research paper topics for developmental psychology

101 Best Developmental Psychology Research Topics

Psychologists always strive to understand change. But change is inevitable. They spot potential challenges when studying developmental psychology and provide early solutions for better results. But what does it take to find the best developmental psychology research topics? Although psychology is an exciting course, finding the best ideas for projects can be a hassle. However, HelpForHomework is here to solve the quagmire and provide you with top-quality writing services.

Suppose you are looking for a legit platform to help your research writing; we offer 100% unique content and topic recommendations. In that case, we have employed a team of crème de la crème psychology writers and tutors who understand how to work on professional psychology research papers. As a result, they provide original, professionally formatted, edited and revised content.

It does not matter if your research paper is on short notice. We will help you select an exciting topic and help you write a proposal and the main paper on time.

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If you struggle to find expert developmental psychology research topics, go through this article and choose the best one for your project.

How Do We Select The Best Developmental Psychology Research Topics?

We have an excellent team of researchers to go above and beyond to find you the best developmental psychology research topics. But which criteria do we use to create suggestions?

Originality: Originality is an integral part of psychological research writing. For that reason, we generate unique topics and highlight the shallowly researched ones. We understand that exhausting research topics can be irrelevant to your audience. Consequently, our writers do extensive reading to expose themselves to new information crucial to the topic formulation.

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Is the research topic relevant?
Are these ideas sustainable?
Is the political psychology research question possible to answer?
Is the question manageable?

Appeal: A good research topic should be appealing to the researcher and the audience. For this reason, you should choose topics that excites you to do extensive, enjoyable research.

Expert Tip: After helping you with the topic selection, you should engage your supervisor for approval and guidance. Engaging the supervisor frequently ensures that your research falls within the scope and that all mistakes are cleared at an early stage.

Best Developmental Psychology Research Topics

Getting the best developmental psychology research topics is not an easy task. But we have a list of suggestions for you:

A cognitive approach to child abuse prevention
A developmental perspective on imitation and social cognition
Children’s perception of gender-based violence and gender discrimination
Development of gender stereotypes and prejudice
Development of social networks in early and middle childhood: How does gender influence the development of social networks
Developmental implications of prejudice and discrimination
Developmental psychology perspective on child abuse prevention and treatment
Developmental psychology: The ecology of development processes
History, current status and future of developmental psychology
How do structured leisure activities influence psychological development in middle childhood
How does delay in gratification and low self-control affect academic achievement
How does history influence the current status and future of developmental psychology?
How does self-control influence academic performance?
How does the media influence instant gratification?
Influence of culture on marketing and impulsive buying behavior
Instant gratification and self-control in the adolescent.: A case study for a school near you
Origin of prejudice and discrimination
Parenting: The relationship between parenting and developmental psychology
People and the internet: A developmental psychology perspective
Prejudice and discrimination in children: Origin and interventions
Social and developmental psychology: Trends influencing the future of psychology
Social cognition and academic competence in early childhood education
Social media influence on self-control and instant gratification
Substance abuse and violent behavior effects of academic achievement at a school in your country
The role of psychology professionals in the prevention of child abuse

Interesting Developmental Psychology Research Topics

Are you looking for excellent developmental psychology research topics? We hope you find one from the list below:

Addressing child abuse and trauma in a developmental context
Child trauma and mental health indicators among the LGBTQ adults
Development of cyber violence
Developmental psychology perspective on children raised in non-traditional families
Developmental psychology perspective on writing techniques and intellectual growth for college students
Developmental psychology perspective to the impacts of social media use
Developmental psychology: Relationship between childhood trauma and adulthood chronic illness and mental health
Does social media increase children’s tolerance to real-life violence and aggression?
Dynamics of development and decline: Life-span developmental psychology
Effects of long-term childhood trauma
Explain the growth patterns during the early adulthood to old age
How does social media fuel violence? How can it be controlled?
Intellectual growth in early childhood development
Leadership development: Current state and future expectations in your country
Media effects on violent behavior: Psychological analysis
Media use among children with autism spectrum disorder and development implications
Neuropsychological development in the context of childhood abuse and trauma
Online communication, friendships and social media use in adolescents
The effects of media on violence, attitudes and emotions: Historical and current status
The perspective of developmental psychology of money spending on a virtual world
The psychology of adult development and ageing
The role of media in social development
Theoretical proposition on intellectual growth
Use of older people experience to understand developmental psychology: Challenges and benefits
Use of social media to facilitate community education and development

Excellent Developmental Psychology Research Topics

If you select one of the excellent developmental psychology topics below, be sure of top grades. Choose one and tell us what you think:

A developmental perspective on global political marketing
Correlation between gender, power and developmental psychology
Development of relationships in adolescence: Social media influence
Developmental psychology application in the development of children laws
Developmental psychology perspective of family
Developmental psychology perspective of human behavior
Developmental psychology perspective on child psychology and mental health development
Developmental psychology perspective on mass persuasion
Developmental psychology perspective on religious cults
Developmental psychology perspective on social propaganda and social marketing
Developmental psychology: Sexual repression, social control and gender hierarchy in Native America
Does religion promote moral development?
How does religion influence politics in your country?
How does religious bias influence moral development? A developmental psychology investigation
Influence of culture on social control organizations
Islamist political propaganda: Developmental psychology perspective on political marketing
Modern responses on cults
Precursors of attraction, romance and love in young adulthood
Psychological interventions on improving school discipline
Relationship between developmental psychology and political psychology in your country
Social control in significant religions: A developmental psychology perspective
Social discipline in your country: Prevention, correction and long-term social development
The psychology of grandparenthood: A developmental psychology perspective
The psychology of religion: Ethics and implications of moral implications
The psychology of religion: Social media influence on the development of religion

Professional Developmental Psychology Research Topics

Are you looking for professional psychology research topics for your project? We have the best suggestions for you:

Biological aspects of the development of human violence behavior
Can participation in extracurricular activities support psychological intervention programs in schools?
Development of self-identity through social media
Developmental difference between children exposed to the internet and media and those who spend more time on playgrounds
Developmental psychology perspective on emotions and customer experience
Developmental psychology perspective on happiness
Does child trauma influence adulthood antisocial personality disorder?
Does the media influence sexual identity?
Dynamics of human behavior: Mass panic
Early identifications of adulthood antisocial behavior
How does loneliness influence personality across the lifespan?
Impacts of maternal stress to cognitive development of children
Infant mental health: Development and significance of early childhood mental health
Influence of media on sexual development
Internet addiction and happiness for adolescents
Internet, sex, and adolescents: Implications on sexual development
Management of phobia in children and adolescents
Neuropsychological perspective on evolution of human behavior
Personality disorders: Tracing the roots through developmental psychology
Phobia: Fear appeals and security behaviors
Relationship between emotion-cognition and human development
Relationship between exposure to sexual content on children and sexual outcomes
Relationship between happiness and social development
Relationship between human behavior and psychological development
School discipline and self-discipline: Psychological interventions to improve student behavior
The neuropsychological perspective of social bonding

Final Verdict

Have you selected an interesting developmental psychology research topic? If not, contact us and let us help you. If you have found one, you should also contact us to help you in the proposal process. Once you work with us, you quickly realize why we are the best research help platform. Also check out Educational Psychology Research Topics.

50+ Research Topics for Psychology Papers

How to Find Psychology Research Topics for Your Student Paper

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

research paper topics for developmental psychology

Steven Gans, MD is board-certified in psychiatry and is an active supervisor, teacher, and mentor at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Specific Branches of Psychology
Topics Involving a Disorder or Type of Therapy
Human Cognition
Human Development
Critique of Publications
Famous Experiments
Historical Figures
Specific Careers
Case Studies
Literature Reviews
Your Own Study/Experiment

Are you searching for a great topic for your psychology paper ? Sometimes it seems like coming up with topics of psychology research is more challenging than the actual research and writing. Fortunately, there are plenty of great places to find inspiration and the following list contains just a few ideas to help get you started.

Finding a solid topic is one of the most important steps when writing any type of paper. It can be particularly important when you are writing a psychology research paper or essay. Psychology is such a broad topic, so you want to find a topic that allows you to adequately cover the subject without becoming overwhelmed with information.

I can always tell when a student really cares about the topic they chose; it comes through in the writing. My advice is to choose a topic that genuinely interests you, so you’ll be more motivated to do thorough research.

In some cases, such as in a general psychology class, you might have the option to select any topic from within psychology's broad reach. Other instances, such as in an abnormal psychology course, might require you to write your paper on a specific subject such as a psychological disorder.

As you begin your search for a topic for your psychology paper, it is first important to consider the guidelines established by your instructor.

Research Topics Within Specific Branches of Psychology

The key to selecting a good topic for your psychology paper is to select something that is narrow enough to allow you to really focus on the subject, but not so narrow that it is difficult to find sources or information to write about.

One approach is to narrow your focus down to a subject within a specific branch of psychology. For example, you might start by deciding that you want to write a paper on some sort of social psychology topic. Next, you might narrow your focus down to how persuasion can be used to influence behavior .

Other social psychology topics you might consider include:

Prejudice and discrimination (i.e., homophobia, sexism, racism)
Social cognition
Person perception
Social control and cults
Persuasion, propaganda, and marketing
Attraction, romance, and love
Nonverbal communication
Prosocial behavior

Psychology Research Topics Involving a Disorder or Type of Therapy

Exploring a psychological disorder or a specific treatment modality can also be a good topic for a psychology paper. Some potential abnormal psychology topics include specific psychological disorders or particular treatment modalities, including:

Eating disorders
Borderline personality disorder
Seasonal affective disorder
Schizophrenia
Antisocial personality disorder
Profile a type of therapy (i.e., cognitive-behavioral therapy, group therapy, psychoanalytic therapy)

Topics of Psychology Research Related to Human Cognition

Some of the possible topics you might explore in this area include thinking, language, intelligence, and decision-making. Other ideas might include:

False memories
Speech disorders
Problem-solving

Topics of Psychology Research Related to Human Development

In this area, you might opt to focus on issues pertinent to early childhood such as language development, social learning, or childhood attachment or you might instead opt to concentrate on issues that affect older adults such as dementia or Alzheimer's disease.

Some other topics you might consider include:

Language acquisition
Media violence and children
Learning disabilities
Gender roles
Child abuse
Prenatal development
Parenting styles
Aspects of the aging process

Do a Critique of Publications Involving Psychology Research Topics

One option is to consider writing a critique paper of a published psychology book or academic journal article. For example, you might write a critical analysis of Sigmund Freud's Interpretation of Dreams or you might evaluate a more recent book such as Philip Zimbardo's The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil .

Professional and academic journals are also great places to find materials for a critique paper. Browse through the collection at your university library to find titles devoted to the subject that you are most interested in, then look through recent articles until you find one that grabs your attention.

Topics of Psychology Research Related to Famous Experiments

There have been many fascinating and groundbreaking experiments throughout the history of psychology, providing ample material for students looking for an interesting term paper topic. In your paper, you might choose to summarize the experiment, analyze the ethics of the research, or evaluate the implications of the study. Possible experiments that you might consider include:

The Milgram Obedience Experiment
The Stanford Prison Experiment
The Little Albert Experiment
Pavlov's Conditioning Experiments
The Asch Conformity Experiment
Harlow's Rhesus Monkey Experiments

Topics of Psychology Research About Historical Figures

One of the simplest ways to find a great topic is to choose an interesting person in the history of psychology and write a paper about them. Your paper might focus on many different elements of the individual's life, such as their biography, professional history, theories, or influence on psychology.

While this type of paper may be historical in nature, there is no need for this assignment to be dry or boring. Psychology is full of fascinating figures rife with intriguing stories and anecdotes. Consider such famous individuals as Sigmund Freud, B.F. Skinner, Harry Harlow, or one of the many other eminent psychologists .

Psychology Research Topics About a Specific Career

Another possible topic, depending on the course in which you are enrolled, is to write about specific career paths within the field of psychology . This type of paper is especially appropriate if you are exploring different subtopics or considering which area interests you the most.

In your paper, you might opt to explore the typical duties of a psychologist, how much people working in these fields typically earn, and the different employment options that are available.

Topics of Psychology Research Involving Case Studies

One potentially interesting idea is to write a psychology case study of a particular individual or group of people. In this type of paper, you will provide an in-depth analysis of your subject, including a thorough biography.

Generally, you will also assess the person, often using a major psychological theory such as Piaget's stages of cognitive development or Erikson's eight-stage theory of human development . It is also important to note that your paper doesn't necessarily have to be about someone you know personally.

In fact, many professors encourage students to write case studies on historical figures or fictional characters from books, television programs, or films.

Psychology Research Topics Involving Literature Reviews

Another possibility that would work well for a number of psychology courses is to do a literature review of a specific topic within psychology. A literature review involves finding a variety of sources on a particular subject, then summarizing and reporting on what these sources have to say about the topic.

Literature reviews are generally found in the introduction of journal articles and other psychology papers , but this type of analysis also works well for a full-scale psychology term paper.

Topics of Psychology Research Based on Your Own Study or Experiment

Many psychology courses require students to design an actual psychological study or perform some type of experiment. In some cases, students simply devise the study and then imagine the possible results that might occur. In other situations, you may actually have the opportunity to collect data, analyze your findings, and write up your results.

Finding a topic for your study can be difficult, but there are plenty of great ways to come up with intriguing ideas. Start by considering your own interests as well as subjects you have studied in the past.

Online sources, newspaper articles, books , journal articles, and even your own class textbook are all great places to start searching for topics for your experiments and psychology term papers. Before you begin, learn more about how to conduct a psychology experiment .

What This Means For You

After looking at this brief list of possible topics for psychology papers, it is easy to see that psychology is a very broad and diverse subject. While this variety makes it possible to find a topic that really catches your interest, it can sometimes make it very difficult for some students to select a good topic.

