-eye. On the other was the sketch of a human face. This board was hung in a chamber where a baby could lie safely underneath and see both images. Then, from behind the board, invisible to the baby, he peeked through a hole to watch what the baby looked at. This study showed that a two-month old baby looked twice as much at the human face as it did at the bulls-eye. This suggests that human babies have some powers of pattern and form selection. Before this experiment it was thought that babies looked out onto a chaotic world of which they could make little sense.

7. Hawthorne Effect

Study conducted by: henry a. landsberger.

Study Conducted in 1955 at Hawthorne Works in Chicago, Illinois

Landsberger performed the study by analyzing data from experiments conducted between 1924 and 1932, by Elton Mayo, at the Hawthorne Works near Chicago. The company had commissioned studies to evaluate whether the level of light in a building changed the productivity of the workers. What Mayo found was that the level of light made no difference in productivity. The workers increased their output whenever the amount of light was switched from a low level to a high level, or vice versa.

The researchers noticed a tendency that the workers’ level of efficiency increased when any variable was manipulated. The study showed that the output changed simply because the workers were aware that they were under observation. The conclusion was that the workers felt important because they were pleased to be singled out. They increased productivity as a result. Being singled out was the factor dictating increased productivity, not the changing lighting levels, or any of the other factors that they experimented upon.

The Hawthorne Effect has become one of the hardest inbuilt biases to eliminate or factor into the design of any experiment in psychology and beyond.

8. Kitty Genovese Case

Study conducted by: new york police force.

Study Conducted in 1964 in New York City

Experiment Details: The murder case of Kitty Genovese was never intended to be a psychological experiment, however it ended up having serious implications for the field.

According to a New York Times article, almost 40 neighbors witnessed Kitty Genovese being savagely attacked and murdered in Queens, New York in 1964. Not one neighbor called the police for help. Some reports state that the attacker briefly left the scene and later returned to “finish off” his victim. It was later uncovered that many of these facts were exaggerated. (There were more likely only a dozen witnesses and records show that some calls to police were made).

What this case later become famous for is the “Bystander Effect,” which states that the more bystanders that are present in a social situation, the less likely it is that anyone will step in and help. This effect has led to changes in medicine, psychology and many other areas. One famous example is the way CPR is taught to new learners. All students in CPR courses learn that they must assign one bystander the job of alerting authorities which minimizes the chances of no one calling for assistance.

9. Learned Helplessness Experiment

Study conducted by: martin seligman.

Study Conducted in 1967 at the University of Pennsylvania

Seligman’s experiment involved the ringing of a bell and then the administration of a light shock to a dog. After a number of pairings, the dog reacted to the shock even before it happened. As soon as the dog heard the bell, he reacted as though he’d already been shocked.

During the course of this study something unexpected happened. Each dog was placed in a large crate that was divided down the middle with a low fence. The dog could see and jump over the fence easily. The floor on one side of the fence was electrified, but not on the other side of the fence. Seligman placed each dog on the electrified side and administered a light shock. He expected the dog to jump to the non-shocking side of the fence. In an unexpected turn, the dogs simply laid down.

The hypothesis was that as the dogs learned from the first part of the experiment that there was nothing they could do to avoid the shocks, they gave up in the second part of the experiment. To prove this hypothesis the experimenters brought in a new set of animals and found that dogs with no history in the experiment would jump over the fence.

This condition was described as learned helplessness. A human or animal does not attempt to get out of a negative situation because the past has taught them that they are helpless.

10. Little Albert Experiment

Study conducted by: john b. watson and rosalie rayner.

Study Conducted in 1920 at Johns Hopkins University

The experiment began by placing a white rat in front of the infant, who initially had no fear of the animal. Watson then produced a loud sound by striking a steel bar with a hammer every time little Albert was presented with the rat. After several pairings (the noise and the presentation of the white rat), the boy began to cry and exhibit signs of fear every time the rat appeared in the room. Watson also created similar conditioned reflexes with other common animals and objects (rabbits, Santa beard, etc.) until Albert feared them all.

This study proved that classical conditioning works on humans. One of its most important implications is that adult fears are often connected to early childhood experiences.

11. Magical Number Seven

Study conducted by: george a. miller.

Study Conducted in 1956 at Princeton University

Experiment Details:   Frequently referred to as “ Miller’s Law,” the Magical Number Seven experiment purports that the number of objects an average human can hold in working memory is 7 ± 2. This means that the human memory capacity typically includes strings of words or concepts ranging from 5-9. This information on the limits to the capacity for processing information became one of the most highly cited papers in psychology.

The Magical Number Seven Experiment was published in 1956 by cognitive psychologist George A. Miller of Princeton University’s Department of Psychology in Psychological Review .  In the article, Miller discussed a concurrence between the limits of one-dimensional absolute judgment and the limits of short-term memory.

In a one-dimensional absolute-judgment task, a person is presented with a number of stimuli that vary on one dimension (such as 10 different tones varying only in pitch). The person responds to each stimulus with a corresponding response (learned before).

Performance is almost perfect up to five or six different stimuli but declines as the number of different stimuli is increased. This means that a human’s maximum performance on one-dimensional absolute judgment can be described as an information store with the maximum capacity of approximately 2 to 3 bits of information There is the ability to distinguish between four and eight alternatives.

12. Pavlov’s Dog Experiment

Study conducted by: ivan pavlov.

Study Conducted in the 1890s at the Military Medical Academy in St. Petersburg, Russia

Pavlov began with the simple idea that there are some things that a dog does not need to learn. He observed that dogs do not learn to salivate when they see food. This reflex is “hard wired” into the dog. This is an unconditioned response (a stimulus-response connection that required no learning).

Pavlov outlined that there are unconditioned responses in the animal by presenting a dog with a bowl of food and then measuring its salivary secretions. In the experiment, Pavlov used a bell as his neutral stimulus. Whenever he gave food to his dogs, he also rang a bell. After a number of repeats of this procedure, he tried the bell on its own. What he found was that the bell on its own now caused an increase in salivation. The dog had learned to associate the bell and the food. This learning created a new behavior. The dog salivated when he heard the bell. Because this response was learned (or conditioned), it is called a conditioned response. The neutral stimulus has become a conditioned stimulus.

This theory came to be known as classical conditioning.

13. Robbers Cave Experiment

Study conducted by: muzafer and carolyn sherif.

Study Conducted in 1954 at the University of Oklahoma

Experiment Details: This experiment, which studied group conflict, is considered by most to be outside the lines of what is considered ethically sound.

In 1954 researchers at the University of Oklahoma assigned 22 eleven- and twelve-year-old boys from similar backgrounds into two groups. The two groups were taken to separate areas of a summer camp facility where they were able to bond as social units. The groups were housed in separate cabins and neither group knew of the other’s existence for an entire week. The boys bonded with their cabin mates during that time. Once the two groups were allowed to have contact, they showed definite signs of prejudice and hostility toward each other even though they had only been given a very short time to develop their social group. To increase the conflict between the groups, the experimenters had them compete against each other in a series of activities. This created even more hostility and eventually the groups refused to eat in the same room. The final phase of the experiment involved turning the rival groups into friends. The fun activities the experimenters had planned like shooting firecrackers and watching movies did not initially work, so they created teamwork exercises where the two groups were forced to collaborate. At the end of the experiment, the boys decided to ride the same bus home, demonstrating that conflict can be resolved and prejudice overcome through cooperation.

Many critics have compared this study to Golding’s Lord of the Flies novel as a classic example of prejudice and conflict resolution.

14. Ross’ False Consensus Effect Study

Study conducted by: lee ross.

