Dissertation Ideas?!

Hello (:

I've finished my second year of university studying Psychology with Criminology, & have to meet up with my dissertation supervisor soon to go through what ideas I have for my dissertation.

The problem is, I don't have a clue on what to do it on! I want it to be crime-based, but a lot of topics related to that aren't allowed to be focused on because they're not completely 'ethical'.

I'm kind of interested in the psychology of lying, so I thought I could do something with that - either child eyewitness testimony (although I don't know a lot about this area), or 'crocodile tears' (e.g. when murderers pretend to be upset about the fact that a child has gone missing, when they actually killed that child). I don't know how I'd go about studying these areas, because I have to actually conduct a study, and then write it up in about 10,000 words. It has to be a study that I can do on psychology students that is fairly easy.

Please give me ideas of topics to do with forensic psychology, even if it's nothing to do with lying! Anything will help! Thank you (:

Reply 1

susanalbumparty

Original post by jessicalucy

The two projects that you mentioned would be very difficult (would you be able to interview people who pretend to not have killed someone?). A good book on eye witness testimony to start is http://www.amazon.co.uk/Childrens-Testimony-Handbook-Psychological-Psychology/dp/0470686782/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1401529536&sr=8-1-fkmr1&keywords=eyewitness+testimony+michael+lamb . However, this would be very difficult to do a project on unless there was someone already in your department researching this area.

Reply 2

jessicalucy

Original post by susanalbumparty

The two projects that you mentioned would be very difficult (would you be able to interview people who pretend to not have killed someone?).

A good book on eye witness testimony to start is http://www.amazon.co.uk/Childrens-Testimony-Handbook-Psychological-Psychology/dp/0470686782/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1401529536&sr=8-1-fkmr1&keywords=eyewitness+testimony+michael+lamb . However, this would be very difficult to do a project on unless there was someone already in your department researching this area.

Thanks for the book recommendation (: We don't have to have someone already researching it in the department? I don't know what you mean by that? We can do a study on whatever we want, as long as it's within our supervisors 'area' of study or interests, i.e. cognitive, social... My supervisor is a developmental psychologist, who is also interested in lying & most things really. I would just have to run my idea by him.

Reply 3

susanalbumparty

Original post by jessicalucy

I wouldn't have done it like that, I would have done something like show videos of the killers talking on the news about the child, & then ask participants if they thought they were lying or not, or something. But that's also problematic because the killers would have already been shown to have been lying or not, i.e. most people know that it WAS Tia Sharpe's 'grandad' that killed her...

Thanks for the book recommendation (: We don't have to have someone already researching it in the department? I don't know what you mean by that? We can do a study on whatever we want, as long as it's within our supervisors 'area' of study or interests, i.e. cognitive, social... My supervisor is a developmental psychologist, who is also interested in lying & most things really. I would just have to run my idea by him.

Well I know someone who did their dissertation on forensic interviewing with children, but they could only do it because they had a supervisor who studied that specific area who could provide them with interview tapes to analyse. Otherwise I wouldn't know how you could study the area, although you could look at something related of course.

Reply 4

mp1

I too had a problem with what to choose. I would search the net for hours trying to find a fun, original idea. Then I got frustrated and decided to change my method.

I knew my base topic, so I took out my general psychology text book from 1st year, and started opening it at random pages. I would skim the page to see whats there, and once I found a concept that seemed to be an interesting combination for my base topic, I chose that. Voila. In less than 5 minutes I had a thesis topic.

Reply 5

AlbertBarkley

You should concern about getting help from The Academic Papers UK which will sure help you in dissertation throughout process..

Reply 6

jessicalucy

Hi everyone!

I've just come back to this forum and looked at my old post. Thought it might be of interest to you all what I ended up doing my dissertation on!

Here's the title:
The illusion of transparency and the Dark Triad personality traits: Do narcissists, Machiavellians and psychopaths think that they can deceive others easily?

So there you go :smile:

It's all done now, I handed it in on March 18th.

Thank you for your suggestions and advice!

Reply 7

o-glez

Original post by jessicalucy

Hi
quite a lot of people at my uni did forensic psychology related dissertations. A lot were based on memory recall And EWT. One study I did basically (for a friend) basically involved me watching a video of a crime, then playing snap with cards for a few minutes then asking some questions about the video. The idea is basicallly to see if recall can be effected by the task.
Another idea could be based on offender profiling, basing it on whether peoples expectations and schemas can affect recieving a profile.
Both should be easy enough to do and ethical.