If you are still stumped by your assignment, ask your instructor for suggestions and consider a few from this list for inspiration.

Hockenbury, SE & Nolan, SA. Psychology. New York: Worth Publishers; 2014.
Santrock, JW. A Topical Approach to Lifespan Development. New York: McGraw-Hill Education; 2016.

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

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Developmental Psychology Dissertation Topics

Published by Owen Ingram at January 3rd, 2023 , Revised On August 11, 2023

A child’s behaviour is affected by his or her experiences. Language, IQ, and motor abilities are just some of the domains of developmental psychology which are commonly studied by students. Theories of development give different weights to experience or durable standards when explaining how change occurs. Others, however, advocate a middle approach that incorporates both.

Many people find developmental psychology to be very interesting and relevant, including parents, teachers, and doctors. Dissertations in developmental psychology can be both interesting and helpful. In this article, you will see multiple related psychology dissertations topics based on the studied analysis, previous professional demand and future growth expectations.

Development Psychology Dissertation Topics

Children’s primary emotional needs (care, love, support, freedom, safety, being accepted and understood, etc.)
Child abuse is the root cause of numerous psychological disorders in later life.
How young children learn and flourish when their upbringing is defined by caring, safe interactions with people
who can assist their child’s learning and development?
Neglecting a child’s emotional needs and how it affects adult life.
Animal and child mirror tests (similarities and differences)
Psychological modifications brought on by ageing
Causes of the rise in psychopathic behaviour among adolescents and young people
Effects of child maltreatment on a child’s mental growth
The ageing process-accelerating factors
The importance of developmental cognitive neuroscience for the early diagnosis and management of developmental disorders
In light of recent discoveries in cognitive neuroscience, is Piaget’s theory of cognitive development still a viable theory?
The idea of plasticity in child development helps explain how a child can adapt to either positive or negative situations in life
The impact of culture on conversational comprehension, where kids typically don’t talk to adults
The role of the amygdala as a change agent in adolescent brains
an enhancement in working memory and processing speed that is generally applicable to the development of conversational understanding
The development of short-term memory from childhood to old age
How much discipline is necessary for a child’s personality to grow healthily?
The development of children depends on both biological growth and cultural acquisition
The Importance of Emotion Regulation in Understanding Positive Emotion in Depression
How much knowledge of neural development’s mechanics can teach us about how early cognition takes place?
Demonstrating how evidence of growing system integration during development can be reconciled with growing structural separation
The elements influence a fetus’s ability to develop its brain
Emotional growth in adults. When and how does it occur?
The things that young children fear the most and how those fears affect their psychological development development psychology and the ageing process about each other
Children with dyscalculia are influenced by the condition, or are they largely independent in their abilities unrelated to numeracy?
The function of facial stimuli in determining the progression of the ventral pathway in humans from childhood to maturity
When explaining changes during cognitive development, one particular learning mechanism or a variety of learning paradigms for various issues?

How Can ResearchProspect Help?

ResearchProspect writers can send several custom topic ideas to your email address. Once you have chosen a topic that suits your needs and interests, you can order Get Dissertation Writing Services Within Your Budget our dissertation outline service, which will include a brief introduction to the topic, research questions , literature review , methodology , expected results , and conclusion . The dissertation outline will enable you to review the quality of our work before placing the order for our full dissertation writing service!

When choosing a dissertation topic , make sure it builds on your previous work. Don’t forget to be passionate about your topic/idea. Do not pick a topic that extends your adviser’s work or that you are generally ambivalent about. Don’t forget that the dissertation is a marathon, not a sprint.

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Developmental Psychology 101: Theories, Stages, & Research

You can imagine how vast this field of psychology is if it has to cover the whole of life, from birth through death.

Just like any other area of psychology, it has created exciting debates and given rise to fascinating case studies.

In recent years, developmental psychology has shifted to incorporate positive psychology paradigms to create a holistic lifespan approach. As an example, the knowledge gained from positive psychology can enhance the development of children in education.

In this article, you will learn a lot about different aspects of developmental psychology, including how it first emerged in history and famous theories and models.

Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Positive Psychology Exercises for free . These science-based exercises explore fundamental aspects of positive psychology, including strengths, values, and self-compassion, and will give you the tools to enhance the wellbeing of your clients, students, or employees.

This Article Contains:

What is developmental psychology, 4 popular theories, stages, & models, 2 questions and research topics, fascinating case studies & research findings, a look at positive developmental psychology, applying developmental psychology in education, resources from positivepsychology.com, a take-home message.

Human beings change drastically over our lifetime.

The American Psychological Association (2020) defines developmental psychology as the study of physical, mental, and behavioral changes, from conception through old age.

Developmental psychology investigates biological, genetic, neurological, psychosocial, cultural, and environmental factors of human growth (Burman, 2017).

Over the years, developmental psychology has been influenced by numerous theories and models in varied branches of psychology (Burman, 2017).

History of developmental psychology

Developmental psychology first appeared as an area of study in the late 19th century (Baltes, Lindenberger, & Staudinger, 2007). Developmental psychology focused initially on child and adolescent development, and was concerned about children’s minds and learning (Hall, 1883).

There are several key figures in developmental psychology. In 1877, the famous evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin undertook the first study of developmental psychology on innate communication forms. Not long after, physiologist William Preyer (1888) published a book on the abilities of an infant.

The 1900s saw many significant people dominating the developmental psychology field with their detailed theories of development: Sigmund Freud (1923, 1961), Jean Piaget (1928), Erik Erikson (1959), Lev Vygotsky (1978), John Bowlby (1958), and Albert Bandura (1977).

By the 1920s, the scope of developmental psychology had begun to include adult development and the aging process (Thompson, 2016).

In more recent years, it has broadened further to include prenatal development (Brandon et al., 2009). Developmental psychology is now understood to encompass the complete lifespan (Baltes et al., 2007).

Each of these models has contributed to the understanding of the process of human development and growth.

Furthermore, each theory and model focuses on different aspects of development: social, emotional, psychosexual, behavioral, attachment, social learning, and many more.

Here are some of the most popular models of development that have heavily contributed to the field of developmental psychology.

1. Bowlby’s attachment styles

The seminal work of psychologist John Bowlby (1958) showcased his interest in children’s social development. Bowlby (1969, 1973, 1980) developed the most famous theory of social development, known as attachment theory .

Bowlby (1969) hypothesized that the need to form attachments is innate, embedded in all humans for survival and essential for children’s development. This instinctive bond helps ensure that children are cared for by their parent or caregiver (Bowlby, 1969, 1973, 1980).

Bowlby’s original attachment work was developed further by one of his students, Mary Ainsworth. She proposed several attachment styles between the child and the caregiver (Ainsworth & Bell, 1970).

This theory clearly illustrates the importance of attachment styles to a child’s future development. Consistent and stable caregiving results in a secure attachment style (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978). In contrast, unstable and insecure caregiving results in several negative attachment styles: ambivalent, avoidant, or disorganized (Ainsworth & Bell, 1970; Main & Solomon, 1986).

Bowlby’s theory does not consider peer group influence or how it can shape children’s personality and development (Harris, 1998).

2. Piaget’s stage theory

Jean Piaget was a French psychologist highly interested in child development. He was interested in children’s thinking and how they acquire, construct, and use their knowledge (Piaget, 1951).

Piaget’s (1951) four-stage theory of cognitive development sequences a child’s intellectual development. According to this theory, all children move through these four stages of development in the same order (Simatwa, 2010).

The sensorimotor stage is from birth to two years old. Behaviors are triggered by sensory stimuli and limited to simple motor responses. If an object is removed from the child’s vision, they think it no longer exists (Piaget, 1936).

The pre-operational stage occurs between two and six years old. The child learns language but cannot mentally manipulate information or understand concrete logic (Wadsworth, 1971).

The concrete operational stage takes place from 7 to 11 years old. Children begin to think more logically about factual events. Abstract or hypothetical concepts are still difficult to understand in this stage (Wadsworth, 1971).

In the formal operational stage from 12 years to adulthood, abstract thought and skills arise (Piaget, 1936).

Piaget did not consider other factors that might affect these stages or a child’s progress through them. Biological maturation and interaction with the environment can determine the rate of cognitive development in children (Papalia & Feldman, 2011). Individual differences can also dictate a child’s progress (Berger, 2014).

3. Freud’s psychosexual development theory

One of the most influential developmental theories, which encompassed psychosexual stages of development, was developed by Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud (Fisher & Greenberg, 1996).

Freud concluded that childhood experiences and unconscious desires influence behavior after witnessing his female patients experiencing physical symptoms and distress with no physical cause (Breuer & Freud, 1957).

According to Freud’s psychosexual theory, child development occurs in a series of stages, each focused on different pleasure areas of the body. During each stage, the child encounters conflicts, which play a significant role in development (Silverman, 2017).

Freud’s theory of psychosexual development includes the oral, anal, phallic, latent, and genital stages. His theory suggests that the energy of the libido is focused on these different erogenous zones at each specific stage (Silverman, 2017).

Freud concluded that the successful completion of each stage leads to healthy adult development. He also suggested that a failure to progress through a stage causes fixation and developmental difficulties, such as nail biting (oral fixation) or obsessive tidiness (anal fixation; Silverman, 2017).

Freud considered personality to be formed in childhood as a child passes through these stages. Criticisms of Freud’s theory of psychosexual development include its failure to consider that personality can change and grow over an entire lifetime. Freud believed that early experiences played the most significant role in shaping development (Silverman, 2017).

4. Bandura’s social learning theory

American psychologist Albert Bandura proposed the social learning theory (Bandura, Ross, & Ross, 1961). Bandura did not believe that classical or operant conditioning was enough to explain learned behavior because some behaviors of children are never reinforced (Bandura, 1986). He believed that children observe, imitate, and model the behaviors and reactions of others (Bandura, 1977).

Bandura suggested that observation is critical in learning. Further, the observation does not have to be of a live actor, such as in the Bobo doll experiment (Bandura, 1986). Bandura et al. (1961) considered that learning and modeling can also occur from listening to verbal instructions on behavior performance.

Bandura’s (1977) social theory posits that both environmental and cognitive factors interact to influence development.

Bandura’s developmental theory has been criticized for not considering biological factors or children’s autonomic nervous system responses (Kevin, 1995).

Overview of theories of development – Khan Academy

Developmental psychology has given rise to many debatable questions and research topics. Here are two of the most commonly discussed.

1. Nature vs nurture debate

One of the oldest debates in the field of developmental psychology has been between nature and nurture (Levitt, 2013).

Is human development a result of hereditary factors (genes), or is it influenced by the environment (school, family, relationships, peers, community, culture)?

The polarized position of developmental psychologists of the past has now changed. The nature/nurture question now concerns the relationship between the innateness of an attribute and the environmental effects on that attribute (Nesterak, 2015).

The field of epigenetics describes how behavioral and environmental influences affect the expression of genes (Kubota, Miyake, & Hirasawa, 2012).

Many severe mental health disorders have a hereditary component. Yet, the environment and behavior, such as improved diet, reduced stress, physical activity, and a positive mindset, can determine whether this health condition is ever expressed (Śmigielski, Jagannath, Rössler, Walitza, & Grünblatt, 2020).

When considering classic models of developmental psychology, such as Piaget’s schema theory and Freud’s psychosexual theory, you’ll see that they both perceive development to be set in stone and unchangeable by the environment.

Contemporary developmental psychology theories take a different approach. They stress the importance of multiple levels of organization over the course of human development (Lomas, Hefferon, & Ivtzan, 2016).

2. Theory of mind

Theory of mind allows us to understand that others have different intentions, beliefs, desires, perceptions, behaviors, and emotions (American Psychological Association, 2020).

It was first identified by research by Premack and Woodruff (1978) and considered to be a natural developmental stage of progression for all children. Starting around the ages of four or five, children begin to think about the thoughts and feelings of others. This shows an emergence of the theory of mind (Wellman & Liu, 2004).

However, the ability of all individuals to achieve and maintain this critical skill at the same level is debatable.

Children diagnosed with autism exhibit a deficit in the theory of mind (Baron-Cohen, Leslie, & Frith, 1985).

Individuals with depression (psychotic and non-psychotic) are significantly impaired in theory of mind tasks (Wang, Wang, Chen, Zhu, & Wang, 2008).

People with social anxiety disorder have also been found to show less accuracy in decoding the mental states of others (Washburn, Wilson, Roes, Rnic, & Harkness, 2016).

Further research has shown that the theory of mind changes with aging. This suggests a developmental lifespan process for this concept (Meinhardt-Injac, Daum, & Meinhardt, 2020).

1. Little Albert

The small child who was the focus of the experiments of behavioral psychologists Watson and Rayner (1920) was referred to as ‘Little Albert.’ These experiments were essential landmarks in developmental psychology and showed how an emotionally stable child can be conditioned to develop a phobia.

Albert was exposed to several neutral stimuli including cotton wool, masks, a white rat, rabbit, monkey, and dog. Albert showed no initial fear to these stimuli.

When a loud noise was coupled with the initially neutral stimulus, Albert became very distressed and developed a phobia of the object, which extended to any similar object as well.

This experiment highlights the importance of environmental factors in the development of behaviors in children.

2. David Reimer

At the age of eight months, David Reimer lost his penis in a circumcision operation that went wrong. His worried parents consulted a psychologist, who advised them to raise David as a girl.

David’s young age meant he knew nothing about this. He went through the process of hormonal treatment and gender reassignment. At the age of 14, David found out the truth and wanted to reverse the gender reassignment process to become a boy again. He had always felt like a boy until this time, even though he was socialized and brought up as a girl (Colapinto, 2006).