Study Conducted in 1977 at Stanford University

Experiment Details: In 1977, a social psychology professor at Stanford University named Lee Ross conducted an experiment that, in lay terms, focuses on how people can incorrectly conclude that others think the same way they do, or form a “false consensus” about the beliefs and preferences of others. Ross conducted the study in order to outline how the “false consensus effect” functions in humans.

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In the first part of the study, participants were asked to read about situations in which a conflict occurred and then were told two alternative ways of responding to the situation. They were asked to do three things:

• Guess which option other people would choose
• Say which option they themselves would choose
• Describe the attributes of the person who would likely choose each of the two options

What the study showed was that most of the subjects believed that other people would do the same as them, regardless of which of the two responses they actually chose themselves. This phenomenon is referred to as the false consensus effect, where an individual thinks that other people think the same way they do when they may not. The second observation coming from this important study is that when participants were asked to describe the attributes of the people who will likely make the choice opposite of their own, they made bold and sometimes negative predictions about the personalities of those who did not share their choice.

15. The Schacter and Singer Experiment on Emotion

Study conducted by: stanley schachter and jerome e. singer.

Study Conducted in 1962 at Columbia University

Experiment Details: In 1962 Schachter and Singer conducted a ground breaking experiment to prove their theory of emotion.

In the study, a group of 184 male participants were injected with epinephrine, a hormone that induces arousal including increased heartbeat, trembling, and rapid breathing. The research participants were told that they were being injected with a new medication to test their eyesight. The first group of participants was informed the possible side effects that the injection might cause while the second group of participants were not. The participants were then placed in a room with someone they thought was another participant, but was actually a confederate in the experiment. The confederate acted in one of two ways: euphoric or angry. Participants who had not been informed about the effects of the injection were more likely to feel either happier or angrier than those who had been informed.

What Schachter and Singer were trying to understand was the ways in which cognition or thoughts influence human emotion. Their study illustrates the importance of how people interpret their physiological states, which form an important component of your emotions. Though their cognitive theory of emotional arousal dominated the field for two decades, it has been criticized for two main reasons: the size of the effect seen in the experiment was not that significant and other researchers had difficulties repeating the experiment.

16. Selective Attention / Invisible Gorilla Experiment

Study conducted by: daniel simons and christopher chabris.

Study Conducted in 1999 at Harvard University

Experiment Details: In 1999 Simons and Chabris conducted their famous awareness test at Harvard University.

Participants in the study were asked to watch a video and count how many passes occurred between basketball players on the white team. The video moves at a moderate pace and keeping track of the passes is a relatively easy task. What most people fail to notice amidst their counting is that in the middle of the test, a man in a gorilla suit walked onto the court and stood in the center before walking off-screen.

The study found that the majority of the subjects did not notice the gorilla at all, proving that humans often overestimate their ability to effectively multi-task. What the study set out to prove is that when people are asked to attend to one task, they focus so strongly on that element that they may miss other important details.

17. Stanford Prison Study

Study conducted by philip zimbardo.

Study Conducted in 1971 at Stanford University

The Stanford Prison Experiment was designed to study behavior of “normal” individuals when assigned a role of prisoner or guard. College students were recruited to participate. They were assigned roles of “guard” or “inmate.”  Zimbardo played the role of the warden. The basement of the psychology building was the set of the prison. Great care was taken to make it look and feel as realistic as possible.

The prison guards were told to run a prison for two weeks. They were told not to physically harm any of the inmates during the study. After a few days, the prison guards became very abusive verbally towards the inmates. Many of the prisoners became submissive to those in authority roles. The Stanford Prison Experiment inevitably had to be cancelled because some of the participants displayed troubling signs of breaking down mentally.

Although the experiment was conducted very unethically, many psychologists believe that the findings showed how much human behavior is situational. People will conform to certain roles if the conditions are right. The Stanford Prison Experiment remains one of the most famous psychology experiments of all time.

18. Stanley Milgram Experiment

Study conducted by stanley milgram.

Study Conducted in 1961 at Stanford University

Experiment Details: This 1961 study was conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram. It was designed to measure people’s willingness to obey authority figures when instructed to perform acts that conflicted with their morals. The study was based on the premise that humans will inherently take direction from authority figures from very early in life.

Participants were told they were participating in a study on memory. They were asked to watch another person (an actor) do a memory test. They were instructed to press a button that gave an electric shock each time the person got a wrong answer. (The actor did not actually receive the shocks, but pretended they did).

Participants were told to play the role of “teacher” and administer electric shocks to “the learner,” every time they answered a question incorrectly. The experimenters asked the participants to keep increasing the shocks. Most of them obeyed even though the individual completing the memory test appeared to be in great pain. Despite these protests, many participants continued the experiment when the authority figure urged them to. They increased the voltage after each wrong answer until some eventually administered what would be lethal electric shocks.

This experiment showed that humans are conditioned to obey authority and will usually do so even if it goes against their natural morals or common sense.

19. Surrogate Mother Experiment

Study conducted by: harry harlow.

Study Conducted from 1957-1963 at the University of Wisconsin

Experiment Details: In a series of controversial experiments during the late 1950s and early 1960s, Harry Harlow studied the importance of a mother’s love for healthy childhood development.

In order to do this he separated infant rhesus monkeys from their mothers a few hours after birth and left them to be raised by two “surrogate mothers.” One of the surrogates was made of wire with an attached bottle for food. The other was made of soft terrycloth but lacked food. The researcher found that the baby monkeys spent much more time with the cloth mother than the wire mother, thereby proving that affection plays a greater role than sustenance when it comes to childhood development. They also found that the monkeys that spent more time cuddling the soft mother grew up to healthier.

This experiment showed that love, as demonstrated by physical body contact, is a more important aspect of the parent-child bond than the provision of basic needs. These findings also had implications in the attachment between fathers and their infants when the mother is the source of nourishment.

20. The Good Samaritan Experiment

Study conducted by: john darley and daniel batson.

Study Conducted in 1973 at The Princeton Theological Seminary (Researchers were from Princeton University)

Experiment Details: In 1973, an experiment was created by John Darley and Daniel Batson, to investigate the potential causes that underlie altruistic behavior. The researchers set out three hypotheses they wanted to test:

• People thinking about religion and higher principles would be no more inclined to show helping behavior than laymen.
• People in a rush would be much less likely to show helping behavior.
• People who are religious for personal gain would be less likely to help than people who are religious because they want to gain some spiritual and personal insights into the meaning of life.

Student participants were given some religious teaching and instruction. They were then were told to travel from one building to the next. Between the two buildings was a man lying injured and appearing to be in dire need of assistance. The first variable being tested was the degree of urgency impressed upon the subjects, with some being told not to rush and others being informed that speed was of the essence.

The results of the experiment were intriguing, with the haste of the subject proving to be the overriding factor. When the subject was in no hurry, nearly two-thirds of people stopped to lend assistance. When the subject was in a rush, this dropped to one in ten.

People who were on the way to deliver a speech about helping others were nearly twice as likely to help as those delivering other sermons,. This showed that the thoughts of the individual were a factor in determining helping behavior. Religious beliefs did not appear to make much difference on the results. Being religious for personal gain, or as part of a spiritual quest, did not appear to make much of an impact on the amount of helping behavior shown.

21. The Halo Effect Experiment

Study conducted by: richard e. nisbett and timothy decamp wilson.

