Prototype of a Person

The Effects of Music on Personal Space Preferences

The Psychology Society of Ireland doesn’t appear to update their website very much (also, another fine example of antiquated web design!) therefore I cannot access information on all of the awards from the Psychology Congress. But, I did want to mention the work by Colin Gallagher, a final year student from IADT (Psychology Applied to I.T) who received a well deserved commendation for his research presentation. Not only is his research fascinating and his presentation enjoyable, he was more than capable of handling the multitude of questions the adjudicators and audience threw at him. An award well deserved. Below is his abstract, taken from “The Irish Psychologist” Vol. 34, no.9 - I’ve also added some relevant web-links.

The Effects of Music on Personal Space Preferences: Comparing Introverts and Extraverts

The current study examined the distracting effects of music on introverts and extraverts with regard to their personal space preferences in public spaces. There has been no prior investigation into the possible link between personal space and music. The now pervasive behaviour of listening to music in public is possibly a reaction to the modern hi-density urban situations that people live in nowadays and music could be a way of easing people’s feelings of crowding. Participants in this study performed a simple personal space measure with music and without, and then completed a personality test (NEO PI-R). The research result found there was a significant reduction in personal space boundaries of the particpants when listening to music. This supports Worchel and Teddlie’s theory that distractions reduce personal space. The introvert sample were found to be most affected indicating that introverts find music more distracting, as was found by Furnham and Bradley.

I’m certain that anyone that uses public transport, especially the Luas or Dart, will agree with these results. I for one, feel a lot more uncomfortable without my earphones in. Though, if I myself had been conducting this study, I would have included a third condition - earplugs. I would be curious about the results of this, and whether any significant reduction in personal space boundaries would be at all comparable to the “with music” condition.

Psychology Congress Highlight: Flow States

I returned late last night from the Psychology Student Congress held in Mary Immaculate College in Limerick and I must say - I really enjoyed myself. I found Limerick to be a vibrant, clean and enjoyable city. I tried to see as many IT related presentations as I could and the highlight for me was from Michael Malone, an undergraduate Psychology Applied to IT student from IADT. Below is his abstract, taken from “The Irish Psychologist” Vol. 34, no.9 - I’ve also added some relevant web-links.

The Physiological Correlates of “Flow” States Within an IT Environment

Since the initial conception of the “Flow” construct a vast amount of psychological research has focused on identifying its key subjective components and investigating its supposed association with elevating human performance capacity (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). However, the most distinguishable characteristic of this research is its complete dependency on qualitative research methods. There has been no research conducted thus far investigating the molecular concomitants of flow states. For this study 8 participants (6 males, 2 females) were requested to play a videogame (Flow TM) which was specifically designed to induce flow states (Chen, 2006). Heart rate and electro-dermal activity (EDA) were recorded during game play. An adapted FSS-2 (Flow State Scale Revised) questionnaire was then administered to measure flow levels experienced during gameplay. It is anticipated that the molecular activity associated with increased Flow levels will resemble that of deep meditation (i.e, decreases in both heart rate and skin conductance) due to their similarly described subjective state (Marr, 2001). Analysis of results is pending. Results will be discussed with reference to the methodological challenges facing future flow research and possible benefits derived from such research.

Consider the feelings you get when you’re “in the zone” and completely immersed in your computer, even forgetting to eat and being completely unaware of the passage of time (I can certainly relate!). The above piece of research hypothesized that this was similar to a meditative state. The actual results of the study did not support this hypothesis (though decreased heart rates were found) but I believe that this was due to the small scale of the study - due to time constraints, as it was only a undergraduate piece of research. If participants had been tested more than once, I believe that it would have led to a more relaxed state as they would have had no anxiety related to the equipment being used to monitor their physiological responses, and of course, would have had some experience playing the game.

I sincerely hope that someone in either IADT or another college can fund this as a long term postgraduate research study.

Coincidentally the British Psychological Society held their annual conference in Dublin this week and Jazz Biscuit has pointed out all the “tabloid fodder” studies that were discussed.

30th Annual Congress of Psychology Students

In two weeks time I’m off to Limerick to attend the Congress of Psychology Students - this is an annual event where undergraduate and postgraduate psychology students (and sometimes their supervisors) present the research that they have conducted, usually in the last year or two. At this event two years ago I presented my own research, and plan on doing so once again at next year’s congress.

The congress is a wonderful opportunity to gather information about the current direction of Irish psychological research and based on the information from the timetable for presentations it appears that the majority of the research to be presented is coming from the traditional mainstream topics of scientific psychology. From almost 200 presentations taking place only about 10 of these are related to I.T in some way, which personally is a big disappointment, especially considering the ubiquity of communications technologies in Ireland and the number of I.T companies based here.

Applying psychological studies to technology has always been a niche in this country, which is surprising because it has so many positive and negative impacts upon Irish working life, home life, education etc. It is something that I feel passionately about, especially the importance of applying scientific methods to research in I.T - rather than the current climate of unreliable surveys and the media shaping public knowledge and ideas about how we use and interact with one another through technology.

I did however note an increase in the areas of research related to gay men and lesbians (though it is still a tiny percentage of the 200 presentations). There are of course many other areas of research that I have an interest in and below is a list of the selected presentations which I will aiming to attend.

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