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Contemporary theories of developmental psychology often encompass a holistic approach and a more positive approach to development.

Positive psychology has intersected with developmental disciplines in areas such as parenting, education, youth, and aging (Lomas et al., 2016).

These paradigms can all be grouped together under the umbrella of positive developmental psychology. This fresh approach to development focuses on the wellbeing aspects of development, while systematically bringing them together (Lomas, et al., 2016).

Positive parenting is the approach to children’s wellbeing by focusing on the role of parents and caregivers (Latham, 1994).
Positive education looks at flourishing in the context of school (Seligman, Ernst, Gillham, Reivich, & Linkins, 2009).
Positive youth development is the productive and constructive focus on adolescence and early adulthood to enhance young people’s strengths and promote positive outcomes (Larson, 2000).
Positive aging , also known as healthy aging, focuses on the positivity of aging as a healthy, normal stage of life (Vaillant, 2004).

Much of the empirical and theoretical work connected to positive developmental psychology has been going on for years, even before the emergence of positive psychology itself (Lomas et al., 2016).

We recommend this related article Applying Positive Psychology in Schools & Education: Your Ultimate Guide for further reading.

In the classroom, developmental psychology considers children’s psychological, emotional, and intellectual characteristics according to their developmental stage.

A report on the top 20 principles of psychology in the classroom, from pre-kindergarten to high school, was published by the American Psychological Association in 2015. The report also advised how teachers can respond to these principles in the classroom setting.

The top 5 principles and teacher responses are outlined in the table below.

There are many valuable resources to help you foster positive development no matter whether you’re working with young children, teenagers, or adults.

To help get you started, check out the following free resources from around our blog.

Adopt A Growth Mindset This exercise helps clients recognize instances of fixed mindset in their thinking and actions and replace them with thoughts and behaviors more supportive of a growth mindset.
Childhood Frustrations This worksheet provides a space for clients to document key challenges experienced during childhood, together with their emotional and behavioral responses.
What I Want to Be This worksheet helps children identify behaviors and emotions they would like to display and select an opportunity in the future to behave in this ideal way.
17 Positive Psychology Exercises If you’re looking for more science-based ways to help others enhance their wellbeing, this signature collection contains 17 validated positive psychology tools for practitioners. Use them to help others flourish and thrive.
Developmental Psychology Courses If you are interested in a career in Developmental Psychology , we suggest 15 of the best courses in this article.

17 Top-Rated Positive Psychology Exercises for Practitioners

Expand your arsenal and impact with these 17 Positive Psychology Exercises [PDF] , scientifically designed to promote human flourishing, meaning, and wellbeing.

Created by Experts. 100% Science-based.

Earlier developmental psychology models and theories were focused on specific areas, such as attachment, psychosexual, cognitive, and social learning. Although informative, they did not take in differing perspectives and were fixed paradigms.

We’ve now come to understand that development is not fixed. Individual differences take place in development, and the factors that can affect development are many. It is ever changing throughout life.

The modern-day approach to developmental psychology includes sub-fields of positive psychology. It brings these differing disciplines together to form an overarching positive developmental psychology paradigm.

Developmental psychology has helped us gain a considerable understanding of children’s motivations, social and emotional contexts, and their strengths and weaknesses.

This knowledge is essential for educators to create rich learning environments for students to help them develop positively and ultimately flourish to their full potential.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Positive Psychology Exercises for free .

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Challenges in developmental psychology, a focus on Sustainable Development

Peter klaver.

1 Centre for Research and Development, University of Teacher Education in Special Needs, Zurich, Switzerland

2 Institute of Psychology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

Katharina J. Rohlfing

3 Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Paderborn University, Paderborn, Germany

Introduction

Developmental psychology is traditionally of interdisciplinary nature with the aims to understand mechanisms of normative and individual changes and consistencies throughout the lifespan. The applied fields of developmental psychology target into health and educational sciences. The aims of developmental psychology cannot be reached without understanding and applying the underlying biological, senso-motoric, emotional, social, and cognitive processes that are intertwined with cultural context.

The field changes in dependence on internal and external factors. First, the increase in knowledge, in each of the associated areas can change the focus of interest in subfields or the whole field of developmental psychology. Second, methodological inventions can boost the development of certain subfields or the whole field of developmental psychology. Third, sudden changes in cultural context, by global events, such as strikingly demonstrated recently during the COVID-19 pandemic, affect the focus of interest in certain periods in life, or in interventions. Fourth, there is a solid claim for a bias in research on and from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic (WEIRD) countries (Henrich et al., 2010 ), which affect inferences and impact from research in developmental psychology. Awareness toward the cultural context of research in developmental psychology, its limitations and generalizability, can change perspective and course of the field.

In the following Specialty Grand Challenge, we would like to sketch the most important challenges we observe within the field of developmental psychology, which are dependent on the above-mentioned areas of change: changes in knowledge and methodology, changes or bias in environment by global events and cultural context.

Aims of the Specialty Grand Challenge

One of the key challenges we observe in developmental psychology relate to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The Agenda 2030 and the associated SDGs pose new challenges on science as a whole and as such on developmental psychology. The global goals to sustain the resources in the world's biosphere for future generations are balanced across the dimensions of social responsibility, ecological responsibility, and economic growth (United Nations Sustainable Development Group, 2019 ). Local or global actions at each of these dimensions can have an impact on the individual development and potentially on the normative development of people. Thus, they may affect individuals differently in childhood, youth, and adulthood. For example, youth in several countries have shown to take responsibility regarding SDGs to engage against climate change, against poverty, diversity, human rights, and democracy (Plan International UK, 2018 ), while Education for Sustainable Development is part of the curriculum in many countries. The development of youth may be affected alone by the responsibility they take, and the social changes they achieve may affect development of future generations. Participating more actively in a society and being encouraged by children's rights (UNICEF), children might require more support in developing skills that pertains to engagement in active citizenship from early on. The global context and youth's participation put novel requirements on youth's and children's care, caregivers as well as education.

Further, fast economic growth in urban areas as well as political conflicts can lead to migration waves toward these areas, which provides an impact on the health and education infrastructure in both rural and urban areas, which may in turn affect vulnerable populations disproportionally, and particularly children, elderly, and individuals with disabilities. Observations of the kind has been observed in several countries (Jampaklay et al., 2016 ; Holecki et al., 2020 ; Martín-Cano et al., 2020 ).

Actions relating to SDGs

In our view, SDGs require actions in the field of developmental psychology regarding relevant methodologies and topics. We observe two windows of opportunity to take action on the impact of SDGs on developmental psychology. First, global developments in methodology of research, particularly Open Science and Open Research Data help to access, merge, and analyze data in understanding emotion, cognition, and social dynamics in development within cultural context. These approaches initiate new discoveries but require an understanding of the technological functions and their limitations. Second, digitalization has a global impact on the use of knowledge and skills in social, health, and educational systems, which induces challenges and boosts research in the field of developmental psychology.

Regarding the methodologies, we recommend for three levels of actions. First, research in developmental psychology needs to adopt to the principles of Open Science. The movement of Open Science has been seen as an important step toward managing resources at a global scale. Open Access of publications as implemented by Frontiers and other publishers, increases access to knowledge across the globe. However, sharing data by implementing FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) principles on Open Research Data (ORD) would allow researchers across the globe to reuse data and connect own data to a larger pool of data than ever before. This could increase validation of evidence across different cultural contexts and could diversify and generalize theories on development. Simultaneously, methods can be further developed to adjust to novel contextual circumstances. Furthermore, a reuse of material, measures, procedures, and data contributes to more transparency and works against data loss, fosters collaborations, and generates reproducible workflows (Klein et al., 2018 ). With these methods, key issues relating to development and SDGs can be more easily studied, because contextual differences can be identified in larger datasets. Currently, Frontiers does not have a policy regarding ORD, but in our view, we could and should commit to such a policy within our research communities.

Second, research in developmental psychology should be committed to international standards regarding the adoption of research designs, conducting research, reporting and critical appraisal standards. The EQUATOR network currently provides 529 reporting guidelines for all types of research, which are relevant for social sciences and medicine, such as PRISMA (Page et al., 2021 ). Research communities, for example in neuroscience and medicine, have increased awareness toward such standards and thereby increased the quality of research (O'Brien et al., 2014 ; Song et al., 2017 ). It is important that research communities commit themselves toward such standards to increase reproducibility, transparency, and sustainability of research across the globe. In addition to reporting standards, the reviewing standards should be transparent and compliant with the guidelines. Several valuable critical appraisal tools have been developed, such as CASP or JBI checklists, which can support and standardize reviewing processes. By taking such standards more seriously, and with a higher commitment to them, globally, the rigor in addressing key questions relating to development can be pushed forward, and a sustainable knowledge base can be acquired.

Third, we observe strong innovations and methodological developments in areas, which now affect the field of developmental psychology. It will be important to increase awareness about applying technologies for specific solutions and specific contexts. A recent Research Topic on empirical research at a distance provides a good example of putting together novel and rapid methodical developments driven by COVID-19 pandemic but discussing their limitations thoroughly (Tsuji et al., 2022 ). In our view, it is important for novel methods to be presented in a comprehensive manner to provide informative access not only to procedures but also to its purposes and shortcomings. For this, Frontiers offers formats that might be used more often: Data Report, Technology and Code, Study Protocol, but also Brief Research Report could be used to introduce a technologically innovative method to describe novel possibilities of analysis. It should then involve a reflection about the used technology regarding ethics and privacy, its advantages, and disadvantages by addressing tradeoffs, for example between real world behaviors and in-lab controls. Examples of such technologies, involve techniques to record high resolution spatial and temporal data in more realistic settings such as Real-Time response measurements (Waldvogel and Metz, 2020 ), dyads in Experience Sampling Methods (Xia et al., 2022 ), Near Field Communication (Lorusso et al., 2018 ), Google Trends Research (Jun et al., 2018 ; Mavragani et al., 2018 ), and hyperscanning EEG (Kayhan et al., 2022 ). A debate on the use of these techniques may provide a window of opportunity for global research on development and SDGs.

Regarding topics, we observe a strong impact of digitalization on health and education systems. Health issues have become a global phenomenon. The way in which people at different stages during the life span have access to health care, receive information on health risks and preventions, and are at risk to health problems is not evenly distributed. Industrial pollution, access to nutrients, eating habits, digital literacy and consumption, access to information depend on societal, technological, and climate changes. These potential risk and resources can affect fetal, early development and parenting, as well as later periods in life. The increasing knowledge about the mechanisms and the more widespread possibilities to observe changes longitudinally in several areas around the world lead to a more detailed understanding of the development of health risks and the effect of interventions during life span. In our view, it is important that the knowledge about health risks at all ages and heterogeneous populations is well-documented and (digitally) accessible for use by professional health practitioners.

Along similar lines, we observe that education undergoes changes depending on technological development, particularly digital information technology. Access to information and knowledge about education governance, access to education during political, societal and climate change can all affect the way in which children develop and the way in which communities and families are able to support the development of children. The current access to larger datasets has the potential to facilitate research about the psychological development on these topics. We therefore encourage the research on human development, health, and education specifically concerned with the influence of social and technological change in dynamic cultural contexts.

The main challenges that we observe are related to the global movements in science and society, which affect the course that developmental psychology takes. In the past, developmental psychology has been dominated by European and North American scientists, followed by important research from Japan (Norimatsu, 2018 ). Now, researchers from an increasing number of countries across the world, but particularly China deliver important insights into the field of developmental psychology. Further, the Agenda 2030, the global issues relating to health and education, the Open Science movement, the increasing knowledge about developmental psychology from other counties, the ability to merge greater datasets provide the possibility to understand development at a different level. Our view is indeed in line with these developments, first because we see a chance that normative and individual changes in development can be better understood at both a global and local level. Second, because we trust that applied scientists can address that knowledge. Their task is to improve, for example, health care, health risk prevention and education in cooperation with professionals and providers of social support.

Nevertheless, we are aware of the subjective nature of our view. The foundation of it was mainly based on the set of Research Topics that we evaluate at the Frontiers in Psychology Specialty Section Developmental Psychology, the manuscript we receive in our role as Section Chief Editors, as well as our role we have as professionals at our universities and the research communities we work in. We are also aware of the diversity of ethical and cultural values, which drives our vision of research on developmental psychology and the visions of all researchers in the field. The hope that shared values on the necessity to continue research on developmental psychology in the light of Sustainable Development remains.

Author contributions

All authors listed have made a substantial, direct, and intellectual contribution to the work and approved it for publication.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher's note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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61 intriguing psychology research topics to explore

Last updated

11 January 2024

Reviewed by

Brittany Ferri, PhD, OTR/L

Psychology is an incredibly diverse, critical, and ever-changing area of study in the medical and health industries. Because of this, it’s a common area of study for students and healthcare professionals.

We’re walking you through picking the perfect topic for your upcoming paper or study. Keep reading for plenty of example topics to pique your interest and curiosity.

How to choose a psychology research topic

Exploring a psychology-based topic for your research project? You need to pick a specific area of interest to collect compelling data.

Use these tips to help you narrow down which psychology topics to research:

Focus on a particular area of psychology

The most effective psychological research focuses on a smaller, niche concept or disorder within the scope of a study.

Psychology is a broad and fascinating area of science, including everything from diagnosed mental health disorders to sports performance mindset assessments.

This gives you plenty of different avenues to explore. Having a hard time choosing? Check out our list of 61 ideas further down in this article to get started.

Read the latest clinical studies

Once you’ve picked a more niche topic to explore, you need to do your due diligence and explore other research projects on the same topic.

This practice will help you learn more about your chosen topic, ask more specific questions, and avoid covering existing projects.