Study Conducted in 1977 at the University of Michigan

Experiment Details: The Halo Effect states that people generally assume that people who are physically attractive are more likely to:

• be intelligent
• be friendly
• display good judgment

To prove their theory, Nisbett and DeCamp Wilson created a study to prove that people have little awareness of the nature of the Halo Effect. They’re not aware that it influences:

• their personal judgments
• the production of a more complex social behavior

In the experiment, college students were the research participants. They were asked to evaluate a psychology instructor as they view him in a videotaped interview. The students were randomly assigned to one of two groups. Each group was shown one of two different interviews with the same instructor. The instructor is a native French-speaking Belgian who spoke English with a noticeable accent. In the first video, the instructor presented himself as someone:

• respectful of his students’ intelligence and motives
• flexible in his approach to teaching
• enthusiastic about his subject matter

In the second interview, he presented himself as much more unlikable. He was cold and distrustful toward the students and was quite rigid in his teaching style.

After watching the videos, the subjects were asked to rate the lecturer on:

• physical appearance

His mannerisms and accent were kept the same in both versions of videos. The subjects were asked to rate the professor on an 8-point scale ranging from “like extremely” to “dislike extremely.” Subjects were also told that the researchers were interested in knowing “how much their liking for the teacher influenced the ratings they just made.” Other subjects were asked to identify how much the characteristics they just rated influenced their liking of the teacher.

After responding to the questionnaire, the respondents were puzzled about their reactions to the videotapes and to the questionnaire items. The students had no idea why they gave one lecturer higher ratings. Most said that how much they liked the lecturer had not affected their evaluation of his individual characteristics at all.

The interesting thing about this study is that people can understand the phenomenon, but they are unaware when it is occurring. Without realizing it, humans make judgments. Even when it is pointed out, they may still deny that it is a product of the halo effect phenomenon.

22. The Marshmallow Test

Study conducted by: walter mischel.

Study Conducted in 1972 at Stanford University

In his 1972 Marshmallow Experiment, children ages four to six were taken into a room where a marshmallow was placed in front of them on a table. Before leaving each of the children alone in the room, the experimenter informed them that they would receive a second marshmallow if the first one was still on the table after they returned in 15 minutes. The examiner recorded how long each child resisted eating the marshmallow and noted whether it correlated with the child’s success in adulthood. A small number of the 600 children ate the marshmallow immediately and one-third delayed gratification long enough to receive the second marshmallow.

In follow-up studies, Mischel found that those who deferred gratification were significantly more competent and received higher SAT scores than their peers. This characteristic likely remains with a person for life. While this study seems simplistic, the findings outline some of the foundational differences in individual traits that can predict success.

23. The Monster Study

Study conducted by: wendell johnson.

Study Conducted in 1939 at the University of Iowa

Experiment Details: The Monster Study received this negative title due to the unethical methods that were used to determine the effects of positive and negative speech therapy on children.

Wendell Johnson of the University of Iowa selected 22 orphaned children, some with stutters and some without. The children were in two groups. The group of children with stutters was placed in positive speech therapy, where they were praised for their fluency. The non-stutterers were placed in negative speech therapy, where they were disparaged for every mistake in grammar that they made.

As a result of the experiment, some of the children who received negative speech therapy suffered psychological effects and retained speech problems for the rest of their lives. They were examples of the significance of positive reinforcement in education.

The initial goal of the study was to investigate positive and negative speech therapy. However, the implication spanned much further into methods of teaching for young children.

24. Violinist at the Metro Experiment

Study conducted by: staff at the washington post.

Study Conducted in 2007 at a Washington D.C. Metro Train Station

During the study, pedestrians rushed by without realizing that the musician playing at the entrance to the metro stop was Grammy-winning musician, Joshua Bell. Two days before playing in the subway, he sold out at a theater in Boston where the seats average $100. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars. In the 45 minutes the musician played his violin, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. Around 20 gave him money, but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32.

The study and the subsequent article organized by the Washington Post was part of a social experiment looking at:

• the priorities of people

Gene Weingarten wrote about the social experiment: “In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?” Later he won a Pulitzer Prize for his story. Some of the questions the article addresses are:

• Do we perceive beauty?
• Do we stop to appreciate it?
• Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?

As it turns out, many of us are not nearly as perceptive to our environment as we might like to think.

25. Visual Cliff Experiment

Study conducted by: eleanor gibson and richard walk.

Study Conducted in 1959 at Cornell University

Experiment Details: In 1959, psychologists Eleanor Gibson and Richard Walk set out to study depth perception in infants. They wanted to know if depth perception is a learned behavior or if it is something that we are born with. To study this, Gibson and Walk conducted the visual cliff experiment.

They studied 36 infants between the ages of six and 14 months, all of whom could crawl. The infants were placed one at a time on a visual cliff. A visual cliff was created using a large glass table that was raised about a foot off the floor. Half of the glass table had a checker pattern underneath in order to create the appearance of a ‘shallow side.’

In order to create a ‘deep side,’ a checker pattern was created on the floor; this side is the visual cliff. The placement of the checker pattern on the floor creates the illusion of a sudden drop-off. Researchers placed a foot-wide centerboard between the shallow side and the deep side. Gibson and Walk found the following:

• Nine of the infants did not move off the centerboard.
• All of the 27 infants who did move crossed into the shallow side when their mothers called them from the shallow side.
• Three of the infants crawled off the visual cliff toward their mother when called from the deep side.
• When called from the deep side, the remaining 24 children either crawled to the shallow side or cried because they could not cross the visual cliff and make it to their mother.

What this study helped demonstrate is that depth perception is likely an inborn train in humans.

Among these experiments and psychological tests, we see boundaries pushed and theories taking on a life of their own. It is through the endless stream of psychological experimentation that we can see simple hypotheses become guiding theories for those in this field. The greater field of psychology became a formal field of experimental study in 1879, when Wilhelm Wundt established the first laboratory dedicated solely to psychological research in Leipzig, Germany. Wundt was the first person to refer to himself as a psychologist. Since 1879, psychology has grown into a massive collection of:

• methods of practice

It’s also a specialty area in the field of healthcare. None of this would have been possible without these and many other important psychological experiments that have stood the test of time.

• 20 Most Unethical Experiments in Psychology
• What Careers are in Experimental Psychology?
• 10 Things to Know About the Psychology of Psychotherapy

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After earning a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Rutgers University and then a Master of Science in Clinical and Forensic Psychology from Drexel University, Kristen began a career as a therapist at two prisons in Philadelphia. At the same time she volunteered as a rape crisis counselor, also in Philadelphia. After a few years in the field she accepted a teaching position at a local college where she currently teaches online psychology courses. Kristen began writing in college and still enjoys her work as a writer, editor, professor and mother.

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Study: Best way to memorize stuff? It depends ...

Recent experiments by psychologists at Temple University and the University of Pittsburgh shed new light on how we learn and how we remember our real-world experiences.

The research, described in the March 12 online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) , suggests that varying what we study and spacing out our learning over time can both be helpful for memory -- it just depends on what we're trying to remember.

"Lots of prior research has shown that learning and memory benefit from spacing study sessions out," said Benjamin Rottman, an associate professor of psychology and director of the Causal Learning and Decision-Making Lab at Pitt.

"For example, if you cram the night before a test, you might remember the information the next day for the test, but you will probably forget it fairly soon," he added. "In contrast, if you study the material on different days leading up to the test, you will be more likely to recall it for a longer period of time."

But while the "spacing effect" is one of the most replicated findings in psychological research, much of this work has been predicated on the idea that what you are trying to learn -- the content of the experience itself -- repeats identically each time. Yet that is rarely the case in real life, when some features of our experiences may stay the same, but others are likely to change. For example, imagine repeat trips to your local coffeeshop. While many features may stay the same on each visit, a new barista may be serving you. How does the spacing effect work in light of such variation across experiences?

