Psychology

Topics in Cognitive Psychology

1. How do people learn a new language? Is it different for adults and kids?
2. What helps a memory stick? What helps us remember things better?
3. What makes memories become more accurate or inaccurate? What does this mean for eyewitness testimonies?
4. Why are we so good at seeing “faces” from objects, like an outlet or a smiley face [ 🙂 ]? Does this have an evolutionary reason?
5. Carrying a heavier backpack can make a hill look bigger. What are some other ways in which things change our perception?
6. What affects our attention, and what distracts us? How do we select what we pay attention to?
7. How do other people affect how we think? How do opinions of others change our own opinions?
8. Why are we so captivated by surprising and unexpected things, like magic? Does this have an evolutionary reason?
9. How do optical illusions work? How do they trick our brains?
10. What happens in our brain when we make predictions that turn out to be wrong? How does this experience help us learn?
11. We’re really good at hearing our name, even if it’s said by someone standing really far away in a loud room. Why does this happen?
12. Are babies’ brains as good as adults’ brains? In what way?
13. What do babies do to learn? Are they good learners?
14. Can newborn babies tell their mothers apart from other people? In what way?
15. A lot of toys are marketed to be good for the brain. Is this true? Which toys? Why or why not?
16. What is our brain doing when we form memories and remember things from the past?
17. What is our brain doing when we see numbers and do math?
18. What is our brain doing when we see alphabets and read a sentence?
19. What is our brain doing when we’re not paying attention in class?
20. How does the brain change when we learn a new skill and become better at it?
21. What factors lead to differences in intelligence? Is IQ a good measure of how intelligent someone is?
22. What makes different education styles work better than others? What does it mean to be a certain type of learner?
23. What are the differences between short and long-term memory? How do attention and memory interact?
24. What role does memory play in eating behaviors? Can we use memories to help us lose weight?
25. What are the barriers to access to mental health services between different racial and ethnic groups?
26. Are there differences in how mental illness is perceived between different racial and ethnic groups?
27. Are there differences in perception of mental illness between men and women, and does this have long-term consequences?

Topics in Clinical Psychology

1. Uncertainty is a core feature of our everyday lives, especially during current times. How do humans respond to uncertainty? How does it affect our cognition, emotions, and behavior?
2. How does the psychological trait of intolerance of uncertainty increase risk for anxiety disorders?
3. Does it make sense to think of mental disorders as discrete categories or as dimensions that we all vary on?
4. How do cognitive factors like attention, memory, and interpretation contribute to depression?
5. What is the difference between fear and anxiety?
6. How do we regulate our emotions? How does emotion regulation go awry in psychopathology?
7. Is worry adaptive?
8. Rumination refers to repetitive negative thoughts about the past, and worry refers to repetitive negative thoughts about the future. Are these two processes fundamentally the same or different?
9. Why are we not better at treating mental disorders?
10. Does it make more sense to call mental disorders (e.g., depression) a “brain disease”? Why or why not?
11. What are the “active ingredients” in psychotherapies for emotional disorders? How do we know that these are really the mechanisms of change?
12. What is depression, exactly? Is it one syndrome, or is it a collection of different syndromes that we’ve grouped under the same name?
13. Are today’s youth really more anxious and depressed than youth in the past? If so, what is contributing to this increase?
14. What do we know—and what do we not know—about treatments for emotional disorders?
15. How do scientists study treatments for mental health problems? What are empirically supported treatments, why are they useful, and what are their limitations?
16. How can mental health treatments be delivered? What are the advantages and disadvantages of certain delivery formats?
17. How can we increase access to mental health treatments?
18. Are apps and internet programs effective treatments for common mental health problems?
19. How have treatments been adapted for people in low- and middle-income countries? What strategies are used to ensure that treatments are effective and culturally appropriate?
20. What is the research-implementation gap? How long does it take for research evidence to reach clinical practice?

Topics in Pathology and Data Science

1. The network theory of mental disorders states that mental disorders do not have a single underlying cause but instead are the result of feedback loops in a complex system. How does this theory apply to depression? Anxiety? Trauma? Other psychological problems?
2. Why do mental disorders co-occur at such high rates? How can network analysis inform the comorbidity between them?
3. How can novel developments in data science (e.g., machine learning methods) contribute to the field of clinical psychology?
4. What can we learn from exploratory data analysis of mental disorder symptoms? What kinds of psychometric data analyses and visualizations are most helpful?
5. Why are rates of emotional disorders often observed to be more common in developed nations compared to less developed nations?
6. One hallmark of anxiety disorders is avoidance. What factors lead people to avoid versus approach their fears?
7. Rates of violence across the world have been steadily decreasing. If this is indeed the case, why are rates of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) stagnant or even increasing?
8. To what extent do mental disorders represent a “mismatch” between the modern world and our environment during evolution? What factors of modernity might influence mental illness?
9. Why do some individuals with PTSD seem to compulsively revisit their traumatic past? How does this square with research on avoidance?
10. Are trigger warnings or safe spaces effective approaches to helping those with PTSD? Why or why not?
11. Today, phones and devices capture a huge amount of data about individuals (e.g., location, movement, texts, phone calls, app usage). Can this data be used for good when it comes to mental health? How?
12. Can people really experience “post-traumatic growth” after a trauma? If so, what does this growth look like?
13. What is idiographic science? How can we study one person at a time?
14. Can we personalize psychotherapy interventions for each person?
15. How can data science help us predict substance use for each person?
16. Can a single survey item capture enough information, or do we always need multiple items?
17. How much can we generalize from group-level research?
18. How can we best capture fluctuations in people’s emotions? What are affective dynamics?

