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Psychology research
Psychology attempts to explain how external and internal factors influence behavior. If you’ve got an inquisitive mind, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to look for answers while a student at Northwestern.
Professors Edman and Feenstra have teams of psychology majors working with them on research projects. Dr. Edman and his students are studying two subjects: The development and measurement of critical thinking, and emotional intelligence and its relationship to other life outcomes and abilities. Dr. Feenstra and her students are researching why people volunteer and how volunteering changes them.
Students participate in generating hypotheses, designing studies to test hypotheses, and gathering and analyzing data. It’s not unusual for Northwestern psychology majors to be the co-authors of papers and to make presentations at the national conferences of the American Psychological Society and the American Psychological Association.
In addition to opportunities to conduct research with faculty, every psychology major completes a senior research thesis. In some cases, the thesis is related to one of the team research projects, but there’s also the option of working on your own interest area. Recent senior theses have included the following:
- Matt Schuring researched the role of personality in music preference;
- Ethanie Wallinga examined the effect of gender, fit and personality on classroom participation;
- Andrea Price did a social comparison of metro and non-metro populations related to income and life satisfaction;
- John Ranney studied what effect time spent in college had on conformity; and
- Lindsey Nuehring explored the link between general intellectual ability and the likelihood of false memory.
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