In two experiments, Temple and Pitt researchers asked participants to repeatedly study pairs of items and scenes that were either identical on each repetition or in which the item stayed the same but the scene changed each time.

One of the experiments asked participants to learn and to test their memory via their smartphones -- an unusual approach for learning and memory research. This enabled researchers to ask participants to learn pairs at various times of the day across 24 hours, more accurately representing how people actually learn information.

In the second experiment, researchers collected data online in a single session.

Emily Cowan, lead author on the PNAS paper and a postdoctoral fellow in Temple's Adaptive Memory Lab, explained: "The combination of these two large-scale experiments allowed us to look at the timing of these 'spacing effects' across both long timescales -- for example, hours to days -- in Experiment No. 1 versus short timescales -- for example, seconds to minutes -- in Experiment No. 2. With this, we were able to ask how memory is impacted both by what is being learned -- whether that is an exact repetition or instead, contains variations or changes -- as well as when it is learned over repeated study opportunities.

"In other words, using these two designs, we could examine how having material that more closely resembles our experiences of repetition in the real world -- where some aspects stay the same but others differ -- impacts memory if you are exposed to that information in quick succession versus over longer intervals… from seconds to minutes, or hours to days."

As in prior experiments, researchers found that spaced learning benefited item memory. But they also found that memory was better for the items that had been paired with different scenes compared with those shown with the same scene each time. For example, if you want to remember a new person's name, repeating the name but associating it with different information about the person can actually be helpful.

"In contrast," Rottman said, "we found that for associative memory -- memory for the item and which scene it was paired with -- benefited from stability. Spacing only benefited memory for the pairs that were repeated exactly, and only if there were pretty long gaps -- hours to days -- between study opportunities. For example, if you are trying to remember the new person's name and something about them, like their favorite food, it is more helpful to repeat that same exact name-food pairing multiple times with spacing between each."

The Pitt-Temple experiments represent basic memory research. "Because of how nuanced memory is, it is hard to provide clear advice for things like studying for a test because the sort of material can be so different," Rottman said. "But in theory our findings should be broadly relevant to different sorts of tasks, like remembering someone's name and things about them, studying for a test, and learning new vocabulary in a foreign language.

"At the same time, because all these sorts of tasks have lots of differences, it is hard to make really concrete advice for them. We would need to do follow-up research to provide more concrete guidance for each case."

Cowan continued: "This work demonstrates the benefits of spaced learning on memory are not absolute, instead depending on the variability present in the content across repetitions and the timing between learning opportunities, expanding our current understanding of how the way in which we learn information can impact how it is remembered. Our work suggests that both variability and spacing may present methods to improve our memory for isolated features and associative information, respectively, raising important applications for future research, education, and our everyday lives."

In addition to Cowan and Rottman, study investigators included Vishnu "Deepu" Murty, principal investigator of Temple's Adaptive Memory Lab, and Yiwen Zhang, a graduate student in cognitive psychology at Pitt.

The research was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (grant No. 1651330) and the National Institutes of Health (grant Nos. NIH R21 DA043568, K01 MH111991 and R01 DA055259).

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Materials provided by University of Pittsburgh . Original written by Bruce Steele. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference :

• Emily T. Cowan, Yiwen Zhang, Benjamin M. Rottman, Vishnu P. Murty. The effects of mnemonic variability and spacing on memory over multiple timescales . Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , 2024; 121 (12) DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2311077121

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Relations among coping style, and depression and anxiety symptoms in medical graduate students: a transdiagnostic network analysis

• Published: 26 March 2024

Cite this article

• Zhihua Guo   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2151-7258 1 , 4 ,
• Yajuan Zhang 1 ,
• Peiyun Pi 2 ,
• Xia Zhu 1 ,
• Danmin Miao 1 , 4 &
• Hongliang Lu 1 , 4  

Medical graduate students are known to be susceptible to depression and anxiety, and coping style has been implicated in these pathogenic processes. However, the fine-grained pathways through which positive and negative coping styles (i.e., PCS and NCS) impact depression and anxiety remain unclear. This study aimed to use network analysis to investigate the associations among PCS/NCS, the individual symptoms of depression and anxiety, and their comorbidity among medical graduate students. Three regularized partial correlation networks were estimated based on cross-sectional data from 1582 medical graduate students, including PCS/NCS-depression, PCS/NCS-anxiety, and PCS/NCS-comorbidity networks. Bridge expected influence (BEI) values were calculated for each node within the three networks. The results showed the prevalence rates of mild or more severe depression and anxiety symptoms were 24.21% and 19.91%, respectively, in our sample. PCS and NCS functioned differently in relation to individual symptoms of depression and anxiety. Consistently, PCS had the highest negative BEI, while NCS had the highest positive BEI in the PCS/NCS-depression, PCS/NCS-anxiety, and PCS/NCS-comorbidity networks. PCS had more associations with depression and anxiety symptoms than did NCS. These findings shed light on the distinct pathways through which PCS and NCS may influence depression and anxiety. PCS and NCS were identified as important bridge nodes and transdiagnostic factors within separate depression and anxiety disorders and the comorbidity form, serving as protective and detrimental factors, respectively. Furthermore, PCS was more important than NCS in connecting the symptoms of depression and anxiety. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed.

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Data availability

The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Zhihua Guo: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing - original draft. Yajuan Zhang: Methodology, Writing - original draft. Peiyun Pi: Formal analysis, Writing - original draft. Xia Zhu: Investigation, Formal analysis, Visualization. Yi Cui: Formal analysis, Visualization. Danmin Miao: Conceptualization, Supervision, Writing - Review & Editing. Hongliang Lu: Funding acquisition, Conceptualization, Investigation, Supervision, Writing - Review & Editing.

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Guo, Z., Zhang, Y., Pi, P. et al. Relations among coping style, and depression and anxiety symptoms in medical graduate students: a transdiagnostic network analysis. Curr Psychol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-024-05912-x

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Ethical foundations for graduate students in the psychological sciences

Julia bravin.

1 SDSU/UC San Diego Joint Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology

Jessica Carrasco

Michael kalichman.

2 Department of Pathology, and Director, Research Ethics Program UC San Diego

Preparation to address ethical challenges is an essential component of graduate training, and no less so for the psychological sciences. However, in the absence of uniform guidelines, approaches to training vary in form and quality. Classroom lectures and online training seem to be the mechanisms of choice, but these fall short. First, such approaches conflict with the scholarship on teaching and learning that makes it clear that having a meaningful impact depends on having students actively engaged in constructing their own learning. Second, research is consistent with intuition that the impact of courses is likely to be far less than what happens in a graduate student’s research environment. The conclusion is that promoting an ethical culture, and for the training of graduate students in particular, will be well served by enhancing the role of mentors. Examples of options to consider are: (1) recognizing that a primary advisor can be a mentor, but should certainly not be considered the only mentor; (2) emphasizing the importance of mentoring for individuals from underrepresented groups (e.g., because of gender or ethnicity); (3) strengthening the APA code of ethics to more fully articulate the full range and importance of mentoring; (4) developing and implementing mechanisms to evaluate and reward effective mentoring; and (5) providing targeted training for faculty advisors to empower them with tools and resources to be effective mentors for ethics generally and the responsible conduct of research specifically.

