1. Minds & New Media
Research Project Idea No. 1: Psychological factors
with disclosure.
 New and emerging technologies provide a richer experience (and
increase their economic viability) when people are willing to
share: Their location, mood, likes and dislikes, political opinions,
etc.
 What are the psychological processes involved in the decision of
whether to share information?
 What platforms and designs encourage/inhibit various types of
disclosure?
 The project could consist of both a literature review and some
sort of experiment or survey, although I am unsure exactly what
research design would be most appropriate for these questions.
 It would be fascinating to collect some psychophysiological data and
learn more about how the brain makes these decisions.

2. Idea No. 2: Immersive learning environments and
parental self-efficacy
 Videos games that promote child learning are a booming business.
 But what about games that teach expectant and new parents how to be good parents? A
Google search did not turn up a single example.
 The coming generation of parents have all been raised on video games.
 Parenting – like being a surgeon or pilot – is a high-wire act where some mistakes are
irreversible. Likewise, new and expecting parents may be more willing to reveal and address
shortcomings in a virtual environment than with a doctor or peers.
 Research has shown that a child’s earliest experience profoundly shapes his/her cognitive
abilities
 http://www.library.ca.gov/crb/98/01/98001.pdf; http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/samples/cam032/99025362.pdf
 It has also shown that increasing parental self-efficacy leads to better outcomes for the children,
and for the entire community in which they live.
 Dumka, L., Gonzales, N., Wheeler, L., & Millsap, R. (2010). Parenting self-efficacy and parenting practices over
time in Mexican American Families. Journal of Family Psychology. 24(5), 522-531, doi: 10.1037/a0020833
 I have written a literature review for another class that looks at parental self-efficacy and social
cognitive theory. I propose to extend that review and to focus it on the potential of new and
emerging technologies, particularly immersive and networked gaming.
 If such a game does exist, we could test its effectiveness experimentally. If not, the paper could include a
discussion of potentially beneficial design elements and how we would test such a game, with the goal of actually
producing the game over the summer or Fall 2012.

3. Idea No. 3: News as mediating effect on video game
violence’s desensitizing effect.
 Research covered in class has shown that violent video games desensitize people
to real violence.
 Heavy users had lower P3 brain waves when they were shown images of real violence than
light users. P3 is a measure of aversion. Both groups played a round of a violent game
before being shown the photo.
 For this project, I propose an experimental design similar to the one employed for
the study referenced above.
 However, in this case, I’d propose to create several groups:
 Group 1: Survey to determine violent gaming level > Playing of a violent game > Exposure to
images of real violence while measuring P3
 Group 2: Between the playing and the viewing of the real violence, they’d watch a TV news
broadcast about a violent incident.
 Group 3: Between the playing and the viewing of the real violence, we’d have the participants
read a news article framed a straight news report.
 Group 4: Between the playing and the viewing of the real violence, we’d have the participants
read a news article framed as a human-interest narrative that personalizes the
consequences of violence.
 In addition to testing some of the theories covered in this course, this would also
significantly expand framing theory, for which I have already constructed a decent
literature review that we could incorporate here .
H1: Group 4 < Desensitization than Group 1
H2: Group 2 & 3 = Group 1 Desensitization