Your research proposal should feature the following elements: Cover sheet, Abstract, Introduction, Method, Analysis strategy, References and Appendices (if appropriate).The length of your research proposal will depend on your decision for your project (e.g., the complexity of your research question, design or measures), so there is no strict rule about word count here. Your proposal can be between
around1,500 and 1,800 words with most research proposal being somewhere around 1,700 words. This word count does not include the abstract, the references, and cover sheet.
Research Methods in Psychology Research Proposal Overview The goal of the lab sessions is to develop your own research plan and submit a research proposal. You will be given a general, broadly defined research topic, along with some specific examples. You will be asked to find your own research question that is related to the topic, and come up with a research design to address your research question. You do not carry out the actual data collection or data analysis, so you can be as creative as you can be. You can also assume that you have technicians to help you develop necessary apparatuses or computer programming, so do not worry about access to specialist equipment. However, you must know exactly what you need from your technicians and describe it in detail, which would mean that you must understand the research method that you propose. You must also propose a data analysis that you can understand, rather than an analysis that you read from somewhere but do not actually know what it means. You may choose one of the statistical analyses that you have learned in PS115 (e.g., t-tests, correlation, simple linear regression) and one that is most appropriate to test your hypotheses. Research Topic Prejudice can be defined as "antipathy based on a faulty or inflexible generalization" (Allport, 1954). Prejudice can lead to discrimination. That is behaviour which disadvantages people with certain (assumed) characteristics. It is therefore important to measure and reduce prejudice. However, this is not easy since people often either deny that they are prejudiced or are sometimes even unaware that they are. Luckily, researchers have identified several ways to reduce prejudice. One prominent example is the so-called contact hypothesis which states that contact with members of disliked outgroups can reduce prejudice under certain conditions. Virtual reality allows researchers to create immersive and reactive experiences where people interact and move freely, within a tightly controlled and very much staged environment. Using these created environments allows researchers to create scenarios that mirror the real world and thus increase the study’s external validity. Within virtual reality, the researcher can record every aspect of how the user acts and responds. This provides an excellent platform to evaluate those unconscious behaviours that are difficult to measure through standard self-response measures – and even change them. Virtual reality has shown great potential in achieving positive changes to empathy, understanding attitudes, intentions and behaviour. Herrera et al., (2018) assessed the effect of a VR perspective taking experience on attitudes towards homelessness, in comparison with traditional and desktop-computer based perspective tasks. They showed VR to have a long term effect on attitude and empathy, and increased engagement with a petition in support of the homeless. Kishore et al., (2021) evaluated the effectiveness of VR embodiment in enhancing helping behaviour of toward victims of police racial aggression. Participants from the New York police department experienced a police interview which contained racial abuse towards the suspect, from the perspective of either the suspect or of an observers. Several weeks later, those who had experienced the racial abuse from the first-person perspective behaved more helpfully towards the victim of racially-motivated aggression in a follow-up VR experience. This study showed the power of a first-person VR experience to have long-lasting effects on interventions to tackle acts of racist aggression. Your research should address a research question about Prejudice and Unconscious Biases using a virtual reality based scenario. Assume that your environment can be designed by the technicians, however you may choose to draw a storyboard. You may also choose to include other surveys or biographical questionnaires. Our feelings and views towards other people, whether we are consciously aware of them or not, can influence our behaviour towards them (Devine, 1989; Greenwald & Banaji, 1995). If our feelings and views are shaped by some (exaggerated) stereotypes or biased assumptions, they become problematic. Such (implicit) biases can result in discrimination against people, simply because of their sexual, religious, or political orientation, their gender, or their ethnicity, for example. It is therefore desirable to change implicit biases. However, before we can reduce implicit biases, we first need to be able to measure them, otherwise we do not know whether our interventions were successful. Explicit measures of biases usually openly ask about people’s feelings, views, or attitudes towards groups of people such as black or white people. In contrast, implicit measures are more subtle and thought to be less influenced by social desirability. One very prominent example it the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald et al., 1998). The IAT can be used to measure implicit biases against groups of people (e.g., people