“Like any relationship, creation of a foundation of trust, nurturance, and support is the best context for a mentee to experience maximal growth.” ( Gruber et al., 2020 )

Science faces a crisis in integrity ( Alberts et al., 2014 ; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2017 ). While intentional lapses in honest reporting are a significant threat ( National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2017 ), it is arguably even more important that the integrity of science can be compromised unintentionally through insufficient understanding or awareness of good practices of science ( Ioannidis, 2005 ). The latter challenge is probably best illustrated by worries about the reproducibility of science ( Baker, 2016 ). The field of psychological sciences is not immune to the reproducibility crisis ( Open Science Collaboration, 2015 ). Some authors have even proposed that with the right methodological choices you can prove anything in psychology ( Simmons et al., 2011 ). The risks here are that deficient research practices can result in false positive findings. To the extent this is true, the implication for translation of psychological findings into practice is at least disturbing and possibly harmful. The subject of this manuscript is how to minimize these challenges by better preparing the next generation of researchers. What, if anything, can be done to strengthen the integrity of science, and in psychological sciences in particular?

Following WWII, the prominence of psychological sciences and growing ethical concerns led to the establishment of the American Psychological Association code of ethics (1953) . Over 2000 psychologists created a document outlining standards for public responsibility, client relationships, teaching, research, writing and publishing, and professional relationships. The code of ethics was established to acknowledge the societal responsibility of psychologists to not only better understand human behavior through ethical research, but also, in treating mental illnesses through ethical clinical engagements. Since then, the APA code of ethics has been revised to reflect current ethical challenges (e.g., cultural competence, open science) through more specific and updated standards closely mirrored guidelines for responsible conduct of research ( American Psychological Association, 2017 ).

Notwithstanding the APA code of ethics, responsible conduct of research (RCR) was not a prominent concern before the 1980s. However, in the face of several high-profile cases of research misconduct (e.g., summarized in Kalichman, 2013a ), the National Institutes of Health (NIH) established a new requirement that trainees supported by NIH training grants should receive RCR instruction ( NIH, 1989 ). Although at least in part a response to cases of research misconduct, the requirement could be characterized as calling for teaching about rules, regulations, and to some extent good practices of research, largely consistent with the APA code of ethics guidelines (e.g., need for institutional review board approval, informed consent, protection of human participants, mentoring). This approach to mitigating misconduct is questionable. While it is plausible that someone might be dissuaded from committing research misconduct if they were first told it is against guidelines or regulations to lie, cheat, or steal, it is more likely that most adults already know this. On the other hand, for cases of research misconduct that might be “accidental,” this approach may have some value. In any case, there is an implicit assumption that trainees would benefit from a better understanding of how research should be done.

The scientific community has largely focused on education or training as the remedy for deficiencies in research conduct, resulting in a proliferation of courses, workshops, seminars, and resources to promote RCR ( Kalichman, 2013a ). Many APA accredited psychology graduate programs have made research ethics courses a core requirement. Although such requirements as well as training required by the U.S. federal government (e.g., through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF)) ensure access to RCR training, each institution has the liberty to decide what is to be taught within these courses ensuring a lack of consistency in goals and content covered ( Phillips et al., 2018 ). To date, the overarching goals of RCR programs remain unclear.

While it might seem enough to say the goal is “responsible conduct of research,” that begs the question of what should be covered and how it should be covered. One answer is current NIH guidelines for RCR training in which nine topics are recommended ( NIH, 2009 ). These include: conflicts of interest, human and animal subjects, mentoring, collaborations, peer review, data management, research misconduct, authorship and publication, and social responsibilities. However, as these are only guidelines, it might seem more useful to simply ask teachers of RCR about their goals for teaching ( Kalichman and Plemmons, 2007 ). The answers were wide-ranging, including: (1) conveying new knowledge (e.g., ethical theories, rules and regulations); (2) nurturing skills (e.g., ethical decision-making, stress or time management); (3) encouraging positive attitudes (e.g., recognizing the importance of promoting RCR, continued learning, and valuing openness and transparency); (4) stimulating positive behaviors (e.g., conducting responsible rather than fraudulent research, being a good mentor, taking responsibility to learn and follow relevant rules); and (5) building community (e.g., providing opportunities for trainees to speak to one another in class, but to also do so outside of class with peers, mentors, faculty, and others). All of these are desirable outcomes, but not only is it unrealistic to expect to meet so many different goals at the same time, classroom education and training are unfortunately unlikely to have significant impact.

Challenges to effectiveness of RCR courses

The hurdles limiting the impact of courses are numerous. First, it is certainly unrealistic to think that any one course, much less a seminar or workshop, could address all of the possible issues ( Kalichman, 2013b ). It would of course be even more dubious to expect much more than conveying limited knowledge if the approach were simply an online tutorial ( Kalichman, 2005 ). Second, it should not be surprising that a single course is likely to be less important in shaping outcomes than the pervasive, daily exposure a researcher experiences over the course of a career (e.g., Anderson et al., 2007 ). Third, researchers may work in an institutional environment in which leadership, policies, and resources could unfortunately send a clear message contrary to the efforts made in the classroom. Finally, the culture of science is one in which the incentives are often perverse—publication in high impact factor journals, high volume of publications, and first authorship is valued and rewarded over publishing work more likely to be reproducible ( Oransky & Marcus, 2016 ). The nature of the incentives widely perceived to define science would likely undermine the impact of attempts at training or education. In light of these challenges, it is important to ask how best to provide training.

For most educational goals, the scholarship on teaching and learning is clear: It is better for students to be actively engaged rather than being a passive audience for a lecture or simply reading material online ( National Research Council, 2000 ; Brown et al., 2014 ; Freeman et al., 2014 ). While lectures or online training may have some value, meaningful impact should be expected only when learners are in effect generating their own learning by being actively engaged. This can be done in many ways ranging from small group case discussions to debates to role playing to conducting surveys to games ( Plemmons and Kalichman, 2008 ). However, while such activities definitely strengthen courses, it remains true that the greatest impact is likely going to come from a trainee’s experiences in the laboratory, a culture and context largely dictated by their mentors.

It is increasingly recognized that graduate students and trainees receive the majority of their ethics education and information regarding the practical implementation of ethical standards, not from formal classroom training, but rather from the ‘hidden curriculum’— socialization into RCR that includes formal instruction from principal investigators (PIs) (who often serve as primary mentors), observed behaviors of other researchers, day-to-day interactions with members of the research team, and experiencing the culture of the research environment ( Fryer-Edwards, 2002 ). In this setting, it is the PI who serves not only to set the cultural norms with regard to ethical scientific practice, but along with other senior laboratory staff also serves as a professional role model for trainees. PIs, thus, lead by example, modeling both “good” and “bad” behaviors that a trainee may internalize and integrate as normative behaviors of a seasoned scientist ( Fryer-Edwards, 2002 ; Institute of Medicine and National Research Council, 2002 ; Peiffer et al., 2008 ; Satalkar and Shaw, 2019 ; Plemmons et al., 2020 ).

As for RCR training and goals, mentorship in academic research has varied widely among and even within institutions. Who is considered a mentor versus a PI or an advisor, the degree of interactions, and responsibilities of mentors to their protégés are among many factors to be considered ( Cobb et al., 2018 ). While the expected roles of advisors and mentors overlap and are variably defined, a primary “advisor” often has a supervisory role (i.e., their guidance might be seen more as expectations rather than advice). On the other hand, a mentor does not necessarily have a formal relationship with the mentee so their role is much more advisory than supervisory (i.e., their guidance would be considered as suggestions rather than expectations). In clinical psychology, formal mentorship expands beyond a primary advisor, and also includes clinical and dissertation advisors ( Cobb et al., 2018 ). This further confounds the proper dissemination of ethical practices to students given not only the variance in ethical standards across institutions, but also variance in RCR teaching provided by mentors or advisors.