For the best results, we recommend creating a research folder of associated published papers to reference throughout your project. This makes it much easier to cite direct references and find inspiration down the line.

Find a topic you enjoy and ask questions

Once you’ve spent time researching and collecting references for your study, you finally get to explore.

Whether this research project is for work, school, or just for fun, having a passion for your research will make the project much more enjoyable. (Trust us, there will be times when that is the only thing that keeps you going.)

Now you’ve decided on the topic, ask more nuanced questions you might want to explore.

If you can, pick the direction that interests you the most to make the research process much more enjoyable.

61 psychology topics to research in 2024

Need some extra help starting your psychology research project on the right foot? Explore our list of 61 cutting-edge, in-demand psychology research topics to use as a starting point for your research journey.

Psychology research topics for university students

As a university student, it can be hard to pick a research topic that fits the scope of your classes and is still compelling and unique.

Here are a few exciting topics we recommend exploring for your next assigned research project:

Mental health in post-secondary students

Seeking post-secondary education is a stressful and overwhelming experience for most students, making this topic a great choice to explore for your in-class research paper.

Examples of post-secondary mental health research topics include:

Student mental health status during exam season

Mental health disorder prevalence based on study major

The impact of chronic school stress on overall quality of life

The impacts of cyberbullying

Cyberbullying can occur at all ages, starting as early as elementary school and carrying through into professional workplaces.

Examples of cyberbullying-based research topics you can study include:

The impact of cyberbullying on self-esteem

Common reasons people engage in cyberbullying

Cyberbullying themes and commonly used terms

Cyberbullying habits in children vs. adults

The long-term effects of cyberbullying

Clinical psychology research topics

If you’re looking to take a more clinical approach to your next project, here are a few topics that involve direct patient assessment for you to consider:

Chronic pain and mental health

Living with chronic pain dramatically impacts every aspect of a person’s life, including their mental and emotional health.

Here are a few examples of in-demand pain-related psychology research topics:

The connection between diabetic neuropathy and depression

Neurological pain and its connection to mental health disorders

Efficacy of meditation and mindfulness for pain management

The long-term effects of insomnia

Insomnia is where you have difficulty falling or staying asleep. It’s a common health concern that impacts millions of people worldwide.

This is an excellent topic because insomnia can have a variety of causes, offering many research possibilities.

Here are a few compelling psychology research topics about insomnia you could investigate:

The prevalence of insomnia based on age, gender, and ethnicity

Insomnia and its impact on workplace productivity

The connection between insomnia and mental health disorders

Efficacy and use of melatonin supplements for insomnia

The risks and benefits of prescription insomnia medications

Lifestyle options for managing insomnia symptoms

The efficacy of mental health treatment options

Management and treatment of mental health conditions is an ever-changing area of study. If you can witness or participate in mental health therapies, this can make a great research project.

Examples of mental health treatment-related psychology research topics include:

The efficacy of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for patients with severe anxiety

The benefits and drawbacks of group vs. individual therapy sessions

Music therapy for mental health disorders

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) for patients with depression

Controversial psychology research paper topics

If you are looking to explore a more cutting-edge or modern psychology topic, you can delve into a variety of controversial and topical options:

The impact of social media and digital platforms

Ever since access to internet forums and video games became more commonplace, there’s been growing concern about the impact these digital platforms have on mental health.

Examples of social media and video game-related psychology research topics include:

The effect of edited images on self-confidence

How social media platforms impact social behavior

Video games and their impact on teenage anger and violence

Digital communication and the rapid spread of misinformation

The development of digital friendships

Psychotropic medications for mental health

In recent years, the interest in using psychoactive medications to treat and manage health conditions has increased despite their inherently controversial nature.

Examples of psychotropic medication-related research topics include:

The risks and benefits of using psilocybin mushrooms for managing anxiety

The impact of marijuana on early-onset psychosis

Childhood marijuana use and related prevalence of mental health conditions

Ketamine and its use for complex PTSD (C-PTSD) symptom management

The effect of long-term psychedelic use and mental health conditions

Mental health disorder research topics

As one of the most popular subsections of psychology, studying mental health disorders and how they impact quality of life is an essential and impactful area of research.

While studies in these areas are common, there’s always room for additional exploration, including the following hot-button topics:

Anxiety and depression disorders

Anxiety and depression are well-known and heavily researched mental health disorders.

Despite this, we still don’t know many things about these conditions, making them great candidates for psychology research projects:

Social anxiety and its connection to chronic loneliness

C-PTSD symptoms and causes

The development of phobias

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) behaviors and symptoms

Depression triggers and causes

Self-care tools and resources for depression

The prevalence of anxiety and depression in particular age groups or geographic areas

Bipolar disorder

Bipolar disorder is a complex and multi-faceted area of psychology research.

Use your research skills to learn more about this condition and its impact by choosing any of the following topics:

Early signs of bipolar disorder

The incidence of bipolar disorder in young adults

The efficacy of existing bipolar treatment options

Bipolar medication side effects

Cognitive behavioral therapy for people with bipolar

Schizoaffective disorder

Schizoaffective disorder is often stigmatized, and less common mental health disorders are a hotbed for new and exciting research.

Here are a few examples of interesting research topics related to this mental health disorder:

The prevalence of schizoaffective disorder by certain age groups or geographic locations

Risk factors for developing schizoaffective disorder

The prevalence and content of auditory and visual hallucinations

Alternative therapies for schizoaffective disorder

Societal and systematic psychology research topics

Modern society’s impact is deeply enmeshed in our mental and emotional health on a personal and community level.

Here are a few examples of societal and systemic psychology research topics to explore in more detail:

Access to mental health services

While mental health awareness has risen over the past few decades, access to quality mental health treatment and resources is still not equitable.

This can significantly impact the severity of a person’s mental health symptoms, which can result in worse health outcomes if left untreated.

Explore this crucial issue and provide information about the need for improved mental health resource access by studying any of the following topics:

Rural vs. urban access to mental health resources

Access to crisis lines by location

Wait times for emergency mental health services

Inequities in mental health access based on income and location

Insurance coverage for mental health services

Systemic racism and mental health

Societal systems and the prevalence of systemic racism heavily impact every aspect of a person’s overall health.

Researching these topics draws attention to existing problems and contributes valuable insights into ways to improve access to care moving forward.

Examples of systemic racism-related psychology research topics include:

Access to mental health resources based on race

The prevalence of BIPOC mental health therapists in a chosen area

The impact of systemic racism on mental health and self-worth

Racism training for mental health workers

The prevalence of mental health disorders in discriminated groups

LGBTQIA+ mental health concerns

Research about LGBTQIA+ people and their mental health needs is a unique area of study to explore for your next research project. It’s a commonly overlooked and underserved community.

Examples of LGBTQIA+ psychology research topics to consider include:

Mental health supports for queer teens and children

The impact of queer safe spaces on mental health

The prevalence of mental health disorders in the LGBTQIA+ community

The benefits of queer mentorship and found family

Substance misuse in LQBTQIA+ youth and adults

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Research Topics & Ideas: Psychology

100+ Psychology Topic Ideas To Fast-Track Your Research

If you’re starting out on the dissertation or thesis journey for your psychology degree, the very first challenge you’ll face is finding a solid research topic . In this post, we’ll help get the topic ideation process started by providing a meaty list of research ideas, spanning a range of psychology sub-disciplines. We’ll also look at some examples from actual theses and dissertations to give you an idea of what these look like in the real world.

NB – This is just the start…

The topic ideation and evaluation process has multiple steps (which we’ll explain a little later). Therefore, it’s important to recognise that this post is only the first step in finding a high-quality psychology-centred research topic. To develop a research topic, you’ll need to identify a clear and convincing research gap , and a viable plan of action to fill that gap.

If this all sounds a bit intimidating, be sure to check out our free dissertation mini-course , which covers the process of writing a dissertation or thesis from A-Z. You can also sign up for our free webinar that explores how to find a high-quality research topic. Alternatively, if you’d like hands-on help, have a look at our 1-on-1 coaching service .

Overview: Psychology-Related Topics

How to find a research topic (video)
Behavioural psychology
Clinical psychology
Cognitive psychology
Developmental psychology
Educational psychology
Forensic psychology
Social psychology
Sports psychology
Examples of actual dissertation topics
Free Webinar : Topic Ideation 101
Where to get extra help

How To Find A Research Topic

In the video below, we explain how to find suitable research ideas (in psychology or any field), and how to then refine those into well-articulated potential topics for your dissertation or thesis. We also discuss a few important evaluation criteria to help you make the right choice for your project.

Below you’ll find a list of research ideas to get your thinking started. Please note that these research topic ideas are intentionally broad and generic, so you will need to refine them a fair deal using the techniques we discussed in the video above.

We’ve grouped the topic ideas based on a few popular areas of psychology to make it a little easier for you to find something in your particular field of interest. That said, there is naturally some overlap between topics, so keep this in mind.

Research Ideas: Behavioural Psychology

Cultural variation in behaviour and mental health of adolescents during a disaster: a case study
The impact of parental drug use and risky behaviour on early child development
The effects of video game violence on aggressive behaviour among teenage boys in school
The relationship between adverse childhood experiences and adult risk-seeking behaviour
The impact of physical exercise on anxiety and health-harming behaviour
The relationship between personality traits and addiction behaviour
The effects of reinforcement schedules on decision-making and associative learning
The effects of daily mindfulness practice on stress and anxiety in middle-aged women
The use of behavioural interventions in the treatment of eating disorders in poorer communities
Understanding implicit cognitive processes involved in the over-consumption of fast food
The use of cognitive behavioural therapy for alcohol addiction treatment
The impact of extensive technology use in children on long-term attention and focus
The impact of social media on self-destructive behaviour and poor mental health outcomes
Exploring the role of sleep and sleep deprivation on healthy behaviours

Research Ideas: Clinical Psychology

The use of mindfulness-based approaches in the treatment of anxiety disorders among college students
The use of technology in the delivery of psychological services in war-torn countries
The effectiveness of dialectical behaviour therapy for borderline personality disorder
The use of virtual reality technology in the treatment of phobias and PTSD among war veterans
The role of childhood adversity on adult mental health in immigrant populations in the USA
The role of genetics and epigenetics in the development of bipolar disorder in Pakistani women: an integrative review
The effectiveness of pharmacotherapy in the treatment of social anxiety among hikikomori in Japan
The perception of healthcare workers and patients on the use of teletherapy for the delivery of psychological services
The impact of social support on mental health outcomes among single parents.
The effectiveness of integrative therapeutic approaches in the treatment of schizophrenia
The effectiveness of trauma-focused therapies on post-traumatic growth in domestic abuse survivors
The role and use of cognitive-behavioural therapy for depression among first-generation students
The effectiveness of family therapy in addressing childhood trauma and depression
The impact of cultural mistrust on the diagnosis and treatment of mental health issues in culturally-diverse populations
The effectiveness of group therapy on post-traumatic stress symptoms among survivors of sexual assault

Research Topic Kickstarter - Need Help Finding A Research Topic?

Research Ideas: Cognitive Psychology

The impact of lifelong aerobic exercise on cognitive function in old age
The effects of evening screen use on cognitive development in preschool children
The impact of sleep deprivation on decision-making among graduate students
The use of neuroimaging to understand the neural basis of memory retrieval
The effect of conservative religious homes on social functioning in LGBT+ adolescents
The role of positive emotions in working memory among high school learners
The neural basis of decision-making and problem-solving during undergraduate statistic assessments
The neural basis of language processing among adults learning English as a second language
The role of technological tools in improving working memory in older adults
The role of attention in emotional face processing among adult males
The impact of depression on cognitive function during ageing The impact of daily meditation and mindfulness practice on cognitive function
The relationship between increased protein intake and improved cognitive function
The effects of stress on cognitive function among final-year learners

Research Ideas: Developmental Psychology

The impact of maternal affection on cognitive, social, and emotional development
The effects of parenting styles on children’s executive function
The impact of late-night screen use on child development
The role of digital play on child development outcomes
Exploring the impact of poverty on early child development in Brazil
The trauma-informed care as moderating the impact of trauma on child development
Evaluating the relationship between peer relationship quality and child social development
The impact of child-targeted media and advertising on child behavioural development
The role of parental attachment in child resilience
The moderating impact of culture on bullying and child social development
The impact of single-parenting on child development in India
The impact of early educational interventions on child socio-emotional development
The impact of digital technology use on adolescent development and mental health
The impact of socioeconomic status on child executive function
The role of genetics and epigenetics on child neurodevelopmental outcomes linked to depression

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Research Ideas: Educational Psychology

The relationship between self-regulated learning and academic performance in asynchronous versus synchronous learning environments
Exploring effective parental involvement strategies and their impact on student achievement
The role of intrinsic motivation in formative assessment in the classroom
The impact of classroom management and practice on student learning and behaviour
University students’ preference regarding online learning environments
The effects of gentrification on student achievement in traditionally poor neighbourhoods
The impact of teacher expectations and academic self-concept on K12 student mathematics performance
The use and effectiveness of game-based learning in a high school biology classroom
The impact of prejudice on the relationship between student motivation and academic performance among Black university students
The impact of culture on second language English student learning preferences
The effects of student self-efficacy and engagement on academic performance in secondary school mathematics
The role of metacognition in learning musicality in hip hop
The role of small group instruction on teacher efficacy and stress in early childhood education
The perception and use of multimedia among high school biology teachers in France
The use of augmented reality applications and its impact on student learning, motivation and attitude

