That's a Real Smile! ...or is it?
If someone is smiling, it means they're happy, right? Well, not always. Sometimes people smile to be polite, or because they want to "appear" happy or friendly for social reasons. How easy is it to spot which smiles are genuine and which are fake? Try this science fair project to find out!
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Enjoy It Now... Or Enjoy It Later? Understanding Delayed Gratification
Have you ever thought to yourself, "I have got to have that new video game right now?" Or maybe there's a new shirt at the store that you just have to have. So you rush home, break into your bank, and gather all of your money, even though you have been saving to buy your mom a gift. But wait! Maybe if you do a few more chores and save for just a few more days, you can gather enough money to buy your mom a gift
and buy what you want. This behavior is called
delayed gratification and it's what this human behavior science fair project is all about. Learn more about delayed gratification and how rewards and attention affect the amount of delay.
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Are Childproof Containers Really Childproof?
Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night just not feeling well? Maybe your mom or dad gave you some medicine and you felt better after taking it. Medicine is a great tool in the fight against an illness, but medicine can be a poison if too much is taken. Similarly, household products can clean your home and make it smell great, but if eaten, can be poisonous. That is why most medicines and household products are stored in childproof containers. But are childproof containers really childproof? In this human behavior science fair project, you will investigate the effectiveness of childproof containers by seeing if children can defeat the safety mechanisms of different containers, and if they can easily learn how to open a childproof container.
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Pretty Packaging: Can Attractive Packaging Lead to Healthier Eating?
Have you ever bought or tried something new, just because of the way it looked, or the nice box that it came in? On your birthday, which present do you pick to open first? The one that looks big and colorful and exciting or the one that is wrapped in old tissue paper? The way that something is packaged and wrapped often advertises what is inside. But can attractive, exciting packaging convince you to try something that might not be very exciting, but is, perhaps, something that is good for you? In this human behavior science fair project you will investigate whether exciting packaging can convince children to eat healthier foods.
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Fear Factor: Using Pulse Rate to Measure Emotion
Oh, were you ever scared! Your heart pounded, your breath rate shot up, your palms got cold and clammy. Fear does that to us. Here's a science project based on roller coaster rides to see if heart rate is an accurate measurement of fear. Are you brave enough to take on this frightfully fun project?
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Motion After-Effects in Vision
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If you stare at a waterfall, or look at passing scenery from the window of a moving train, you will have a strange sensation when you turn your gaze to something stationary. You can investigate...
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The Brains Behind 'Where's Waldo?'
What makes you notice someone in a crowd? Why do some things stand out, while others melt into the background? In this experiment you can investigate the psychology of how things get noticed, by studying how our brains perform a visual search.
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Practice
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We've all heard that "practice makes perfect," but what is the best way to practice? For example, does "mental practice" do any good? You'll need at least 9 volunteers for this project. Pick a...
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What Conflicting Mental Tasks Reveal About Thinking: The Stroop Effect
Can you pat your head with one hand while you rub your stomach with the other? This experiment is kind of like that, but it can actually give you some insight into how your mind works. The task is to name colors. It sounds simple enough, but see what happens when color words get in the way.
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Shaping Your Thoughts?
This is an interesting experiment that explores certain aspects of how your brain pays attention. In this project, you'll have to recruit a bunch of volunteers to take a simple test: naming a list of printed shapes. What makes the test tricky is that words will be printed on top of the shapes. The word/shape combination creates the potential for the brain to get conflicting information. Which information is more likely to grab your attention: the shape you are supposed to name or the word just waiting to be read?
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Index of Human Behavior Project Ideas |
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