Psychology students conduct social experiment
Share
Tweet
October 7, 2016
Psychology: the study of behavior. Can someone’s personality type be the deciding factor of whether one has mental disorders such as OCD?
Gene Olbert’s psychology students did an experiment testing just that. Students created a survey that was then passed around to multiple classrooms and faculty members in both the middle school and the high school, as well as Olbert’s Monday night psychology class at the college. The survey consisted of two different tests, the first determining one’s personality type, and the second determining how obsessive/compulsive one is. Above the survey were a few questions about one’s age, gender, household, dominant hand, activities one participates in and the mental health history of family members, in order to target specific demographics later in the experiment.
“I wanted to compare two variables that might have a correlation,” said Olbert, “and I felt like there was a correlation between Type A personalities and OCD. I’ve had these Type A tests and these OCD tests for years, but I’d never thought about putting them together until this year.”
It only took the student about four days to complete the entire experiment. When asked about complications during the experiment, Olbert said overall it went pretty smoothly.
“I thought overall (the students) took it very seriously and we had very good participation.”
In regards to the results of the study, although there were a few cases of both high Type A and high OCD, there was no actual correlation between the two. It was found that faculty members and female college students were the two groups with the most cases of high Type A and high OCD.
“Looking at research – and I didn’t do a complete research – but I couldn’t find where anywhere else had done a high school study on Type A and comparing it to OCD. So if we really had done this study more scientifically, we might have been able to publish these findings in a journal,” Olbert said.
This is only the first of a few experiments the students will be doing throughout the year in psychology.
Reader Comments(0)