Help Samantha Find a Thesis Topic

I'm starting my honors thesis in the Spring. I will be conducting my thesis through the USF Psychology Honors Program which means that my thesis will be empirical in design. My interest is Social Psychology ("discipline that uses scientific methods to understand and explain how the thought, feeling and behavior of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined or implied presence of other human beings"). Any ideas? What would you all do?


I was considering doing my thesis on the effect of metacognition training on performance, but now it sounds kind of boring. I'm looking for something cooler. So post your crazy ideas here!

metacognition is very large word.

I would reccomend starting it off by watching all the episodes to date of The Mentalist. Wonderful show about a police adviser that uses pshycology to solve crimes. And its funny. Best show i've seen since the Cosby Show!

Um perhaps something along the line of: what effect do movies such as finding nemo, Winters Tale (or is it A dolphins tale?), Free Willy, etc. REALLY have on people's outlook of animals in popular culture verses the effect most people think of?

Just an idea.. or you could go read some Plato, Socraetes and Yogi Berra to get some ideas(:

Thanks, Eric! I've never seen the Mentalist. I might give it a try.

Any other suggestions?

Samantha, I know you don't feel like it's very interesting, but I do think your original idea would be good (and helpful!). I assume this is something you must actually study, so keep in mind your participants. This semester we had a lot of students doing experiments that required people who worked 20 hours a week to test stress- and were having such a hard time getting people to participate. You want something people will sign up for

Very true, Ashley. What study were you working on? Are you part of a lab?

Tv shows are wonderful for procastinating!


whats the topic of your thesis have to be on? just anything in phsycology?

Anything in social psychology. It's a wide realm...

1) I loved the Mentalist. I used to watch it all the time until school got too busy. Maybe I can catch up on last season this break...

2) I think the 'implied' presence of other humans is an interesting concept. It's like when I'm alone in my room but I still keep my music low if I think my roommates are in the apartment, but blast it during breaks cause NO ONE'S HEEERRREEE!! I like being considerate though...

I like the idea of the 'implied' presence as well. Social psychology in general is very interesting, which is why narrowing down a thesis is so hard for me.

Implied presence is good. there was a study done where people doing an honor system in a cafeteria (over coffee) either had photos of eyes in the room, or photos of flowers. despite lack of actual people in the room, people were more likely to pitch in for the coffee if they had photos of human eyes!

you could do a study to see if people acted differently if they thought people were listening in on their conversations or something. such as, if a male if paired with a male, will he act differently when a female enters the room? (I'm sure he will, and vice versa with females, but it's still fun to mess with people's heads )

As for me, I was not in a lab.. I just talk to everyone, ever.. lol.

Very cool. I've heard of something along that line before... Definitely a consideration.