Behavioral and Social Sciences- Project Ideas for INTEL

[xxscienceresearchxx]

I'm heading into my second project application for the INTEL science competition (being a sophomore starting fall) and I really want to research something different, interesting, and relevant. My last project, due to a major crunch on time, wasn't the most exciting thing in the world. This year I want to make sure that the project I choose is something out of the box and will stick in people's minds. Of course another must is that it will impress the judges enough for a recognition higher than honorable mention (which was basically nothing, last year, since everybody that didn't place got that). Being in behavioral and social sciences, I also want to be able to get down to the statistics as much as I possibly can with the time frame given. So far I've come up with several ideas, but nothing has really popped out at me. Things like subliminal messaging, hypnosis, and similar areas that go beyond the conscious mind I find to be interesting. Unfortunately, I don't really know how to translate most of that into a project. I've also noticed that not too many people have involved the concept of shadows into research projects, and by shadows I mean the literal noun as a dark space caused by the sun and something blocking it (not some strange slang or whatever...). I have some more ideas but I'll just keep my first message this general and see what happens. Know that any ideas you, being whoever, have would be really appreciated and that whatever project I do would be a variation of someone's idea suggestion if that is what I end up doing. Also, if you feel as though you have a really good idea that doesn't exactly follow the direction of subconscious thought that I lean towards feel free to suggest it because I am really unsure with where I am going with everything so far anyways. Thank you!

-Delana

[MelissaB]

I think that you're on the right track. I'm not really familiar with INTEL, so I don't know what sort of behavioral/social science projects they have there. But, my feeling is that you should go with something that interests you--your enthusiasm for the project will shine through!

Shadows are an interesting topic. Probably the most obvious information they give us as human beings is the direction of the sun, which can be used to tell time and orient yourself if you have some idea of what time it is and where you are. They could potentially give this information to animals, too. Perhaps you could try some sort of orientation experiment with a honeybee or an ant colony, trying to determine what sort of information (if any) they extract from shadows?

Or are you thinking more that shadows can startle us, focus our attention or scare us?

I've seen a fair number of projects on subliminal messages, but I think if you did something like this really well, it would be nice. For hypnosis, I know that some people tend to be resistant to going under and some are not--perhaps you can investigate the qualities of people in either category? You would need a hypnotist, though.

[xxscienceresearchxx]

Thanks! I'll look into those ideas.

[xxscienceresearchxx]

In the area of shadows, I was thinking about doing something about how the intensity of shadows (like how apparant they are) or maybe where they are positioned in terms of the individual would affect their emotions. I want to go into business in university so doing something that has some sort of relevance to that would be helpful. I was thinking that maybe there would be certain positions that rooms would be in at certain tims of the day that would make things like business deals more or less likely to occur due to the shadows and how they affected the susceptibility of the person or people making the business deal (or in other situations as well). I realize, of course, that if I was doing this it would have to be at the same time of day so to manipulate shadows I would need artificial lighting and details planned with a mentor, probably. Here are some other ideas that I've had that I didn't post on the last comment:

- how to determine how someone is (their personality and stuff like that) based on observations such as movement and speech and stuff like that (but i think that might have already been done or like a version of it or something)
-how do shadows/shapes/psychics
-something about game theory (i dont know very much about game theory but the idea of it seems interesting)
-dreams vs. reality
-false memories (i dont know where i was going with this when i wrote it down but it sounds a bit fascinating and intruiging...)

So there are just some of my other ideas, I think they kind of ended up in order of how interesting they are to me (from top to bottom, least interesting to most -but the last two are a little bit of a tie-). Variations of experiments off of any of the things I've mentioned in this entire comment are welcome and I encourage going outside of the box as long as its possible for a high school student to accomplish the task. Thank you so much for your help!

[MelissaB]

Hi,

Given your interests, I think you should really try to make contact with someone in advertising. People in advertising, for example, know a great deal about shadows and colors and how they affect emotions--whereas I doubt there are many scientists working on these sorts of problems.

I think you also want to think about exactly what you want to measure. If I may make a suggestion, you could easily film videos with certain shadow conditions which you could then play to people and ask them questions about how the videos made them feel.

I think--although I'm not very familiar with it--that there's a great deal of research looking at estimating personality traits from even facial features, dress, actions, etc. That doesn't mean that you can't come up with a really unique science fair project on the topic, however. You just need to do a lot of background research to figure out what has already been done.

I'm sure you know this already, but you will need to get permission to do experiments with humans, even if you only do a survey with them--you might want to double-check the ISEF rules before you start.

[xxscienceresearchxx]

Thanks a lot! I think I might try to follow this shadow path since it seems to interest you the most and it is really different since not many people have thought about putting shadows to science. The only problem I can't think of any way to reserach my ideas because there is nothing on google or anything about it. I know that there are professionals I could talk to but I would want to have a meeting with my science research teacher before taking that step and it's summertime so he's not really at my disposal right now. Do you know any ways that I could reserach this through the internet or any links or websites that could help give me quick and thorough information on this new topic? Thanks a bunch!

[MelissaB]

I would suggest two things. First, try Google Scholar: http://scholar.google.com/ . I just put 'shadow' into it and found a number of papers on the use of shadows in computer graphics (among many unrelated items). I tried 'shadow and emotion' and found some really interesting links from the social sciences about, for example, the mythology of different cultures in relation to shadows.

Second, I would go visit your local university library. Explain to them what you are trying to do, and they can help you find information on your topic. They will be a lot more familiar with behavioral science sources than I am, so they should be able to point you in the right direction.

Good luck!

[xxscienceresearchxx]

Thank you so much! I did find some information on googlescholar.com so that was really helpful. Unfortunately, what I found was definately not enough for me to feel comfortable on the topic and ready to come up with an idea. I guess I'll have to go to a university and ask and maybe get some help from my teacher to find someone in advertisment. The closest university to me is UCLA so I'm hoping that they can help me there. So far you've been really helpful with getting me started on my project so thank you very much!!! I sent an email to my teacher asking about some of the things we've been talking about here too to get more ideas so hopefully I'm getting somewhere. Once again, thank you, and I'll let you know if I have any more questions! :]