Despite the variation, mentoring in psychological training can improve academic productivity, professional competence, and the success of psychology graduate students ( Johnson et al., 2000 ; Williams-Nickelson, 2009 , Mangione et al., 2018 ). This is an opportunity to ensure trainees are well-trained and prepared to engage in best practices for how research is conducted, reported, and applied. Unfortunately, in practice, training in clinical psychology (e.g., scientist-practitioner, practitioner-scholar) does not necessarily promote the direct use of mentors ( Clark et al., 2000 ).

Few studies have addressed mentoring for psychology graduate students, but such research has increased in recent years. One area of concern is that graduate students in clinical psychology programs are less likely than those in experimental psychology programs to receive mentoring ( Johnson et al., 2000 ), although clinical psychology Ph.D. students were more likely than Psy.D. students to receive mentorship ( Clark et al., 2000 ). While it is marginally “good news” that 50–70% of graduate students surveyed received mentoring, it is concerning that only about 8% of mentors initiate the relationship ( Clark et al., 2000 ). Even more worrisome, 11% of survey respondents report ethical concerns regarding their mentor or mentor relationship (e.g., research related concerns, sexualized relationships), underscoring the difficulty of addressing ethical training and concerns within the context of the mentor-mentee relationship.

While traditional mentorship meetings are considered the cornerstone of graduate student training, there is a general lack of consensus as to how (i.e., what content, in what format, and with what frequency) mentorship meetings should address ethical practice in science ( Institute of Medicine and National Research Council, 2002 ). Compared to traditional graduate programs, clinical psychology graduate students have the challenge of dividing time between research and clinical training, with students spending less time with their research advisors, and having less exposure to the modeling and teaching of ethical research behaviors ( Johnson et al., 2000 ).

About half of clinical psychology trainees’ time is spent in external clinical settings that often last a year or less; the structure of clinical psychology training models, thus, pose an additional challenge for students to establish meaningful mentorship relationships. This discrepancy may be more pronounced in programs where clinical training is prioritized over research (e.g., professional versus Ph.D. programs).

At least one other aspect of mentoring in the psychological sciences that warrants attention is mental health. Recent research has highlighted the mental health crisis in graduate students ( Kemsley, 2017 ) and clinical psychology students are not immune to these statistics ( Rummell, 2015 ). It is particularly concerning that psychology students often have unaddressed mental health concerns— something that could impact, not only trainees’ overall well-being and productivity ( Liu et al., 2019 ), but also their ability to be effective clinicians. Institutions have a responsibility to promote a culture that communicates to trainees that success in graduate school, including academic productivity (e.g., publications, grants) and clinical proficiency, depends first on their physical and mental health. Providing resources for students to receive mental health treatment when necessary, for example, is a critical factor in maintaining graduate student health and productivity.

A common challenge to addressing ethical dilemmas in the context of academic mentorship lies in the very nature of the mentor-mentee dynamic. The relationship between mentor and trainee is a power-discrepant one in which mentors have implicit and explicit dominance. Additionally, mentors are often expected (if not required) to financially support their trainees ( Gruber et al., 2020 ). Institutions and mentors alike, promote a culture in which graduate students are expected and rewarded for scholarly contributions above other career-oriented pursuits and, at times, well-being (e.g., taking on additional clinical hours, working long hours/weekends). Paradoxically, the power imbalance between any teacher/mentor and student/trainee, combined with an overarching culture of research productivity, may inadvertently promote unethical behavior. For this reason, mechanisms are needed to critically monitor the mentor-mentee relationship and mitigate risks.

As part of RCR training and mentorship, it is also important to consider multicultural competency and ethical concerns regarding research within diverse populations. This plays out in two ways: (1) the training of underrepresented minority (URM) students and (2) the teaching of multicultural ethics. Certain barriers are currently in place limiting appropriate RCR training through mentorship in these groups. For example, traditional one-on-one mentoring is not equitably available to all graduate students, particularly women and members of URM groups ( Holt et al., 2016 ). Further, a major contributor to the on-going difficulties in recruitment and retention of URM researchers, are barriers posed by institutions themselves ( de Dios et al., 2013 ). Such barriers limit accessibility to diverse mentors in research settings, who are important not only to trainees’ development, but who could also provide services to clients who might benefit from a clinician from an underrepresented population. Additionally, little is known overall about the role of gender and ethnicity in graduate students’ ethics experiences or their impressions of RCR training at an individual or institutional level and further research is warranted ( Fisher et al., 2009 ).

Even though efforts to ameliorate some of the aforementioned barriers are still works in progress, academic advising has been shown to contribute to URM student success ( Museus & Ravello, 2010 ). Specifically, three themes were identified in what made an advising relationship most effective: (1) advisors that showed concern about all aspects of the student’s life extending beyond research; (2) advisors that connected students to resources once they expressed concerns; and (3) advisors that proactively connected students to resources ( Museus & Ravello, 2010 ). These three themes may seem intuitive but are especially critical when advising students of color given that many of these groups are exposed to additional stressors (e.g., microaggressions, discrimination) that increase stress and affect psychological well-being ( Miller & Orsillo, 2020 ). In the same vein, given the changing demographics in the United States, diverse research/clinical teams are imperative in addressing mental health disparities response to this challenge, funding institutions, such as the National Institute of Health and the National Science Foundation, have made concerted efforts in recent years to shift diversity-related issues from the periphery to a central focus and value. Not only is recruitment of participants from URM populations now mandated, but also new efforts are designed to recruit and train underrepresented researchers ( Valantine et al., 2016 ).

Guidelines calling for effective mentoring (e.g., American Psychological Association, 1953 ) are important, even though such guidelines alone are insufficient to meet this goal, much less ensure effective RCR mentoring. Despite a clear distinction between mentoring and advising in clinical psychology ( Cobb et al., 2018 ), quantifying the strength of mentoring lacks standardization, especially when trying to gauge RCR training. To meet this challenge, Fisher and colleagues proposed scales to measure mentoring, institutional attitudes, and perceived preparedness in RCR training ( Fisher et al., 2009 ). Development and use of such objective, reliable, and valid measures is important in helping to capture differences among programs/institutions and may help guide improved mentoring and accountability.

Another challenge for mentoring guidelines is that the APA code of ethics speaks exclusively to the teaching and training of students via mentors, but the role of students themselves in teaching and training other psychology graduate students is often missed in the discussion. Considering the importance of peers and fellow researchers in providing informal mentorship ( Lewinski et al., 2017 ) and setting the research environment culture, this narrow focus is a clear short-coming. There is room to improve the APA code of ethics by expanding expectations for the training of graduate students to be effective, ethical mentors ( Brown, 2016 ). In doing so, students can perhaps view themselves as members of a community that values ethics, rather than being passive recipients of ethical training from their mentors and institutions.

In addition to having students more actively engaged in peer training, having access to multiple mentors may also be a remedy for the potentially damaging effects of the power-discrepant nature of the mentor-mentee relationship and trainee perceptions of the competitive nature of the laboratory setting ( Martinson et al., 2005 ; Anderson et al., 2007 ). As with other dimensions of mentoring, multiple mentors can help increase the chance a mentee will hear and experience important messages about good practices and responsible conduct of research. A multiple-mentor model ( Gruber et al., 2020 ), that includes non-evaluative mentors, and even assigned peer mentors, would allow students to discuss topics they might otherwise hesitate to discuss with formal mentors (e.g., what to do when others in the lab are suspected of unethical behaviors, how to navigate situations arising from the power differential between a trainee and mentor such as pressures to publish, or inappropriate demands on time). Support from mentors with differing perspectives and skillsets may also serve to buffer dysfunctional mentoring relationships and increase the likelihood of appropriate whistleblowing ( Terry and Ghosh, 2015 ).