Research Ideas: Forensic Psychology

The impact of trauma on the psychological functioning of police officers and first responders
Understanding cultural considerations during forensic psychological assessment and treatment of trauma
Ethical considerations of the use of AI in forensic psychology in the legal system
The psychological factors related to recidivism among white collar female offenders in the USA
The psychological factors related to false confessions among juveniles
Understanding the use of psychological assessment in the evaluation of eyewitness testimony in criminal courts in England
The impact of trauma on the reflective functioning of adult female sexual assault victims
The use and effectiveness of psychological interventions in reducing recidivism among non-violent criminals
The impact of domestic violence on the mental health and forensic evaluation of men
Exploring the ethical considerations and use of behavioural analysis in the study of criminal behaviour
The use and limitations of neuropsychological assessment in forensic evaluations
The use of social media forensics in evaluating criminal behaviour in violent crimes
The racialised use of psychological assessment in the evaluation of competency to stand trial in Canada
Exploring the use and availability of virtual reality technologies in forensic psychology in Spain
The impact of motivational interviewing-based interventions among criminalized drug users

Research Ideas: Social Psychology

The impact of prejudice and discrimination on social behaviour among African immigrants in South Africa
The impact of social networks on behaviour and well-being among young adult females
The effects of social identity on non-conformity in University students
The effects of group dynamics on risk-seeking behaviour in adult men
The impact of social media on the quality of interpersonal relationships among high school learners
The impact of parental emotional intelligence on pro-social behaviour in children and adolescents
The effects of conformity and deviance on social attitudes and behaviour during a global recession
The effects of Tik Tok on social comparison and self-esteem among teenage girls
Understanding gendered differences in social influence and algorithms on impulsive decision-making
The effects of social support on mental health among healthcare workers in the UK
The effects of gender roles on social behaviour among trans teens
The impact of perceived power and social status on the behaviour of social media influencers
The impact of social norms on prosocial behaviour among women
The effects of community participation on aggression and violence in middle-aged men
The impact of culture and gender on social behaviour during the COVID-19 pandemic

Research Ideas: Sports Psychology

The moderating role of cultural factors on the relationship between mental health and sports performance in team sports
The role of mindfulness practice in addressing stress and anxiety in young national athletes
The relationship between team cohesion and performance in cricket teams
The effect of transformational leadership on female sports teams in Canada
The effect of positive self-talk on athletic performance and motivation among Olympic athletes
The use and perception of hypnosis in New Zealand team sports Understanding stress and burnout in University team athletes
The efficacy of personalised nutrition and diet on athletic performance among sprinters
Exploring mental preparation techniques and their effect on athletic motivation and resilience among team-sport athletes
Exploring the perception and understanding of goal-setting characteristics on athletic performance among team coaches
The effects of motivational feedback on the performance of female gymnasts
The perception and use of visualization and imagery among coaches as a means to enhance sport performance
The impact of sports injuries on mental health and recovery in high school athletes
The moderating role of sleep on mental toughness and sports performance in Olympic athletes
The use and perception of technology in sports training and performance in little league softball

Free Webinar: How To Find A Dissertation Research Topic

Psychology-Related Dissertations & Theses

While the ideas we’ve presented above are a decent starting point for finding a research topic in psychology, they are fairly generic and non-specific. So, it helps to look at actual dissertations and theses to see how this all comes together in practice.

Below, we’ve included a selection of research projects from various psychology degree programs to help refine your thinking. These are actual dissertations and theses, written as part of Master’s and PhD-level programs, so they can provide some useful insight as to what a research topic looks like in practice.

Effects of a Patient Question Prompt List on Outpatient Palliative Care Appointments (McDarby, 2022)
The role of affect and exercise goals in physical activity engagement in younger and older adults (Stojanovic, 2022)
Lay Theories about Whether Emotion Helps or Hinders Reasoning and Well-being (Karnaze, 2022)
The effects of blast-induced traumatic brain injury on two transgenic models of Alzheimer’s Disease (Gann, 2020)
Understanding the parental mind: Examining the stability of parental reflective functioning across the birth of a child and associations with maternal mind-mindedness (Pitzen, 2021)
An investigation of ineffective ally behaviours (Collier, 2019)
Response Inhibition-Related Beta Power: Distinguishing Cognitively Intact Elders by Risk for Alzheimer’s Disease (Evans, 2021)
Recognition Memory of Extremely High-Frequency Words (Miller, 2019)
The Relationship between Dementia Caregiver Burden and Caregiver Communications in a Memory Clinic Setting (Martin, 2021)
Examination of Maternal Versus Paternal Ratings of Child Pre-Injury Functioning in Predicting Child Post-Traumatic Stress Symptoms (Sayer, 2021)
Electromyography As A Means of Predicting The Rubber Hand Illusion (Teaford, 2021)
Linking Diversity Climate and Feedback Seeking Through Interpersonal Processes and Race Effects (Flores, 2021)

Looking at these titles, you can probably pick up that the research topics here are far more specific and narrowly-focused , compared to the generic ones presented earlier. This is an important thing to keep in mind as you develop your own research topic. That is to say, to create a top-notch research topic, you must be precise and target a specific context with specific variables of interest . In other words, you need to identify a clear, well-justified research gap.

Fast-Track Your Topic Ideation

Still unsure about how to find the right topic for your research project? Check out our private coaching services , where we work with psychology students on a 1:1 basis to help them find the perfect topic.

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Topic Kickstarter: Research topics in education

10 Comments

Great insight

A very interesting site that offers a variety of options regarding research topics.

You’re most welcome

A good platform to get information

Amazing and interesting options 👌

Very useful but had not any field of research in health psychology

I feel honored going through this lovely stuff put together. Thank you so much

I need counseling psychology research topics

very empowering and insightful presentations. Can I be assisted in crafting a school psychology-related research topic about African context

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IResearchNet

Psychology Research Paper Topics

In the list of psychology research paper topics below we have attempted to capture psychology’s vast and evolving nature in the 16 categories and more than 100 topics.

100+ Psychology Research Paper Topics

Research Paper Topics in History of Psychology

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Psychology Before 1900
Psychology in the 20th Century
Psychology Into the 21st Century
Women and Minorities in Psychology
Conducting Research on the History of Psychology

Research Paper Topics in Research Methodology and Analytic Techniques in Psychology

Statistical Techniques and Analysis
Nonexperimental Research Methods
Experimental Designs
Single-Subject Designs
Qualitative Research
Ethics of Psychological Research

Neuroscience Research Paper Topics

Biological Psychology
Neurotransmission
Traditional Neuroscience Research Methods
Imaging Techniques for the Localization of Brain Function
Drugs and Behavior
Behavioral Pharmacology

Research Paper Topics in Sensory Processes and Perception

Psychophysics
States of Consciousness
Somatosensory Systems

Research Paper Topics in Evolution and Behavior

Evolutionary Psychology: The Impact of Evolution on Human Behavior
Evolutionary Perspectives on Mate Preferences
Animal Learning and Behavior
Animal Cognition
Comparative Psychology

Research Paper Topics in Basic Learning Processes

Classical Conditioning
Recent Trends in Classical Conditioning
Taste-Aversion Learning
Operant Conditioning
Recent Trends in Operant Conditioning
Social Learning
Stimulus Equivalence

Research Paper Topics in Individual Differences and Personality

Psychometrics
Testing and Assessment
Personality Development
Personality Psychology
Intelligence
Motivation and Emotion

Cognitive Psychology Research Paper Topics

Memory: A Look Into the Past, Present, and Future
Memory and Eyewitness Testimony
Repressed and Recovered Memory
Language and Language Development
Thinking and Problem Solving
Critical Thinking
Artificial Intelligence

Developmental Psychology Research Paper Topics

Prenatal Development and Infancy
Childhood and Adolescence
Adulthood and Aging: Perspectives on Adult Development
Disabilities
Death, Dying, and Bereavement
Nature Versus Nurture
Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: Myth or Mental Disorder?

Social Psychology Research Paper Topics

Social Cognition
Attitudes and Attitude Change
Group Processes
Social Influence
The Nature of Love
Prejudice and Stereotyping
Leadership: Theory and Practice

Research Paper Topics in Health, Stress, and Coping

Health Psychology
Stress and Stressors
Coping Skills
Positive Psychology
Human Performance in Extreme Environments

Behavior Disorders and Clinical Psychology Research Paper Topics

Abnormal Psychology
Ethics of Therapists
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)
Anxiety Disorders
Dissociative Disorders
Personality Disorders
Mood Disorders: An Overview
Schizophrenia: Understanding a Split Mind
Psychoactive Substance Use Disorders
Psychotherapy
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy
Family Therapy and Therapy With Children
Pharmacotherapy
Forensic Clinical Psychology: Sensationalism and Reality
Sexual Offending Behavior

Applied Psychology Research Paper Topics

Industrial and Organizational Psychology
Human Factors
Community Psychology
Sport Psychology
Environmental Psychology
Psychology and the Law
Applied Behavior Analysis
Organizational Behavior Management

Research Paper Topics in Human Diversity

Gender and Sexual Orientation
Multiple Axes of Human Diversity
Psychology and Religion
Cross-Cultural Psychology and Research
International Psychology

Mental Health Research Paper Topics

Agoraphobia
Alcohol Problems
Alzheimer’s Disease
Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa
Antisocial Personality Disorder
Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
Autism and Pervasive Developmental Disorders
Borderline Personality Disorder
Classifying Mental Disorders: Nontraditional Approaches
Conduct Disorder
Dependent Personality
Mental Retardation and Mental Health
Mood Disorders
Narcissistic Personality Disorder
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
Panic Attacks
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS)
Psychopathology
Schizophrenia
Sexual Disorders
Somatization and Hypochondriasis
Substance Abuse

Assessment and Psychotherapy Research Paper Topics

Assessment of Mental Health in Older Adults
Behavior Therapy
Behavioral Medicine
Biofeedback
Brain Scanning/Neuroimaging
Child Sexual Abuse
Classifying Mental Disorders
Clinical Assessment
Cognitive Therapy
Community Mental Health
Constructivist Psychotherapies
Coping with Stress
Couples Therapy
Depression—Applied Aspects
Domestic Violence Intervention
Family Therapy
Hypnosis and the Psychological Unconscious
Meditation and the Relaxation Response
Personality Assessment
Premenstrual Syndrome Treatment Interventions
Psychoanalysis
Psychopharmacology
Sexual Dysfunction Therapy
Standards for Psychotherapy
Support Groups

For example, the early years of the 20th century witnessed the development and popularization of the now classic “schools of psychology” such as structuralism, functionalism, Gestalt psychology, and behaviorism. World War II and the Korean War spurred the development of modern clinical psychology. In the middle of the 20th century, individual schools rose to prominence and tended to dominate psychological research and theorizing. These dominant schools often clashed with clinical psychology. For example, disagreements between behaviorists and clinicians, which have their roots in the 1940s and 1950s, still persist.

Toward the end of the 1960s, the nature of the field began to change, and the face of modern psychology was forever altered. First, Ulrich Neisser’s 1967 book, Cognitive Psychology, ushered in the “cognitive revolution” and put behaviorism on the decline. Technological advances in computer technology, which allowed researchers to simulate human thought and memory processes and to create images of neurological processes, played an inestimable role in modern psychology’s metamorphosis. Likewise, advances in social concern and action increased psychologists’ awareness of psychology’s diversity and its ability to make significant contributions in these areas. To be sure, the face of contemporary psychology was changing drastically. In fact, in 1992 former American Psychological Association (APA) president George A. Miller believed that psychology had become “an intellectual zoo” (p. 40). Clearly, that situation has not changed, as psychology is evolving in the 21st century.

Nowhere are psychology’s expansion and change seen more clearly than in the evolution of the APA. Founded in 1892 by G. Stanley Hall at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, the APA began with 31 charter members. Currently, there are over 60,000 APA members and 56 divisions with which these members and other interested psychologists can affiliate. The diversity of the APA divisions clearly reflects the changing face of contemporary psychology as well as represents wide subjects of psychological research. They include General Psychology (Division 1), the Study of Social Issues (Division 9), Clinical Psychology (Division 12), Pharmacology and Substance Abuse (Division 28), Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities (Division 33), Media Psychology (Division 46), International Psychology (Division 52), and Trauma Psychology (Division 56). Clearly, psychology research topics in the 21st century continue to be diverse and evolving.

We believe that our choice of traditional and cutting-edge research paper topics reflects contemporary psychology’s diverse nature. For example, the “traditional” research paper topics include the following:

The cutting-edge research paper topics include the following:

Browse examples of psychology research papers to find sample research paper on all topics in the list above. Whether the research paper deals with a traditional topic or a cutting-edge topic, you will find that it presents the materials in a decidedly contemporary manner. We hope that students will enjoy reading the research papers on different topics in psychology as much as we have enjoyed collecting them for you.

Advancing Human Assessment pp 453–486 Cite as

Research on Developmental Psychology

Nathan Kogan 5 ,
Lawrence J. Stricker 5 ,
Michael Lewis 6 &
Jeanne Brooks-Gunn 7
Open Access
First Online: 18 October 2017

30k Accesses

1 Altmetric

Part of the book series: Methodology of Educational Measurement and Assessment ((MEMA))

Developmental psychology was a major area of research at ETS from the late 1960s to the early 1990s. This work was a natural extension of the programs in cognitive, personality, and social psychology that had begun shortly after the organization’s founding in 1947, consistent with Henry Chauncey’s vision of investigating intellectual and personal qualities. This chapter covers research on representational competence; parental influences, migration, and measurement; cognitive, personality, and social development of infants and young children; and cognitive, personality, and social development from infancy to adolescence.

Representational Competence
Paper Folding Task
Teaching Parents Behavior
infantsInfants
Young childrenYoung Children

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

You have full access to this open access chapter, Download chapter PDF

Developmental psychology was a major area of research at ETS from the late 1960s to the early 1990s, a natural extension of the work in cognitive, personality, and social psychology that had begun shortly after the organization’s founding in 1947, consistent with Henry Chauncey’s vision of investigating intellectual and personal qualities (see Stricker, Chap. 13 , this volume). For a full understanding of these qualities, it is essential to know how they emerge and evolve. Hence the work in developmental psychology complemented the efforts already under way in other fields of psychology.

