Department of Psychology
Research projects for Psychology Honours Students
On your application form, you are asked to list three areas/topics that would be of interest to you as your Honours Thesis project. Note that if you do not list three areas, it will be assumed that you are willing to do a project in any area of psychology. You may base your selection on a course or topic that interested you in your undergraduate years. You may also want to check out the interests of the psychology staff , and about the research interests of staff in the Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science (MACCS). The following areas or topics have been nominated by the staff as potential areas of Honours projects. (Note that not all areas listed will have supervisors available in any one year.)
Topics in Social Psychology and Personality, including
- non-verbal communication
- disgust
- close relationships
- emotions
- evolutionary psychology
- evolutionary psychology (mate choice)
- repression, suppression and forgetting
- self control and regulation
- social comparison processes
- stigmatisation
- hypnosis and personality
- forgiveness
- personality styles with limited empathy
- processes of emotional regulation
- attachment style
- interpersonal rejection
- aggressive behaviour
- personality styles linked with aggression
- schizotypal personality traits
- personality and creativity
- personality and culture
- achievement and success
Topics in Psychological Health, Pathology and Change, including
- anxiety, depression, sexual disorders and body image in both adults and young people
- mood disorders
- mechanisms of trauma/stress and anxiety disorders
- social anxiety
- obesity
- delusion proneness
- clinical psychology
- coping with illness
- influence of coping styles on health related behaviours
- coping and problem solving
- autism, Williams syndrome, Down syndrome
- alcohol problems in university students
- psychological correlates and outcomes of organic disease
- psychometric studies
- early maladaptive schemas
- responses to genetic risk information
- factors linked with genetic testing interest
- factors associated with illness prevention
- attitudes towards physical differences resulting from illness
- the role of anticipated affect in health behaviours
Topics in Cognitive Psychology, including
- repetition blindness
- attentional blink
- comprehending briefly presented stimuli
- attentional shifts
- priming (repetition priming, semantic priming, masked priming)
- reading and language in children and adults
- effects of non-speech training
- face processing in the brain
- links between music and language
- impairments of music and rhythm
- emotional effects of music
- reading and reading disorders
- social cognition and theory of mind
- the face as a signalling system
- complex human cognition and decision making
- cognitive foundations of religion
- synesthesia
- mindfulness
- attention training
- optimism
- autobiographical memory and collective memory
- hypnosis and cognitive illusions
- bilingualism
- subliminal perception
- perception and action
- human reasoning
- decision making
- word recognition and letter perception
- the use of gesture by children and adults
- concept learning by children and adults
Topics in Organisational Psychology, including
- training
- Organisational and management trust and personality
- Organisational culture
- leadership
- performance
- workplace creativity, innovation and problem-solving
- competency beliefs and early work experiences
- decision support systems
- communication
- Incivility
- Interpersonal Mistreatment in the Workplace
- Adjustment to Change at Work
- attitudes to older people at work
- Psychological resilience in the workplace and resilience training
- pro-social organisational dissent
- Occupational stress and situational appraisal
- Goal setting and action planning
Topics in Neuropsychology, including
- sports concussion
- assessment of deception
- divided attention and brain impairment
- language impairments
Topics in the applications of Learning, including
- self control and regulation
- driver distraction
- risk taking and driving
Topics in Perception, including
- Perception in general
- Visual Perception
- visual illusions and/or aftereffects
- motion perception
- 3-D vision
- perceptual learning
- olfaction
- applied perception
- human spatial memory
- Perception of Body Size/Shape
- Face Perception & Recognition
- Orientation perception
- Space perception
- Spatial vision
Topics in Developmental Psychology, including
- bullying and victimisation
- gender development
- moral development
- child sexual abuse
- child witnesses
- disclosure processes
- Psychological adjustment to pregnancy and early parenthood
- child bearing intentions and fertility issues
- parent-child relationships
- Infant and child development and behaviour: Infancy to five years
- the use of gesture by children and adults
- concept learning by children and adults
Measurement Issues in Psychology, including
- psychological assessment
- intelligence
Topics in Psychobiology, including
- eating and drinking
- animal models of addiction
- animal models of anxiety and memory disorders