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The annual Psychology fair for AP Psychology classes was held on March 24 in the WJ cafeteria during periods one through four. The Pitch staff talked to students about their projects documenting social behaviors.
Editorial editor Alexandra Sanfuentes talked to juniors Yash Singh, Sharon Park and Claire Popovich about their musically influenced experiment.
Where did you get your idea for your project?
Claire: I've always liked music and I always wanted to see the extent that it affected our emotions. I usually get very emotionally involved with a song and I wanted to see how it affects other people and also expand it to see how it influences our decisions.
Did it take you a while to come up with the concept? How come?
Claire: I knew I wanted to do [something on] music all along so I was trying to think of how I could incorporate music into my psych fair project.
Was it difficult to execute? Why?
Claire: Not really. We just had surveys which had responses that correspond with emotion. We went to classes, played music and had them answer questions so it was a very convenient sample and it wasn't very difficult.
At what lengths did you have to go to get your information?
Claire: We had to make surveys [and] consent forms. We had to write a proposal. There are so many different aspects to get to this final result.
What music did you play?
Claire: We played Mika's "We Are Golden" and that was for happy music. "Eye of the Tiger" by Survivor, also kind of happy, exciting music. Brian Eno's "By this River" for sad kind of depressing music. And Henry Cowell's "Banshee" where he plucks the strings of a piano to get a very eerie effect.
How much time did you spend working on this project?
Claire: I would say over 12 hours.
Yash: We each spent a whole day and about three to four class periods doing surveys. Each of us had about three to four classes that we went to to give out surveys and about five to seven minutes of having them answer the surveys.
Claire: Not to mention the proposals so we spent a good amount of time doing this.
Did your experiment turn out as you wanted it to?
Result wise, no. We had more neutral responses than responses that corresponded with what we hypothesized which was that 50 percent or more would change their answers. We can't really be disappointed because neutral results kind of can be interpreted differently. If we changed our survey to be more of a happy medium between happy/sad we could probably see how much.
What would you do differently if you could do this project again?
Claire: I would change the survey.
Yash: We would change the survey and put it in different scenarios. We could have different music, sad music, happy music, to attract people to a project which is one way that industrial psychology is used.
Claire: I think it would also be cool if we could do this again with a video in the background being played and seeing how music influences how people perceive the video.
Are you satisfied overall with the work you've done? Why?
Sharon: Yes, because we found that 25 percent of our data was significant. Originally our hypothesis was that we would hope for 50 percent to be accurate. But we were satisfied that we at least got 25 percent.
Claire: I think in general we were just satisfied that we got it done and that it looks good. We got a good response.
Print staff writer Cameron Keyani spoke to sophomore Marcela De Campos about her project on peer pressure.
What is your project?
My project is an experiment on the effects of conformity and peer pressure. We gave students a quiz and we gave some groups the option of confering
Why did you decide to do this experiment?
We were inspired by the psychologist Abraham Maslow for our experiment.
What do you think your experiment proved?
I think it showed the strength of peer pressure and group mentality
How did your experiment differ from the others?
They are all diferent ours just had a bigger control group
Did you have any (other) inspirations?
I think we were inspired also by experiment like the Stanford Prison experiment
Print Feature editor Camilla Yanushevsky and Krithi Ramaswamy interviewed senior Merissa Personette on her project about different soft drinks.
What is your project about?
My project is about telling the difference between Pepsi, Rally Cola, and Coco Cola.
Why did you choose this project?
People always tell me that soda preference doesn't matter, when I've always been a Coke girl, so it matters to me.
What did you learn?
I learned that females much more accurately can tell the difference between the sodas.
Was your initial hypothesis correct?
No, we thought that people would most accurately tell the difference when only 20 out of 40 could tell the difference between one of the three. 13 out of 40 cannot tell the difference between any. And only 7 out of 40 could tell the difference between all of them.
How long did the project take you guys?
The surveys took only a week because we got used classes. Overall, it took about three weeks.
Did you enjoy the project?
Yes, but I wish the data could have been more conclusive.
Print editor in chieft Luke Wilson spoke to junior Maria Moersen on her project that identified a correlation between leadership and sports.
What was your experiment?
Our experiment was does age play a role in leadership ability. [It explored] if upperclassmen [are] better leaders than others.
Why did you decide to do this project?
[Our whole group] is on sports teams, so we wanted to know if the older athletes were better leaders than we were.
What did you do?
We had upperclassmen walk the long way around the field and see if the underclassmen would follow them. We found that upperclassmen had a higher influence on the underclassmen.
Print layout editor Parker Smith spoke to junior Suzy Dolan on her project on egos and sports.
What do you like about the psych fair?
I really like seeing it all come together. You are given a lot of freedom to choose a topic that interests you. We all put a lot of work in to it and it's really satisfying to see everything come together.
What inspired you to do this project? [About egos in sports]
I am an athlete and I'm really interested in the personalities that go along with a lot of other athletes.
What kind of preparation did you do for this project?
There were a lot of different stages. Our project was a research project so, instead of testing and experimenting, we had to research the topic of narcissism in sports.
What were your results?
We found that jocks are more narcissistic than others.
What was your psych fair experience like?
It was kind of stressful towards the end, but it was really rewarding in the end to see it all come together.
Print Arts & Entertainment editor Sophie Meade spoke to junior Matt Krug about his project about religion and morality
What is the premise of your project? Describe it as best you can.
I was testing how religious affiliation correlates with ‘helping behavior' in everyday life.
How did you go about this project?
I surveyed 80 people in the D.C./Maryland district and compiled the results in data.
What was your general outcome?
There are definitely strong differences in the behavior between religious and irreligious groups.
Were any specific results especially surprising?
Religious people were actually less likely to cheat. Irreligious people were more likely to give money to the homeless.
What caused you to choose this specific project?
I feel like religious behavior and helping behavior are often linked together, with Christianity in particular. Sometimes atheists get a reputation for not caring about the world as much.
Were there any crazy obstacles you ran into in the production of your project?
There were a couple people who practically wrote and essay on the survey. . . And I was like ‘I'm not asking for your life story, I was just asking for your answers.'
Do you have any advice for students who may participate in the psych fair in the future?
Get all your stuff done early. Deadlines fly by faster than the wind.
Sports editor Zach Gordon spoke to seniors Robert Hurwitz and Andrew Tollefson on their project about music.
What was your motivation in choosing this project?
RH: Since we are swimmers, we were curious to see if music affected our heart rate to get us pumped up for races.
What were your results?
AT: Well, after testing, we concluded that the genres of rap, rock, and techno seemed to increase the heart rate whereas classical and smooth music tended to decrease it.
Were you surprised at all by your results?
RH: Not really. Before races, we warm up to rap and rock music.
How do you think people can apply this experiment to their lives?
AT: It can be used in science and medical fields.
RH: Besides getting pumped up for sports, we think that listening to classical music may help people with high blood pressure, and vice versa with rap and rock music. |