A great deal of the research in developmental psychology was conducted at ETS’s Turnbull Hall in the Infant Laboratory , equipped with physiological recording equipment and observation rooms (e.g., Lewis 1974 ), and in a full-fledged Montessori school outfitted with video cameras (e.g., Copple et al. 1984 ). Hence, as Lewis ( n.d .) recalled, the building “had sounds of infants crying and preschool children laughing” (p. 4). Other research was done in homes, schools, and hospitals, including a multisite longitudinal study of Head Start participants (e.g., Brooks-Gunn et al. 1989 ; Laosa 1984 ; Shipman 1972 ).

A handful of investigators directed most of the research, each carrying out a distinct program of extensive and influential work. This chapter covers research by Irving Sigel , on representational competence ; Luis Laosa, on parental influences , migration , and measurement ; Michael Lewis, on cognitive, personality, and social development of infants and young children ; and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, on cognitive, personality, and social development from infancy to adolescence. Other important research was conducted by Gordon Hale (e.g., Hale and Alderman 1978 ), on attention; Walter Emmerich (e.g., Emmerich 1968 , 1982 ), on sex roles and personality development ; and Nathan Kogan (e.g., Wallach and Kogan 1965 ) and William Ward (e.g., Ward 1968 ), on creativity . (The Kogan and Ward research is included in Kogan, Chap. 14 , this volume.) In the present chapter, Kogan describes Sigel’s research, and Stricker takes up Laosa’s ; Lewis and Brooks-Gunn discuss their own work.

1 Representational Competence and Psychological Distance

Representational competence was the focus of Sigel’s research program. Roughly defined by Sigel and Saunders ( 1983 ), representational competence is the ability to transcend immediate stimulation and to remember relevant past events and project future possibilities. Also indicative of representational competence in preschoolers was the understanding of equivalence in symbol systems, whereby an object could be rendered three-dimensionally in pictorial form and in words.

The level of a child’s representational competence was attributed in large part to parental beliefs and communicative behaviors and to family constellation (number of children and their birth order and spacing). Earlier research by Sigel and collaborators emphasized ethnicity and socioeconomic status (SES ; see Kogan 1976 ). SES was retained in many of the ETS studies in addition to a contrast between typical children and those with communicative–language disabilities .

A conceptual model of the Sigel team’s research approach is presented in a chapter by McGillicuddy-DeLisi et al. ( 1979 ): Mothers’ and fathers’ backgrounds determined their parental belief systems. Belief systems, in turn, influenced parental communication strategies, which then accounted for the child’s level of cognitive development . It was a nonrecursive model, the child’s developmental progress (relative to his or her age) feeding back to alter the parental belief systems. In terms of research design, then, parental background was the independent variable, parental belief systems and child-directed communicative behavior were mediating variables, and children’s representational competence was the dependent variable. The full model was not implemented in every study, and other relevant variables were not included in the model. In most studies, family constellation (e.g., spacing and number of children), SES , the nature of the parent–child interaction task, the child’s communicative status (with or without language disability ), and the gender of the parent and child were shown to yield main or interaction effects on the child’s representational competence.

In the view of Sigel and his associates, the critical component of parental teaching behavior was distancing (Sigel 1993 ). Parental teachings could reflect high- or low-level distancing. Thus, in a teaching context, asking the child to label an object was an example of low-level distancing, for the child’s response was constrained to a single option with no higher-thinking processes invoked in the answer. By contrast, asking the child to consider possible uses of an object was an example of high-level distancing, for the child was forced to go beyond the overt stimulus properties of the object to adopt new perspectives toward it. In brief, the concept of distancing, as reflected in parental teaching behavior, referred to the degree of constraint versus openness that the parent imposed on the child. Sigel’s principal hypothesis was that higher-level distancing in child-directed communication by an adult would be associated with greater representational competence for that child. Correspondingly, low-level distancing by an adult would inhibit the development of a child’s representational competence.

An additional feature of Sigel’s research program concerned the nature of the task in the parent–child interaction. Two tasks were selected of a distinctively different character. For the storytelling task, age-appropriate edited versions of children’s books were used, with parents instructed to go through a story as they typically would do at home. The other task required paper folding, with the parent required to teach the child to make a boat or a plane.

1.1 Influence of Parental Beliefs and Behavior on Representational Competence

Having outlined the conceptual underpinning of Sigel’s research program along with the nature of the variables selected and the research designs employed, we can now proceed to describe specific studies in greater detail. We begin with a study of 120 families in which the target child was 4 years of age (McGillicuddy-DeLisi 1982 ; Sigel 1982 ). Family variables included SES (middle vs. working class) and single-child versus three-child families. For the three-child families, there was variation in the age discrepancy between the first and second sibling (more than 3 years apart vs. less than 3 years apart), with the restriction that siblings be of the same sex. Each mother and father performed the storytelling and paper-folding tasks with their 4-year-old child. Proper controls were employed for order of task presentations. A total of 800 parent and child observations were coded by six raters with satisfactory interrater reliability .

The presentation of the research was divided into two parts, corresponding to the portion of the analytic model under investigation. In the first part (McGillicuddy-DeLisi 1982 ), the influence of the demographic variables, SES and family constellation, on parental beliefs was examined, and in turn the influence of parental beliefs for their prediction of overt parental behaviors in a teaching situation was explored. The second part, the child’s representational competence, was treated separately in the Sigel ( 1982 ) chapter. Note that the assessment of beliefs was focused exclusively on the parents’ views of how a preschool child acquired concepts and abilities, hence making such beliefs relevant to the parental strategies employed in facilitating the child’s performance in a teaching context.

Parental beliefs were assessed in an interview based on 12 vignettes involving a 4-year-old and a mother or father. The interviewer asked the parent whether the child in the vignette had the necessary concepts or abilities to handle the problem being posed. Further inquiry focused more generally on parents’ views of how children acquire concepts and abilities. Analysis of these data yielded 26 parental belief variables that were reliably scored by three coders. ANOVA was then employed to determine the influence of SES, family constellation, gender of child, and gender of parent on each of the 26 belief variables. Beliefs were found to vary more as a function of SES and family constellation than of gender of parent or child. More specifically, parents of three children had views of child development that differed substantially from those of single-child parents. For the parents of three children, development involved attributes more internal to the child (e.g., reference to self-regulation and impulsivity) as opposed to greater emphasis on external attributes (e.g., direct instruction) in single-child parents. The results as a whole constituted an intriguing mosaic, but they were post hoc in the absence of predictions derived from a theoretical framework . Of course, the exploratory nature of such research reflected the dearth at that time of theoretical development in the study of child-directed parental beliefs and behaviors.

Consider next the observed relationships between parental beliefs and teaching behaviors. Having shown that SES and family constellation influenced parental beliefs, the question of interest was whether such beliefs provided useful information about parents’ teaching behaviors beyond what might be predicted from SES and family constellation. To answer the question, stepwise regressions were carried out with SES and family constellation entered into the analysis first, followed by the belief variables. Separate regressions—four in all—were conducted for mothers’ and fathers’ performance on the storytelling and paper-folding tasks, the dependent variables.

Demonstration of belief effects on teaching behaviors would require that multiple correlations show significant increments in magnitude when beliefs were entered into the regression analysis. Such increments were observed in all four regressions, indicating that parents’ beliefs about their children’s competencies were predictive of the way they went about teaching their children on selected tasks. Noteworthy is the evidence that the significant beliefs varied across the two tasks and that this variation was greater for mothers than for fathers. In other words, mothers appeared to be more sensitive to the properties of the task facing the child, whereas fathers appeared to have internalized a set of beliefs generally applied to different kinds of tasks. Mothers would seem to have a more differentiated view of their children’s competencies and hence were more attuned to the nature of the task than were fathers.

Thus far, we have considered the relations among family demographics, parental beliefs, and teaching strategies. The missing link, the child’s cognitive performance, was examined in the Sigel ( 1982 ) chapter, where it was specifically related to parental teaching behaviors. The child’s responses to the storytelling and paper-folding tasks were considered (e.g., extent of engagement and problem solutions), as was the child’s performance on tasks independent of parental instructions. These latter tasks included Piagetian conservation and imagery assessments and the Sigel Object Categorization Task (Sigel and Olmsted 1970 ). The major hypothesis was that the parents’ uses of distancing strategies in their teaching behaviors would be associated with enhanced cognitive performances in their children—representational competence.

To address this hypothesis, stepwise regressions were analyzed. The results confirmed the basic hypothesis linking parental child-directed distancing to the child’s representational competence. This general observation, however, conceals the specificity of the effects. Thus mothers and fathers employed different teaching strategies, and these strategies, in turn, varied across the storytelling and paper-folding tasks. Of special interest are those analyses in which the mothers’ and fathers’ teaching behaviors were entered into the same regression equation. Doing so in sequence often pointed to the complementarity of parental influences . In concrete terms, the multiple correlations sometimes demonstrated significant enhancements when both parents’ teaching strategies entered into the analysis compared to the outcome for the parents considered separately. This result implied that the children could intellectually profit from the different, but complementary, teaching strategies of mothers and fathers.

1.2 Impact of a Communicative Disability

Sigel and McGillicuddy-DeLisi ( 1984 ) were able to recruit families who had a child with a communicative disability (CD), making it possible to compare such families with those where the child was not communicatively disabled (non-CD). It was possible to match the CD and non-CD children on SES , family size, gender, age, and birth order. Again, mothers’ and fathers’ distancing behaviors were examined in the task context of storytelling and paper folding.

In the case of the child’s intellectual ability, assessed by the Wechsler Preschool and Primary School Scale of Intelligence (WPPSI; Wechsler 1949b ), parental effects were largely confined to the CD sample. Low parental distancing strategies were tightly associated with lower WPPSI scores. Of course, we must allow for the possibility that the parent was adjusting his or her distancing level to the perceived cognitive ability of the child. In contrast, the child’s representational competence , as defined by the assessments previously described in Sigel ( 1982 ), was linked with parental distancing behaviors in both CD and non-CD samples, with the magnitude of the relationship somewhat higher in the CD sample.

Of course, these associations could not address the causality question: The parent might be affecting the child or reacting to the child or, more likely, the influence was proceeding in both directions. Sigel and McGillicuddy-DeLisi ( 1984 ) argued that low-level distancing strategies by parents discouraged active thinking in the child; hence it was no surprise that such children did not perform well on representational tasks that required such thinking. They were optimistic about CD children, for high-level parental distancing seemed to encourage the kind of representational thinking that could partially compensate for their communicative disabilities (Sigel 1986 ).

1.3 Belief-Behavior Connection

Working with a subsample of the non-CD families described in the previous section, Sigel ( 1992 ) plunged into the controversial issue of the linkage between an individual’s beliefs and actual behavior instantiating those beliefs. He also developed a measure of behavioral intentions—a possible mediator of the belief–behavior connection. Although the focus was naturally on parental beliefs and behaviors, similar work in social psychology on the belief and behavior connection (e.g., Ajzen and Fishbein 1977 ), where major advances in theory and research had occurred, was not considered.

Three categories of variables were involved: (a) parents’ beliefs about how children acquired knowledge in four distinct domains (physical, social, moral, and self); (b) the strategies that parents claimed they would use to facilitate the children’s acquisition of knowledge in those domains; and (c) the behavioral strategies employed by the parents in a teaching context with their children. The first two categories were assessed with a series of vignettes. Thus, in the vignette for the physical domain, the child asks the parent how to use a yardstick to measure the capacity of their bathtub. The parents’ view about how children learn about measurement constituted the belief measure; the parents’ statements about how they would help their child learn about measurement constituted the self-referent strategy measure. For the third category, the parents taught their child how to tie knots, and the strategies employed in doing so were observed. Note that the knots task involved different content than was used in the vignettes.

Parental beliefs regarding children’s learning were categorized as emphasizing cognitive processing (e.g., children figuring out things on their own) or direct instruction (e.g., children learning from being told things by adults). Parental intended teaching strategies were classified as distancing, rational authoritative (e.g., parent gives reasons with commands), or direct authoritative (e.g., parent offers statement or rule without rationale). Parental behavioral strategies were scored for high-level versus low-level distancing.

The three variable classes—parental beliefs, parental intended teaching strategies, and parental behavioral strategies—were intercorrelated. Substantial relationships were observed between parental beliefs about learning (cognitive processing vs. direct instruction) and the strategies the parent intended to employ. As anticipated, cognitive processing was associated with distancing strategies, and direct instruction was linked to authoritative strategies. Of course, both the beliefs and self-referent strategies were derived from the same vignettes used in the parental interview, suggesting the likely influence of method variance on the correlational outcomes. When the foregoing variables were related to the parents’ behavioral strategies in teaching the knots task, the magnitude of the correlations dropped precipitously, though the marginally significant correlations were in the predicted direction. Sigel ( 1992 ) attributed the correlational decline to variation across domains. Thus the belief–strategy linkages were not constant across physical, social, and moral problems. Aggregation across these domains could not be justified. Obviously, the shifting task content and context were also responsible for the absence of anticipated linkages. Conceivably, an analytic procedure in which parents’ intended strategies were cast as mediators between their beliefs and their behavioral strategies would have yielded further enlightenment.

1.4 Collaborative Research

The large majority of Sigel’s publications were either solely authored by him or coauthored with former or present members of his staff at ETS. A small number of papers, however, were coauthored with two other investigators, Anthony Pellegrini and Gene Brody, at the University of Georgia. These publications are of particular interest because they cast Sigel’s research paradigm within a different theoretical framework , that of Vygotsky ( 1978 ), and they introduced a new independent variable into the paradigm, marital quality.