Interestingly, multiple mentorship models are already part of clinical psychology programs in the context of clinical training. Multiple tiers of supervision (which can include primary and secondary clinical supervisors, post-doctoral trainees, and interns) share some similarities with the proposed structure of RCR mentoring and training. However, the goals of clinical and research training do not always align (e.g., in research, standardization of measures is highly valued, but in the clinical context, more precise diagnostic evaluations may depend on personalization). Furthermore, depending on the institution, academic research roles may be perceived as more valuable than clinical roles impeding exploration and acquisition of additional ethical training earlier in student’s careers. Likewise, professional schools in clinical psychology may emphasize clinical careers over academic roles, thereby limiting access to appropriate RCR training. Having access to several mentors who can speak to the ethics and challenges inherent to research and clinical work, particularly when their objectives clash, is particularly important in providing graduate students with a wide range of training to handle the various dilemmas to be faced as an independent clinical psychologist. In short, while mentors, particularly multiple mentors, have a central role in trainee success, there is room to improve mentoring as well as the culture of graduate training programs in the psychological sciences.

Recommendation 1. Training for Mentors

In light of the limitations of relying solely on traditional classroom-based RCR training, it is imperative that mentors explicitly address ethical issues in a practical and laboratory-relevant fashion. Trainings such as those proposed by Peiffer and colleagues (2011) and Kalichman and Plemmons (2017) are geared towards providing mentors and educators with tools and strategies for engaging trainees in regular RCR discussions. These “train the trainer” curricula have been well received by trainees and mentors. Furthermore, Peiffer and colleagues argue that integrating such routine discussions promotes RCR as a core value of the laboratory and inculcates moral and ethical questioning as an automatic response to ambiguous situations among trainees. In surveying their participants, Peiffer found that trainees and staff both agreed that they could freely report protocol violations and mistakes to their superiors. Overall, such changes in laboratory culture could ultimately translate to reductions in questionable scientific practices.

Recommendation 2. Guidelines for Trainees

A positive mentoring relationship is a prerequisite for effective RCR mentoring, but trainees often lack the power to find and maintain such a relationship. Institutions have a responsibility to openly acknowledge the power differential inherent in the mentor-mentee relationship and provide trainees with clear guidance for what to do when ethical dilemmas, particularly in the mentor-mentee relationship, emerge (e.g., seek consultation from other mentors). Each graduate program could provide and maintain guidelines somewhere easily accessible to students, and these resources (e.g., an ombuds office) could be presented at initial onboarding. Further, program-specific committees comprised of students and faculty, could meet annually to discuss these evolving guidelines, as well as, present bi-annual surveys to students to gauge institutional climate.

Recommendation 3. Evaluation of Mentoring

If mentoring of trainees is important, then it is reasonable to expect that mentors should be evaluated at least in part on their mentoring. The focus of evaluation could nominally include frequency of mentorship meetings, frequency with which the mentor promotes discussion among trainees, and adequacy with which relevant ethical issues are addressed. Such evaluation of the mentor-mentee relationship in graduate programs would serve to hold mentors accountable for covering ethical issues and may even stimulate discussion of ethical issues relevant to a trainee’s particular research environment. It is perhaps worth considering that such evaluations would best be accomplished through a committee outside the department in an effort to promote change, minimize potential backlash, and protect the students. In addition to assessing these mentorship duties, it might also be useful to assess trainee perceptions of their preparedness to address ethical dilemmas in the context of their research environments and their comfort in bringing ethical questions to their supervisors’ and mentors’ attention. Assessments of trainees’ general preparedness, even if results are summarized across multiple students/cohorts, might serve as a barometer for the quality and effectiveness of mentors’ promotion of ethical practices.

Institutions could provide aggregated results of student feedback surveys to faculty members and elicit from mentors proposed means for remediation when applicable.

Recommendation 4. Institutional Role in Promoting RCR Mentoring

Finally, in addition to the significant role of mentorship in shaping trainee perceptions of appropriate scientific practices, the role of the institution to establish and promote the overall scientific culture must also be acknowledged. Unlike mentorship which can be variable and unpredictable, the institutional climate can be thought of us a constant and necessary backdrop for consistent and effective training ( Fisher et al., 2009 ). To effectively enforce RCR discussions in the context of the mentor-mentee relationship, institutions could: 1) promote a multi-mentor structure (e.g., resources and strategies for obtaining non-evaluative mentors or identifying others that might serve as professional role models); 2) formally describe expectations for mentors including descriptions of how to engage mentees in RCR discussions; 3) offer or perhaps require mentor discussion-based training, including problem solving, laboratory-relevant scenarios and dilemmas; and 4) develop and conduct formal evaluations of mentorship effectiveness in promoting ethics-relevant discussion among trainees. These steps to strengthen mentoring would arguably make a significant impact on the culture of ethics in clinical psychological sciences.

Public Significance Statement:

Research in the psychological sciences has a profound impact on every aspect of our lives. The quality of that research depends on robust training and mentoring for the next generation of scientists. This article recommends several strategies institutions can implement to strengthen mentoring in the responsible conduct of research.

Acknowledgments

Preparation of this manuscript was supported in part by grants from the National Institutes of Health (NCATS/NIH UL1TR001442) and the National Science Foundation (CCE STEM #1835029). The opinions expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not reflect the view of the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Science Foundation, or the United States government.

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Designing Studies (12 Marker) - Research Methods - AQA Psychology

Subject: Psychology

Age range: 16+

Resource type: Lesson (complete)

Last updated

24 March 2024

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**AQA Psychology Paper 2 - Research Methods Lesson - Designing Studies **

This resources contains 2 seperate lesson powerpoints and booklets to teach students how to get top marks on the ‘design a study’ 12 mark questions in Research Methods.

The two lessons focus on:

• Designing an observation
• Designing an experiment

Each lesson contains a powerpoint and lesson booklet with notes and recall activities to help studies revise key facts about observations, experiments and correlational studies.

Each also includes an example 12 mark model answer and then a 12 mark question for students to practice.

There is also a ‘design a correlational study’ worksheet that you can use as an extension activity or a full lesson if you wish.

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The 8 Best Psychology Books for Students

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Cara Lustik is a fact-checker and copywriter.

• What to Look For

If you are interested in learning more about the science of the mind and behavior, there are plenty of great psychology books to help you get started. What are some of the best books for psychology students to read?

While your psychology classes already have required reading lists, there are a number of great psychology books that can supplement your studies. From guides to help you succeed in school to reviews of the ​ history of psychology , the following books are some of the best choices for psychology students interested in boosting their grades and deepening their knowledge of psychology. Even if you are just a casual student of the subject, these psychology books can offer insights into the field and its history.

Here are the best psychology books for students.

Pioneers of Psychology by Raymond E. Fancher & Alexandra Rutherford

Anyone who thinks history is boring should definitely read Fancher and Rutherford's engaging look at the history of psychology, from its philosophical beginnings to the modern day.

As this text proves, psychology books devoted to the history of the field need not be dry or dull. The book offers a very human view of some of the great thinkers that have influenced psychology, including Descartes, Locke, Darwin, Freud, and Skinner.

Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association

When it comes to psychology books, there are a few texts that you should absolutely purchase. The APA style manual is a must-have for any psychology student. Get this book early on in your academic career and keep it on hand to consult as you write research papers, literature reviews, lab report , and other writing assignments.

How to Think Straight About Psychology by Keith E. Stanovich

Keith E. Stanovich's How to Think Straight About Psychology serves as a nice complement to any research methods course.