Topics in Psychology and Law

1. For cases in which juvenile offenders are transferred to adult court, do jurors take their developmental vulnerabilities into account when they make decisions about them?
2. Mistaken identification is the leading cause of wrongful conviction. What procedural best practices can make eyewitness evidence more reliable? How can social psychological theory inform these practices?
3. Do the demographics of the people selected as jury members affect their ultimate verdict decisions?
4. What strategies can help jurors better understand complex evidence in the courtroom?
5. Most all criminal cases are adjudicated through plea negotiation. How can social psychological theory help attorneys better advise their clients?
6. Racial disparities in the criminal justice system are well documented and widespread. How can we lessen racial bias in policing, prison populations, and participation on juries?
7. Why do people make false confessions? What aspects of police interrogations might increase the rate of false confession?
8. Why do innocent people plead guilty? What components of plea bargaining increase the odds an innocent person will plead guilty?
9. How do the racial characteristics of a criminal case impact jurors’ decision-making?
10. How do robust social cognitive processes, such as stereotyping, affect jurors’ perceptions and decision-making in civil and criminal cases?
11. What is criminal profiling, and does it resemble the crime shows on TV? What does the science say about criminal profiling? How is it practiced by law enforcement agencies, and does it work?
12. Jurors are often presented with a lot of complex information presented in a disorganized fashion. How do jurors make sense of the evidence and render their decisions?
13. How do jurors’ emotions impact their decision-making?
14. How does pre-trial publicity impact jurors’ decision-making?
15. What is ‘juror rehabilitation’? Can it successfully reduce jurors’ biases?
16. Jurors are constitutionally required to be impartial at the outset of a trial, but are they? How effective are legal system safeguards (e.g., voir dire and jury selection) at removing biases? What about implicit biases?

Additional Topics in Psychology

Is psychology really a science? Should we trust findings in psychology more or less than in other fields? What is the “replication crisis” in psychology?

Some researchers believe that most published findings in psychology (and some other disciplines) are false alarms and not reproducible. Why might they think that? Are they right?

How do psychologists use statistical information to infer the existence of invisible phenomena like psychological states or attributes? What are some of the major problems with the way psychologists use statistics?

What does it mean to falsify a finding in psychology? If Researcher A runs an experiment and gets result X, and you run the same experiment and don’t get that result, have you disproved their finding? Have you falsified their hypothesis or theory? Why does any of this matter?

What is the psychology of scientific communication—and belief? Do people just believe whatever scientific findings they agree with morally? Is belief in science politically polarized? What determines whether someone believes in climate science? Why do some people think vaccines are harmful?

What does it mean to be “the same person” over time? Are you the same person as you were when you were a baby? If so, in what sense? What factors influence the perception that someone is “a completely different person” after some big change in their life (like becoming addicted to drugs or undergoing a religious conversion)?

Does Alzheimer’s disease change who you are? If you sign a contract before the disease sets in, is it still valid if you lose most of your memories?

What is the relationship between moral intuitions and psychological traits or disorders? If someone is willing to sacrifice the life of one person in order to save a greater number of people, for example, could this have something to do with the trait of psychopathy?

How does relational context influence moral judgments? Why are some things okay to do in one kind of relationship but not okay in other relationships? What explains our moral intuitions about different actions? Is it all about causing harm, or are there other reasons for judging a behavior as wrong?

Where does our sense of right and wrong come from? Why do we judge some things to be morally okay and other things as NOT morally okay? When people from different cultures disagree about moral questions, does at least one of them have to be wrong?

Does believing in free will make you a more moral person? Does encouraging a belief in determinism make people more likely to be immoral (e.g., cheat on an exam)?

What is gender? Is it the same thing as sex? Are there more than two genders? Is your gender a matter of having certain feelings or psychological properties?

How does gender bias affect judgments about how much pain someone is in? Do stereotypes like ‘boys don’t cry’ affect how we perceive the pain of others?

Can your brain start processing visual information—for example, people’s faces—prior to conscious awareness? Is there such a thing as “unconscious perception”? How can you study the unconscious mind?

What is sexual orientation? What determines the sexual orientation a person has?

Is it possible to be addicted to love?

What is the reproducibility crisis in psychology? How can scientists work to make the field better?

What are emotions? What theories do psychologists and philosophers have for how our feelings—a cornerstone of human experience—function? What issues are there with our theories of emotions, and how can we improve them?

How do we best manage our emotions? What skills can people use to regulate what they’re feeling, and how can we make these skills most efficacious?

How do emotions change across age? When do children and adolescents start to have certain emotional experiences, and what does this mean for their well-being?

How does language relate to emotion? Do people of different cultures have different emotional experiences, and what does this mean about the mind? Can changing what words we use to talk about our feelings change how we feel?

How does language relate to mental health? Can we use linguistic methods in verbal communication to learn things about how well someone is doing psychologically? Can we develop tools to intervene when people aren’t doing well?

How does the brain represent and regulate emotions? What brain regions are involved in these processes, and can we connect deregulations in brain functioning to mental health problems?

How does the brain develop across childhood and adolescence, and what does this mean for the development of emotions, mental health, or social functioning?

It has long been the understanding of social psychologists that people do not intuitively use base-rate information when they make predictions. Is it possible to increase the relevancy of base-rate information? How?

Norm development is one of the most powerful vehicles for changing people’s behavior and beliefs. How do norms influence our behavior? How can they be developed?

What are the dimensions underlying our social perceptions of others? How do these relate to stereotypes of people and groups?

What causes stereotypes? Can stereotypes change? How do stereotypes impact a perceiver’s emotional and behavioral reactions? Can they affect a perceiver’s causal attributions for another behavior?