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Middle School, Experiment in Psychology Science Projects (31 results)

Explore the psychology of human behavior, why people act the way they do, or cognition, how people learn. Observe volunteers in experiments, collect data about your own senses, or conduct a survey.

Simple Lie Detector Test
Science Fair Project Idea
Scientific Method
Have you ever watched a great sports player and imitated his or her moves over and over again? Or have you ever felt really bad when someone got hurt or things just weren't going his or her way? If so, you might be surprised to learn that you have been practicing skills closely tied to lying! In this science fair project, you'll discover how your brain gets a workout when it moves from truth-telling to lying, and how you can detect the shift. That's no lie! Read more
What Conflicting Mental Tasks Reveal About Thinking: The Stroop Effect
Science Fair Project Idea
Scientific Method
Can you pat your head with one hand while you rub your stomach with the other? This science project idea is kind of like doing that, but this project 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. Read more
Testing the Accuracy of Eyewitness Testimony
Science Fair Project Idea
Scientific Method
Think back to the last time you went to the grocery store. How well can you describe the person who was ahead of you in the check-out line? How many details do you remember about the person? How accurate do you think your memory is? Here is a project to investigate the accuracy of people's observations during everyday life. Read more
Are Composite Faces More Attractive than Real Faces?
Science Fair Project Idea
Scientific Method
Psychologists have long studied why people find certain faces more attractive than others. One interesting method used in this area of research is mixing several faces together to make a composite face. The composite face averages the input faces, so that small, non-symmetric features tend to get lost. In this human behavior science project, you will use an online tool to make composite faces, and determine how they compare to real faces in perceived attractiveness. Read more
Shaping Your Thoughts?
Science Fair Project Idea
Scientific Method
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… Read more
Memory Mnemonics
Science Fair Project Idea
Scientific Method
Have you ever had to remember a long list of planets or the state capitals? These kinds of lists are full of interesting facts, but they can be hard to remember, especially for tests. What could you do to remember the list better? In this human behavior science fair project, you will learn about a memory technique called mnemonics (pronounced nuh-MAH-nicks) and investigate whether using mnemonics can help you and your friends remember lists of words. Read more
Do You Hear What You See?
Science Fair Project Idea
Scientific Method
Have you ever wondered how virtual reality works? With virtual reality, people feel like they are in one place while knowing they are somewhere else. In this project, you will show the same phenomenon on a smaller scale. You will use the McGurk effect to show how you can hear one sound, while knowing a different sound is physically there. First, you will produce such an experience using audio and video, and then measure the strength of the phenomenon. Read more
Multitasking: Brain Drain or Boost in Efficiency?
Science Fair Project Idea
Scientific Method
Think it's a good idea to plug into iTunes, surf the Web, or watch TV while doing homework or trying to read? Lots of people do it and claim that jumping from one activity to another keeps their attention level up and even gives their brain some time to "relax" between the more challenging tasks. Just how efficient is multitasking? In this project, you'll find out after testing the ability of volunteers to successfully do two or more things at once. Read more
Warped Words and the Stroop Effect
Science Fair Project Idea
Scientific Method
The Stroop effect describes an experiment about the time it takes to name the color of printed words. When you try to name the color in which color words are printed, it takes longer when the color word differs from the ink color than when the color word is the same as the ink color. This project is an interesting variation: what happens if you 'warp' the words into a curved shape that is harder to recognize as a word? Will the Stroop effect still happen? How 'warped' do the words have to be in… Read more
That's a Real Smile! ...or is it?
Science Fair Project Idea
Scientific Method
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! Read more
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