This proposed study will investigate the relationship between individual personality traits examined through the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) and the political values of individuals as assessed by the Eight Values Inventory (EVI). The results will indicate any significant relationships between individual personality traits and political values as well as any interaction effects between personality traits. In accordance with prior literature, it is expected that significant relationships will be found between personality traits and political values, specifically with higher levels of openness, agreeableness, and neuroticism predicting higher rates of equality, globe, liberty, and progress values, and with higher rates of conscientiousness predicting higher rates of markets, nation, authority, and tradition. It is predicted that extraversion rates will not be significantly related to higher rates of any political value. Such a finding would support the existence of personality trait differences amongst individuals with divergent political perspectives.
The results of numerous past studies have indicated that individuals have a limited ability to perform multiple tasks simultaneously. Moreover, negative effects on memory have been identified in situations where subjects were engaged in divided attention tasks at the time of memory encoding. The present study examined the effect of device-delivered notifications on the accuracy of memory through the use of a word recognition paradigm. Two groups of students were presented with an identical word list and were then tested with a two-alternative forced-choice recognition test consisting of a combination of previously presented and novel words. The first group received numeric notifications during word presentation which they were instructed to note down while the other group received no notifications. The results showed that false alarm rates were significantly greater and hit rates were significantly lower for the group that received notifications, demonstrating a mirror effect, and thereby providing support for the hypothesis that notification-derived divided attention has a negative impact on memory. Therefore, using one's phone while doing something else (whether that be studying, watching a film, or enjoying a record) really does impact one's ability to focus on what one is doing, regardless of what many people might claim.
This study examined whether a false memory effect could be demonstrated for categorized word lists. It drew inspiration from previous studies in the field of false memory, most notably in replicating and extending the Roediger-McDermott study and utilizing the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm. In this study, students were presented with word lists of 2 sizes: containing 4 or 8 studied exemplars per category and were then tested on recognition with 2 types of words: words previously presented and novel words. It was predicted that the false alarm rate would be higher for new words from the studied categories and that the false alarm rate would be greater for the categories containing more exemplars. The results showed that false alarm rates were greater for new words from the studied categories as compared to new words from unstudied categories and also showed that the false alarm rate was greater for the larger categories.