Psych Study!

I participated in a psych study that involved filling out questionnaires about conflict scenarios involving a friend. I was given three packets containing scenarios involving "my friend" and was asked whether or not I felt the scenario was uncomfortable/wrong and how I would deal with each case, whether or not what was described would affect our friendship, and how it made me feel. After answering these questions about each of the scenarios I was "interviewed" by the study person and asked to verbally explain why I answered what I answered on the survey. Some of the scenarios were not very problematic. These were ones like helping out my friend with his/her homework. Others were more difficult, like one asking me what I would do if my friend and I had a crush on the same person. Because the study asked me (besides determining whether or not it would complicate our friendship or not) how I would deal with the situation, I thought that perhaps what it was trying to get at was how certain individuals respond to different social situations involving a friend, and perhaps the researchers were trying to map personality to action in relationship to this social scenario. I thought it was a cool study and was glad I got a chance to be a part of it.

I think it would have been very interesting to have participants do the same study (read the same scenarios) and see how their brains look in an fMRI. It would be interesting to make this purely psychology study more neuroscience-related.



-Alice Huang