with a darker skin), specific people (e.g., Donald Trump), or even objects (e.g., money, guns). The IAT measures, very simply put, how fast we associate, for example, pictures of black people with positive words (e.g., good, nice) compared to negatives words (e.g., bad, evil). Associating negatives words more quickly with pictures of black people relative to positive words is usually interpreted as being biased against black people. While the IAT has been criticised on many levels (Fiedler et al., 2006; Schimmack, 2021), it is still often used to measure implicit biases. It is recommended that both explicit and implicit measures of prejudice or biases are used together (Schimmack, 2021). Now that we know more about measuring prejudice and implicit biases, let us move on to discussing ways how they can be reduced. Many studies attempted to reduce prejudice by bringing people from (polarised) groups together (e.g., Israelis and Palestinians). In line with Allport’s (1954) contact hypothesis, contact is more effective if groups work on a common goal, have equal status, must work collaboratively, and are supported by authorities or the law (cf. Pettigrew & Troops, 2006). The effects of contacts can be longer lasting (Pettigrew & Troops, 2006). Importantly, even thinking about contact with another group can lead to reduced prejudice, even though the effect is substantially smaller compared to actual contact (Crisp & Turner, 2009; Klein et al., 2014). In contrast, interventions to reduce implicit biases are less often successful, with no intervention having an effect after a few days anymore on participants’ IAT scores (Lai et al., 2014, 2016). This is not very surprising since these interventions are typically just brief “one shot” interventions, meaning that participants are exposed to them only shortly and once (see Lai et al., 2014, 2016 for examples). It could have also been, however, that they were not engaging enough: Completing tasks on a computer screen is less engaging for most as being in actual contact. A middle way offers virtual reality. Indeed, some more recent recent found that with the help of virtual reality, implicit biases could be sustainably reduced (Banakou et al., 2016). Of course, these are only a few examples, and there are many more questions that psychologists have asked in the past. What questions sound most interesting to you? If there are any, carry out literature search and find out how psychologists have researched on them. Is there any question that has been left unanswered? What kind of research design can you come up with to answer the question? If you have a good idea, write that in your research proposal! What do we do in the lab session? Probably, not everyone could come up with a research question for themselves so easily. To guide you through the process of writing a research proposal, we have five lab sessions, in each of which you will be given a set of objectives that should eventually lead you to a complete research proposal. The timetable for the lab sessions are shown below. You will have a lab session every the other week, which you are expected to attend. In case you have missed any lab session, you are expected to catch up for yourself before the next session (sorry, we cannot have an individual tutor session). Submitting Your Research Proposal What should be included in the research proposal? The proposal should include (1) cover sheet (title page), (2) abstract, (3) introduction, (4) method section, (5) analysis strategy, (6) references, and (7) appendices. Because this is only a proposal, you don’t need the Results section or the Discussion section. You can also include 1 or 2 figures or tables if they are necessary to describe the proposed method. Figures and tables should be included within the main text where you refer to them, with appropriate figure captions/table titles in the APA format. You are also required to complete the pre-registration form to outline your research plan and attach a completed form to your research proposal as an appendix. You will find a template for a research proposal that includes the cover sheet and pre-registration form in Moodle. The word limit of the proposal is 1900 words, including the Introduction, Method, and Analysis strategy (excluding the title, abstract, references, appendices, and figures/tables). There is no specific word limit in each of the sections. How will the proposal be assessed? Your research proposal will be assessed based on the quality of the proposal rather than the kind of research question. You should provide well-reasoned justifications of a particular method you choose, clear descriptions of your hypotheses, and specific statistical techniques to test the hypotheses. You should also demonstrate your insights into the topic in the Introduction so that you can discuss the relevant background of your research. The research proposal is worth 50% of your coursework mark (i.e., 30% of the overall mark for the module). The sections of your research proposal will be marked separately according to a set of criteria. The sections that are marked include: Abstract, Introduction, Method, Analysis strategy, Pre-registration form (Appendix), and the overall quality (language, APA format, etc.). These sections will be marked according to the following criteria: Abstract: - Provide a brief context and aim of the study - Design and measures used - Description of (anticipated) results - Main conclusion/implications of the study Introduction: - Pose a clear research question - Relevant background information (key concepts, theory, etc.) -