Learn more about critical thinking skills and how to identify pseudoscience. Explore other topics in psychology as well such as experimental control, correlational studies, and experimental studies.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks

This book from neurologist Oliver Sacks is a great read for both psychology students and a general interest audience. The author explores clinical stories of patients who suffer from neurological disorders, offering an engaging and thoughtful look at neurological problems.

While some psychology books are targeted at an audience with an extensive background in the topic, this book can be easily enjoyed by anyone new to psychology.

The Psychology Major's Handbook by Tara L. Kuther

Tara L. Kuther offers some excellent tips for students in this handy psychology book.

Learn about some of the many reasons to major in psychology, find great tips for academic success and learn more about some of the careers available to psychology majors.

Career Paths in Psychology by Robert Sternberg

Have you ever wondered exactly what you can do with a psychology degree? Psychology is a broad and diverse subject, so there is considerable variation in the type of careers that psychology students can pursue.

This comprehensive overview from psychologist Robert Sternberg offers an excellent look at some of the career options available to students as well as professionals who are considering a career change. Explore some of your choices and think about how you can achieve your academic goals.

Getting In by the American Psychological Association

If you are thinking of studying psychology at the graduate level, then this guide from the American Psychological Association is a must-have for your growing collection of psychology books.

Each step of the admission process is broken down into easy-to-follow segments, and hand timetables make it simple to track your progress.

Cracking the GRE Psychology Subject Test by The Princeton Review

In order to get into a psychology graduate program, you will most likely need to take the GRE subject test in psychology.

Prepare yourself for the test with this test prep book , which offers a quick review aimed at refreshing your knowledge of various topics within psychology.

What to Look for in a Psychology Book for Students

Up-to-date research.

Used books can be helpful in some contexts. However, psychology is an evolving science with new findings and updated research. If you’re looking for a psychology book to supplement your studies, make sure it’s not outdated.

Trusted Sources

It’s becoming easier to self-publish books either in print or digital formats. As a result, there are more people than ever who are releasing books for public consumption. Some of these people aren’t qualified experts for the disciplines they’re writing about. Research the authors and publishers of psychology books you aren’t familiar with to make sure they’re coming from a trusted source.

Easy to Understand

Many books about health and science are dense and difficult to understand. Luckily, there are many books that break these subjects down for audiences who aren’t as familiar with technical jargon. When you’re choosing psychology books, keep this in mind so that you can easily understand the psychology concepts you wish to learn.

Frequently Asked Questions

Your professor chooses specific psychology books to inform their course design. While other psychology books help explain common concepts, there’s no guarantee that the information is exactly the same. There are advances and new discoveries in psychology that may not be reflected in older editions. Additionally, your professor may utilize the review questions or other unique passages in their selected resources, so it’s best to keep those on hand.

There are many jobs you can pursue with a degree in psychology because it gives you insight into the way people think and behave. Most obviously, there are entry-level opportunities in mental health that are a great fit, like mental health technicians and case managers.

There are also many psychology majors who go on to have successful careers in marketing, education, advertising, sales, and many other industries. Figure out what interests you and it’s likely that your degree in psychology is a reliable step in the right direction.

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

What does “we’re just talking” mean? New psychology research unpacks the meaning behind contemporary dating slang

A recent study sheds light on the phrase “just talking,” a term commonly used by college students to describe a stage in their romantic or sexual interactions. The research, published in the journal Emerging Adulthood , suggests that “just talking” is not merely a euphemism for casual dating or hooking up but rather a linguistic tool that allows for the cultivation of intimacy in an environment where the overt pursuit of emotional connection and romantic relationships is often stigmatized.

The concept of “just talking” emerged against a backdrop where sexual and romantic behaviors on college campuses have been predominantly viewed through the lens of hookup culture. This culture emphasizes casual, non-committed sexual interactions, overshadowing the pursuit of emotional intimacy and committed relationships. Yet, despite this prevailing view, the term “just talking” began to surface in conversations among young adults, suggesting a different approach to forming connections.

Intrigued by the lack of academic exploration into this phenomenon, researchers at Binghamton University’s Human Sexualities Lab conducted a study to better understand what “just talking” entails and how it functions within the social dynamics of college life.

The research into the phenomenon of “just talking” began with an exploratory survey aimed at unpacking the meanings and purposes behind this contemporary slang. The survey was distributed to 403 participants at a mid-sized public university, with questions designed to probe the definition, purpose, and communication methods associated with “just talking.”

The survey results revealed that “just talking” is perceived as a form of amorous activity that could include physical intimacy but is primarily characterized by its non-committal nature. Participants noted that “just talking” could serve as a prelude to more formalized relationships, indicating a process of getting to know someone with the potential for escalation.

Importantly, the findings underscored the ambiguity of “just talking,” with responses varying significantly regarding its emotional and physical intimacy levels.

A key insight was the role of “just talking” in facilitating intimate connections without the pressure of formal commitment. The survey also highlighted the predominant use of smartphones and social media as communication channels among individuals engaged in “just talking,” reflecting the digital age’s influence on modern romantic interactions.

“I do think romance is more important to emerging adults than people may think,” said Melissa Hardesty, co-investigator at the Human Sexualities Lab. “My guess is that romance never went away, but the dominant college culture is centered around drinking alcohol and finding sexual partners. My best guess is that a cultural shift has been in the works for some time, but social scientists don’t usually detect these things until they’re well underway.”

Building on the survey’s findings, the researchers conducted focus groups to further investigate the nuances of “just talking.” These discussions were organized with 37 students and revolved around an eleven-question semi-structured interview guide, which was informed by the initial survey data.

The focus groups provided evidence that “just talking” often signifies a stage of exploration and gradual intimacy building, beginning with interactions on social media platforms and potentially progressing to more personal forms of communication. Participants distinguished “just talking” from hooking up, emphasizing its potential for developing deeper, more personal connections. It was seen as a pathway to discovering shared interests, values, and ideologies, crucial for determining compatibility before potentially entering into a committed relationship.

The focus groups revealed that while “just talking” allows for emotional intimacy and connection, it also serves as a linguistic tool to navigate the pressures and expectations surrounding modern romantic relationships. By engaging in “just talking,” individuals can explore potential romantic interests without the implications of commitment, thereby maintaining a sense of autonomy and freedom in their relational explorations.

For example, one participant stated: “You don’t want to necessarily put, like, a label on anything, especially because, like, a lot of the labels we have are either ‘in a relationship’ or ‘friends with benefits’ so there’s not a lot of labels […] to necessarily use […] it’s a kind of a label without a label.”

Hardesty explained: “In hookup culture, emotional attachments are taboo (though they do occur); just talking allows students to form emotional intimacy while downplaying the significance of such intimacy – they’re just talking . It’s striking to me that students have difficulty recognizing courtship, which is a process rather than a status.

“I think this may be because a sex and gender-integrated social environment allows people to meet potential partners without a formal courtship strategy in place. Students almost certainly courted one another outside of hookup culture prior to the emergence of ‘just talking’, but there didn’t seem to be a dominant/recognizable strategy.”

But the study, like all research, includes limitations. For example, the study’s non-random sampling and focus on a single university may restrict the generalizability of the findings. Future research could benefit from a broader demographic scope, including non-college young adults, to paint a more comprehensive picture of emerging adulthood and relationship dynamics.

Despite these limitations, the research contributes valuable insights into the evolving nature of romantic relationships among college students. It underscores the complexity of navigating intimacy in an environment marked by contradictory desires for connection and the maintenance of a non-committal facade.

The study, “ What Are College Students Talking About When They Say They’re “Just Talking? “, was authored by Melissa Hardesty, Sayre E. Wilson, Leora Wasserman, Sarah Young, Sean Massey, and Ann Merriwether.