In the case of marital quality, Brody et al. ( 1986 ) raised the possibility that the quality of the marital relationship would influence mothers’ and fathers’ interactions with their elementary-school age children. More specifically, Brody et al., leaning on clinical reports, examined the assumption that marital distress would lead to compensatory behaviors by the parents when they interact with their children in a teaching context. Also under examination was the possibility that mothers and fathers would employ different teaching strategies when interacting with the children, with the nature of such differences possibly contingent on the levels of marital distress.

Again, storytelling and paper-folding tasks were used with the mothers and fathers. Level of marital distress was assessed by the Scale of Marriage Problems (Swenson and Fiore 1975 ), and a median split was used to divide the sample into distressed and nondistressed subgroups. Observation of parental teaching strategies and the child’s responsiveness was accomplished with an event-recording procedure (Sigel et al. 1977 ) that yielded interrater reliability coefficients exceeding .75 for each of the eight behaviors coded. ANOVAs produced significant Marital Problems × Parent interactions for seven of the eight behavioral indices. Nondistressed mothers and fathers did not differ on any of the behavioral indices. By contrast, distressed mothers and fathers differed in their teaching strategies, the mothers’ strategies being more effective: more questions, feedback, and suggestions and fewer attempts to take over the child’s problem-solving efforts.

Fathers in the distressed group “behave in a more intrusive manner with their school-aged children, doing tasks for them rather than allowing them to discover their own solutions and displaying fewer positive emotions in response to their children’s learning attempts” (p. 295). Mothers in distressed marriages, by contrast, responded with more effective teaching behaviors, inducing more responsive behavior from their children. Hence the hypothesis of compensatory maternal behaviors in a distressed marriage was supported. The psychological basis for such compensation, however, remained conjectural, with the strong likelihood that mothers were compensating for perceived less-than-satisfactory parenting by their husbands. Finally, Brody et al. ( 1986 ) offered the caveat that the outcomes could not be generalized to parents with more meager educational and economic resources than characterized the well-educated parents employed in their study.

In two additional studies (Pellegrini et al. 1985 , 1986 ), the Sigel research paradigm was applied, but interpretation of the results leaned heavily on Vygotsky’s ( 1978 ) theory of the zone of proximal development. Pellegrini et al. ( 1985 ) studied parents’ book-reading behaviors with 4- and 5-year-old children. Families differed in whether their children were communicatively disabled. MANOVA was applied, with the parental interaction behavior as the dependent variable and age, CD vs. non-CD status, and parent (mother vs. father) as the independent variables. Only CD vs. non-CD status yielded a significant main effect. Parental behaviors were more directive and less demanding with CD children. Furthermore, stepwise regression analysis examined the link between the parental interaction variables and WPPSI verbal IQ. For non-CD children, high cognitive demand was significantly associated with higher IQ levels; for CD children, the strongest positive predictor of IQ was the less demanding strategy of verbal/emotional support.

In general, parents seemed to adjust the cognitive demands of their teaching strategies to the level of the children’s communicative competences. In Vygotskyan terms, parents operated within the child’s zone of proximal development. Other evidence indicated that parents engaged in scaffolding to enhance their children’s cognitive–linguistic performances. Thus parents of non-CD children manifested more conversational turns in a presumed effort to elicit more language from their children. Similarly, more parental paraphrasing with non-CD children encouraged departures from the literal text, thereby fostering greater depth of interaction between parent and child. In sum, parental scaffolding of their children’s task-oriented behavior activated the potential for children to advance toward more independent problem solving as outlined in Vygotsky’s theory.

We turn, finally, to the second study (Pellegrini et al. 1986 ) influenced by Vygotsky’s theory . The research paradigm was similar to studies previously described. Again, gender of parent, children’s CD vs. non-CD status, and the tasks of book reading and paper folding constituted the independent variables, and the teaching strategies of the parents comprised the dependent variables. In addition, the extent of task engagement by the child was also examined. MANOVA was employed, and it yielded a significant main effect for the child’s communicative status and for its interaction with the task variable. ANOVAs applied to the separate teaching variables indicated that (a) parents were more directive and less demanding with CD children than with non-CD children; (b) parents were more demanding, gave less emotional support, and asked fewer questions with the paper-folding task than with the book-reading task; and (c) communicative status and task variable interacted: A CD versus non-CD difference occurred only for the book-reading task, with parents of CD children asking more questions and making lower cognitive demands.

The teaching strategy measures were factor analyzed, and the resulting four orthogonal factors became the predictor variables in a regression analysis with children’s rated task engagement as the criterion variable. For the paper-folding task, parents of both CD and non-CD children used high-demand strategies to keep their children engaged. For the book-reading task, parents of CD and non-CD children differed, with the CD parents using less demanding strategies and the non-CD parents using more demanding ones.

Pellegrini et al. ( 1986 ) had shown how ultimate problem-solving outcomes are of less significance than the processes by which such outcomes are achieved. Adult guidance is the key, with non-CD children requiring considerably less of it to remain engaged with the task than was the case for CD children. Hence the children’s competence levels alert the parents to how demanding their teaching strategies should be. Pellegrini et al. further recommended the exploration of the sequence of parental teaching strategies, as parents found it necessary on occasion to switch from more demanding to less demanding strategies when the child encountered difficulty (see Wertsch et al. 1980 ). In sum, the findings strongly support the Vygotsky model of parents teaching children through the zone of proximal development and the adjustment of parental teaching consistent with the competence level of their children.

1.5 Practice

An important feature of Sigel’s research program was linking research to practice (Renninger 2007 ). As Sigel ( 2006 ) noted,

efforts to apply research to practice require acknowledging the inherent tensions of trying to validate theory and research in practical settings. They require stretching and/or adapting the root metaphors in which we have been trained so that collaborations between researchers and practitioners are the basis of research and any application of research to practice. (p. 1022)

The research on representational competence and psychological distance has had widespread impact, notably for early childhood education (Hyson et al. 2006 ) and cognitive behavior therapy (Beck 1967 ).

2 Parental Influences , Migration, and Measurement

Laosa’s empirical work and his position papers spanned the psychological development of children, particularly Hispanics. His methodological contributions included test theory, especially as it relates to the assessment of minority children , and a standardized measure of parental teaching strategies. The major foci of Laosa’s work to be considered here are parental influences on children’s development, the consequences of migration for their adjustment and growth, and the measurement of their ability.

2.1 Parental Influences

Parental influence on children’s intellectual development has been a topic of long-standing interest to developmental psychologists (e.g., Clarke-Stewart 1977 ). A particular concern in Laosa’s work was Hispanic children , given the gap in their academic achievement. His early research concerned maternal teaching. Unlike much of the previous work in that area, Laosa made direct observations of the mothers teaching their children, instead of relying on mothers’ self-reports about interactions with their children, and distinguished between two likely SES determinants of their teaching: education and occupation. In a study of Hispanic mother–child dyads (Laosa 1978 ), mother’s education correlated positively with praising and asking questions during the teaching and correlated negatively with modeling (i.e., the mother working on the learning task herself while the child observes). However, mother’s occupation did not correlate with any of the teaching variables, and neither did father’s occupation. Laosa speculated that the education-linked differences in teaching strategies account for the relationship between mothers’ education and their children’s intellectual development found in other research (e.g., Bradley et al. 1977 ). Subsequently, Laosa ( 1980b ) also suggested that the more highly educated mothers imitate how they were taught in school.

In a follow-up study of Hispanic and non-Hispanic White mother–child dyads (Laosa 1980b ), the two groups differed on most of the teaching variables. Non-Hispanic White mothers praised and asked questions more, and Hispanic mothers modeled, gave visual cues, directed, and punished or restrained more. However, when mothers’ education was statistically controlled, the differences between the groups disappeared; controlling for mothers’ or fathers’ occupation did not reduce the differences.

In a third study, with the Hispanic mother–child dyads (Laosa 1980a ), mother’s field independence, assessed by the Embedded Figure Test (Witkin et al. 1971 ) and WAIS Block Design (Wechsler 1955 ), correlated positively with mother’s asking questions and praising, and correlated negatively with mother’s modeling. The correlations were reduced, but their pattern was similar when mother’s education was statistically controlled. Laosa suggested that asking questions and praising are self-discovery approaches to learning that reflect field independence, whereas modeling is a concrete approach that reflects field dependence; hence mothers were using strategies that foster their own cognitive style in their children. Mother’s teaching strategies, in fact, correlated modestly but inconsistently with the children’s field independence, as measured by the Children’s Embedded Figures Test (Witkin et al. 1971 ), WISC Block Design (Wechsler 1949a ), and Human Figure Drawing (Harris 1963 ), another measure of field independence. Most of the teaching strategies had scattered correlations with the Children’s Embedded Figures Test and Block Design: positive correlations with asking questions and praising (field-independent strategies) and negative correlations with modeling, punishing or restraining, and giving visual cues (field-dependent strategies).

In Laosa’s later research, a recurring topic was the impact of parents’ education on their children’s intellectual development; this line of work was presumably motivated by the influence of education in his maternal-teaching studies. Laosa ( 1982b ) viewed parental education as impacting the parent–child interaction and presented a conceptual model of this interaction as the mediator between parent education and the child’s development. He reported further analyses of the samples of Hispanic and non-Hispanic White mother–child dyads.

In one analysis, non-Hispanic White mothers and fathers read to their children more than did Hispanic parents. When parents’ education was statistically controlled, the group difference disappeared, but controlling for parents’ occupation did not reduce it. In addition, non-Hispanic mothers had higher realistic educational aspirations for their children (“ realistically , how much education do you think your child will receive?”); this difference also disappeared when mothers’ education was controlled but not when their occupation was controlled.

In another analysis, mother’s education correlated positively in both the Hispanic and non-Hispanic White groups with mother’s reading to the child, but father’s education was uncorrelated with father’s reading to the child in either group. Parent’s occupation did not correlate with reading in the two groups. In both groups, mother’s education also correlated positively with mother’s educational aspirations for the child, but mother’s occupation was uncorrelated.

Also, in an analysis of the Hispanic group, mother’s education correlated positively with the child’s ability to read or write before kindergarten, though father’s education was uncorrelated. Parent’s occupation was also uncorrelated with literacy . In addition, parent’s education correlated positively with their use of English with the child; parent’s occupation also correlated positively but weakly with English use.

Laosa argued that the set of findings, in total, suggests that the lower educational level of Hispanic parents produced a discontinuity between their children’s home and school environments that adversely affected academic achievement.

He explored the consequences of these parental influences on the test performance of 3-year-olds in two studies. In the first study (Laosa 1982a ), which targeted non-Hispanic White children , a path analysis was employed to assess the relationships, direct and indirect, between a host of family influences (e.g., mother’s education and occupation, mother’s reading to the child, nonparents in the household reading to the child, mother’s teaching strategies) and performance on the Preschool Inventory (Caldwell 1970 ), a test of verbal, quantitative, and perceptual-motor skills for kindergarten children. A Mother’s Socioeducational Values factor (defined by mother’s education and occupation and mother’s reading to child) was the strongest determinant of test performance. Less powerful determinants included nonparents in the household (probably older siblings) reading to the child and mother’s use of modeling in teaching. Laosa highlighted two important and unanticipated findings: the apparent influence of siblings and the substantial and positive influence of modeling, contrary to the conventional wisdom that verbal teaching strategies, such as asking questions, are superior to nonverbal ones, such as modeling.

In the second study (Laosa 1984 ) of Hispanic and non-Hispanic White children , the groups differed in their means on three of the five scales of the McCarthy Scales of Children’s Abilities (McCarthy 1972 ): Verbal, Quantitative, and Memory. When a Sib Structure/Size factor (later-born child, many siblings) was statistically controlled, the group differences were unaffected. But when either a Language factor (mother uses English with child, child uses English with mother) or an SES factor (parents’ education, father’s occupation, household income) was controlled, the differences were reduced; when both factors were controlled, the differences were eliminated. The findings led Laosa to conclude that these early ethnic-group differences in ability were explainable by differences in SES and English-language usage.

2.2 Migration

In a series of white papers, Laosa reviewed and synthesized the extant research literature on the consequences of migration for children’s adjustment and development, particularly Hispanic children , and laid out the salient issues (Laosa 1990 , 1997 , 1999 ). One theme was the need for—and the absence of—a developmental perspective in studying migration: “what develops, and when, how, and why it develops” (Laosa 1999 , p. 370). The pioneering nature of this effort is underscored by the observation almost two decades later that migration is neglected by developmental psychology (Suárez-Orozco and Carhill 2008 ; Suárez-Orozco et al. 2008 ).

In a 1990 paper, Laosa proposed a multivariate, conceptual model that described the determinants of the adaptation of Hispanic immigrant children to the new society. Key features of the model were the inclusion of variables antedating immigration (e.g., sending community), moderator variables (e.g., receiving community), and mediating variables (e.g., child’s perceptions and expectations) between the stresses of immigration and the outcomes.

In a complex, longitudinal survey of Puerto Rican migrants in New Jersey schools, Laosa ( 2001 ) found that the majority of the student body were Hispanic in 46% of the schools and were native speakers of Spanish in 31%. Additionally, the majority of the student body was eligible for free lunch in 77% of the schools and was from families on public assistance in 46%. Laosa concluded that the migrants faced considerable segregation by ethnicity or race as well as considerable isolation by language in high-poverty schools, factors with adverse consequences for the students’ social and academic development.

