Ideas for Psychology Experiments

15 Ideas for Psychology Experiments

Most of these experiments can be performed easily at home or at school. That said, you will need to find out if you have to get approval from your teacher or from an institutional review board before getting started.

The following are some questions you could attempt to answer as part of a psychological experiment:

• Are people really able to "feel like someone is watching" them? Have some participants sit alone in a room and have them note when they feel as if they are being watched. Then, see how those results line up to your own record of when participants were actually being observed.
• Can certain colors improve learning? You may have heard teachers or students claim that printing text on green paper helps students read better, or that yellow paper helps students perform better on math exams. Design an experiment to see whether using a specific color of paper helps improve students' scores on math exams.
• Can color cause physiological reactions? Perform an experiment to determine whether certain colors cause a participant's blood pressure to rise or fall.
• Can different types of music lead to different physiological responses? Measure the heart rates of participants in response to various types of music to see if there is a difference.
• Can smelling one thing while tasting another impact a person's ability to detect what the food really is? Have participants engage in a blind taste test where the smell and the food they eat are mismatched. Ask the participants to identify the food they are trying and note how accurate their guesses are.
• Could a person's taste in music offer hints about their personality? Previous research has suggested that people who prefer certain styles of music tend to exhibit similar personality traits. Administer a personality assessment and survey participants about their musical preferences and examine your results.
• Do action films cause people to eat more popcorn and candy during a movie? Have one group of participants watch an action movie, and another group watch a slow-paced drama. Compare how much popcorn is consumed by each group.
• Do colors really impact moods? Investigate to see if the color blue makes people feel calm, or if the color red leaves them feeling agitated.
• Do creative people see optical illusions differently than more analytical people? Have participants complete an assessment to measure their level of creative thinking. Then ask participants to look at optical illusions and note what they perceive.
• Do people rate individuals with perfectly symmetrical faces as more beautiful than those with asymmetrical faces? Create sample cards with both symmetrical and asymmetrical faces and ask participants to rate the attractiveness of each picture.
• Do people who use social media exhibit signs of addiction? Have participants complete an assessment of their social media habits, then have them complete an addiction questionnaire.
• Does eating breakfast help students do better in school? According to some, eating breakfast can have a beneficial influence on school performance. For your experiment, you could compare the test scores of students who ate breakfast to those who did not.
• Does sex influence short-term memory? You could arrange an experiment that tests whether men or women are better at remembering specific types of information.
• How likely are people to conform in groups? Try this experiment to see what percentage of people are likely to conform. Enlist confederates to give the wrong response to a math problem and then see if the participants defy or conform to the rest of the group.
• How much information can people store in short-term memory? Have participants study a word list and then test their memory. Try different versions of the experiment to see which memorization strategies, like chunking or mnemonics, are most effective.

Once you have an idea, the next step is to learn more about how to conduct a psychology experiment.

Psychology Experiments on Your Interests

If none of the ideas in the list above grabbed your attention, there are other ways to find inspiration for your psychology experiments.

You can also think about the things that interest you. Start by considering the topics you've studied in class thus far that have really piqued your interest. Then, whittle the list down to two or three major areas within psychology that seem to interest you the most.

From there, make a list of questions you have related to the topic. Any of these questions could potentially serve as an experiment idea.

Use Textbooks for Inspiration for Psychology Experiments

Your psychology textbooks are another excellent source you can turn to for experiment ideas. Choose the chapters or sections that you find particularly interesting—perhaps it's a chapter on social psychology or a section on child development.

Start by browsing the experiments discussed in your book. Then think of how you could devise an experiment related to some of the questions your text asks. The reference section at the back of your textbook can also serve as a great source for additional reference material.

Discuss Psychology Experiments with Other Students

It can be helpful to brainstorm with your classmates to gather outside ideas and perspectives. Get together with a group of students and make a list of interesting ideas, subjects, or questions you have.

The information from your brainstorming session can serve as a basis for your experiment topic. It's also a great way to get feedback on your own ideas and to determine if they are worth exploring in greater depth.

Study Classic Psychology Experiments

Taking a closer look at a classic psychology experiment can be an excellent way to trigger some unique and thoughtful ideas of your own. To start, you could try conducting your own version of a famous experiment or even updating a classic experiment to assess a slightly different question.

You might not be able to replicate an experiment exactly (lots of classic psychology experiments have ethical issues that would preclude conducting them today), but you can use well-known studies as a basis for inspiration.

Review the Literature on Psychology Experiments

If you have a general idea about what topic you'd like to experiment, you might want to spend a little time doing a brief literature review before you start designing. In other words, do your homework before you invest too much time on an idea.

Visit your university library and find some of the best books and articles that cover the particular topic you are interested in. What research has already been done in this area? Are there any major questions that still need to be answered? What were the findings of previous psychology experiments?

Ask Your Instructor About Ideas for Psychology Experiments

If you have made a good effort to come up with an idea on your own but you're still feeling stumped, it might help to talk to your instructor. Ask for pointers on finding a good experiment topic for the specific assignment. You can also ask them to suggest some other ways you could generate ideas or inspiration.

While it can feel intimidating to ask for help, your instructor should be more than happy to provide some guidance. Plus, they might offer insights that you wouldn't have gathered on your own. Your instructor probably has lots of ideas for psychology experiments that would be worth exploring.