2.3 Measurement

The measurement and evaluation of children’s ability and achievement, particularly the unbiased assessment of minority children, has long been beset by controversies (see Laosa 1977 ; Oakland and Laosa 1977 ). These controversies were sparked in the 1960s and 1970s by the Coleman report (Coleman et al. 1966 ), which suggested that average differences in the academic performance of Black and White students are more affected by their home background than by their schools’ resources, and by Jensen’s ( 1969 ) review of research bearing on genetic and environmental influences on intelligence. He concluded that genetics is a stronger influence, which many observers interpreted as suggesting that the well-established disparity between Black and White children in their average scores on intelligence tests is largely genetic in origin. The upshot was widespread concerns that these tests are biased and calls for banning their use in schools. These arguments were reignited by The Bell Curve (Herrnstein and Murray 1994 ), which concluded that intelligence is mainly heritable. As Laosa ( 1996 ) noted, “thus, like a refractory strain of retrovirus, the issues tend to remain latent and from time to time resurge brusquely onto the fore of public consciousness” (p. 155).

In a 1977 paper, Laosa summarized the earlier controversies and other criticisms of testing and discussed alternatives to current testing practices that had been developed in response. The alternatives included constructing “culture-fair” tests “whose content is equally ‘fair’ or ‘unfair’ to different cultural groups” (p. 14), translating tests from English, using norms for subgroups, adjusting scores for test takers with deprived backgrounds, devising tests for subgroups (e.g., the BITCH, a vocabulary test based on Black culture; Williams 1972 ), using criterion-based interpretations of scores (i.e., how well a student achieves a specific objective) instead of norm-based interpretations (i.e., how well he or she does on the test relative to others), employing tests of specific abilities rather than global measures like IQ, and making observations of actual behavior. Laosa cautioned that these alternatives may also be problematic and would need to be carefully evaluated.

In a companion piece, Laosa, joined by Thomas Oakland of the University of Texas, Austin (Oakland and Laosa 1977 ), provided a comprehensive account of standards for minority-group testing that had been formulated by professional organizations, the government, and the courts. They argued for the need to consider these standards in testing minority-group children.

Laosa ( 1982c ), in a subsequent paper on measurement issues in the evaluation of educational programs , specifically Head Start , delineated the concept of population validity and its applicability to program evaluation . Population validity deals with the question, “Do the results yielded by a given assessment technique have the same meaning when administered to persons of different sociocultural backgrounds?” (p. 512). Laosa discussed threats to population validity: familiarity (performance is influenced by familiarity with the task), communication, role relations (performance is influenced by the test taker’s relationship with the tester), and situational (e.g., physical setting, people involved).

In another paper, Laosa ( 1991 ) explicated the links between population validity, cultural diversity, and professional ethics. As an illustration, he described a study by Bradley et al. ( 1989 ) of children in three ethnic groups, Black, Hispanic, and non-Hispanic White, matched on their HOME inventory (Caldwell and Bradley 1985 ) scores, a measure of the home environment. The HOME inventory scores correlated appreciably with performance on the Bayley Scales of Infant Development (Bayley 1969 ) and the Stanford–Binet Intelligence Test (Terman and Merrill 1960 ) for the Black and non-Hispanic White children but not for the Hispanic children . Laosa suggested that this finding highlights the importance of evaluating test results separately for different ethnic groups.

Laosa pointed out that population validity is a scientific concern in basic research and an ethical issue in applied work, given the inability to predict the results in different populations from the one studied. He also noted that when population differences are observed, two questions need to be answered. One, relevant to applied work, is, Which populations react differently? The other question, pertinent to scientific research, but rarely asked, is, Why do they differ?

In his last paper on measurement issues, Laosa ( 1996 ), responding to The Bell Curve controversy, made several general points about test bias. One was that bias reflects the absence of population validity. He noted that this view accords with the Cole and Moss ( 1989 ) definition of bias: “Bias is differential validity of a given interpretation of a test score for any definable, relevant group of test takers” (p. 205).

Another point was that the definition of predictive bias in the then current third edition of the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (American Educational Research Association, American Psychological Association, & National Council on Measurement in Education 1985 ) is insufficient. According to the Standards , predictive bias is absent if “the predictive relationship of two groups being compared can be adequately described by a common algorithm (e.g., regression line)” (p. 12). Laosa took up the argument that intelligence tests cannot be considered to be unbiased simply because their predictions are equally accurate for different races or social classes, noting Campbell’s rejoinder that the same result would occur if the tests simply measured opportunity to learn (D. T. Campbell, personal communication, May 18, 1995).

The last point was that the consequences of test use also need to be considered (Messick 1989 ). Laosa cited Linn’s ( 1989 ) example that requiring minimum high school grades and admissions test scores for college athletes to play during their freshman year can affect what courses minority athletes take in high school, whether they will attend college if they cannot play in their freshman year, and, ultimately, their education and employment.

3 Cognitive, Personality, and Social Development of Infants and Young Children

Lewis studied infant’s cognitive attention and language ability, infants’ and young children’s physiological responses during attention, and infants’ social and emotional development . He also formulated theories of development as well as theories about the integration of children’s various competencies.

3.1 Social Development

Social development was a major interest, in particular, the mother–child interaction and the role this interaction played in the child’s development. This work on social development revolved around four themes: (a) the mother–child relationship, (b) the growth of the child’s social knowledge, (c) social cognition or the nature of the social world, and (d) the social network of children.

For example, in a 1979 volume (Lewis and Rosenblum 1979 ), The Child and Its Family , Lewis challenged the idea that the child’s mother was the only important figure in the infant’s early life and showed that fathers and siblings, as well as grandparents and teachers, were also key influences. And in a 1975 volume, on peer friendship in the opening years of life (Lewis and Rosenblum 1975 ), Lewis disputed the Piagetian idea that children could not form and maintain friendships before the age of 4 years. The finding that infants are attracted to and enjoy the company of other infants and young children , and that they can learn from them through observation and imitation, helped open the field of infant daycare (Goldman and Lewis 1976 ; Lewis 1982b ; Lewis and Schaeffer 1981 ; Lewis et al. 1975 ). Because the infant’s ability to form and maintain friends is important for the daycare context, where groups of infants are required to play together, this work also showed that the learning experience of young children and infants involved both direct and indirect interactions, such as modeling and imitation with their social world of peers, siblings, and teachers (Feiring and Lewis 1978 ; Lewis and Feiring 1982 ). This information also had an important consequence on hospital care; until this time, infants were kept far apart from each other in the belief that they could not appreciate or profit from the company of other children.

Another major theme of the research on social development involved infants’ social knowledge. In a series of papers, Lewis was able to show that infants could discriminate among human faces (Lewis 1969 ); that they were learning about their gender (Lewis and Brooks 1975 ); that they were showing sex-role-appropriate behaviors (Feiring and Lewis 1979 ; Goldberg and Lewis 1969 ; Lewis 1975a ); that they were learning about how people look, for example, showing surprise at the appearance of a midget—a child’s height but an adult’s face (Brooks and Lewis 1976 ); and that they were detecting the correspondence between particular faces and voices (McGurk and Lewis 1974 ). All of these results indicated that in the first 2 years, children were learning a great deal about their social worlds (Brooks-Gunn and Lewis 1981 ; Lewis 1981b ; Lewis et al. 1971 ).

The most important aspect of this work on social development was the child’s development of a sense of itself, something now called consciousness, which occurs in the second and third years of life. In the Lewis and Brooks-Gunn ( 1979a ) book on self-recognition, Social Cognition and the Acquisition of Self, Lewis described his mirror self-recognition test, a technique that has now been used across the world. Results with this test revealed that between 15 and 24 months of age, typically developing children come to recognize themselves in mirrors. He subsequently showed that this ability, the development of the idea of “me,” along with other cognitive abilities gives rise to the complex emotions of empathy, embarrassment, and envy as well as the later self-conscious emotions of shame, guilt, and pride (Lewis and Brooks 1975 ; Lewis and Brooks-Gunn 1981b ; Lewis and Michalson 1982b ; Lewis and Rosenblum 1974b ).

These ideas, an outgrowth of the work on self-recognition, led to Lewis’s interest in emotional development . They also resulted in a reinterpretation of the child’s need for others. While children’s attachment to their mothers was thought to be the most important relationship for the children, satisfying all of their needs, it became clear that others played an important role in children’s social and emotional lives. His empirical work on fathers (Lewis and Weinraub 1974 ) and peers (Lewis et al. 1975 ) led to the formulation of a social network theory (Feiring and Lewis 1978 ; Lewis 1980 ; Lewis and Ban 1977 ; Lewis and Feiring 1979 ; Weinraub et al. 1977 ).

3.2 Emotional Development

Lewis’s interest in social development and in consciousness led quite naturally to his research on emotional development, as already noted (Lewis 1973 , 1977b , 1980 ; Lewis and Brooks 1974 ; Lewis et al. 1978 ; Lewis and Michalson 1982a , b ; Lewis and Rosenblum 1978a , b ). Two volumes framed this work on the development of emotional life (Lewis and Rosenblum 1974b , 1978b ) and were the first published studies of emotional development. These early efforts were focused on the emotions of infants in the first year of life, including fear, anger, sadness, joy, and interest. To study emotional life, Lewis created experimental paradigms and devised a measurement system. So, for example, paradigms were developed for peer play (Lewis et al. 1975 ), social referencing (Feinman and Lewis 1983 ; Lewis and Feiring 1981 ), stranger approach (Lewis and Brooks-Gunn 1979a ), mirror recognition (Lewis and Brooks-Gunn 1979a ), and contingent learning (Freedle and Lewis 1970 ; Lewis and Starr 1979 ). A measurement system was created for observing infants’ and young children’s emotional behavior in a daycare situation that provided scales of emotional development (Lewis and Michalson 1983 ). These scales have been used by both American and Italian researchers interested in the effects of daycare on emotional life (Goldman and Lewis 1976 ).

3.3 Cognitive Development

Lewis’s interests in development also extended to the study of infants’ and children’s cognitive development, including attentional processes, intelligence, and language development (Dodd and Lewis 1969 ; Freedle and Lewis 1977 ; Hale and Lewis 1979 ; Lewis 1971b , 1973 , 1975b , 1976a , b , 1977a , 1978a , 1981a , 1982a ; Lewis and Baldini 1979 ; Lewis and Baumel 1970 ; Lewis and Cherry 1977 ; Lewis and Freedle 1977 ; Lewis and Rosenblum 1977 ; Lewis et al. 1969a, 1971 ; McGurk and Lewis 1974 ).

Lewis first demonstrated that the Bayley Scales of Infant Development (Bayley 1969 ), which were—and still are—the most widely used test of infant intelligence, had no predictive ability up to 18 months of age (Lewis and McGurk 1973 ). In an effort to find an alternative, Lewis turned to research on infants’ attentional ability, which he had begun at the Fels Research Institute, and developed it further at ETS. This work used a habituation–dishabituation paradigm where the infant was presented with the same visual stimulus repeatedly and then, after some time, presented with a variation of that stimulus. Infants show boredom to the repeated event, or habituation, and when the new event is presented, the infants show recovery of their interest, or dishabituation (Kagan and Lewis 1965 ; Lewis et al. 1967a , b ). Infants’ interest was measured both by observing their looking behavior and by assessing changes in their heart rate (Lewis 1974 ; Lewis et al. 1966a , b ; Lewis and Spaulding 1967 ). He discovered that the infants’ rate of habituation and degree of dishabituation were both related to their subsequent cognitive competence, in particular to their IQ. In fact, this test was more accurate than the Bayley in predicting subsequent IQ (Lewis and Brooks-Gunn 1981a , c ; Lewis et al. 1969 ; Lewis and McGurk 1973 ).

This research on attentional processes convinced Lewis of the usefulness of physiological measures, such as heart rate changes, in augmenting behavior observation, work which he also began at the Fels Research Institute and continued and expanded at ETS (Lewis 1971a , b , 1974 ; Lewis et al. 1969 , 1970 , 1978 ; Lewis and Taft 1982 ; Lewis and Wilson 1970 ; Sontag et al. 1969 ; Steele and Lewis 1968 ).

3.4 Atypical Development

Lewis’s research on normal development, especially on attentional processes as a marker of central nervous system functioning, led to an interest in atypical developmental processes and a program of research on children with disabilities (Brinker and Lewis 1982a , b ; Brooks-Gunn and Lewis 1981 , 1982a , b , c ; Fox and Lewis 1982a , b ; Lewis 1971c ; Lewis and Fox 1980 ; Lewis and Rosenblum 1981 ; Lewis and Taft 1982 ; Lewis and Wehren 1982 ; Lewis and Zarin-Ackerman 1977 ; Thurman and Lewis 1979 ; Zarin-Ackerman et al. 1977 ). Perhaps of most importance was the development of an intervention strategy based on Lewis’s work with typically developing children, the Learning to Learn Curriculum. Infants with disabilities were given home- and clinic-based interventions where their simple motor responses resulted in complex outcomes and where they had to learn to produce these outcomes, which served as operants—in effect, an applied-behavior-analysis intervention strategy (Brinker and Lewis 1982a , b ; Lewis 1978a , b ; Thurman and Lewis 1979 ).

3.5 Theories

Lewis formulated several influential theories about infant development . These included (a) a reconsideration of attachment theory (Weinraub and Lewis 1977 ) and (b) the infant as part of a social network (Weinraub et al. 1977 ). He also began work on a theory of emotional development (Lewis 1971b ; Lewis and Michalson 1983 ).

3.6 The Origin of Behavior Series

Lewis and Leonard Rosenblum of SUNY Downstate Medical Center organized yearly conferences on important topics in child development for research scientists in both child and animal (primate) development to bring together biological, cultural, and educational points of view. These conferences resulted in a book series, The Origins of Behavior (later titled Genesis of Behavior ), under their editorship, with seven highly cited volumes (Lewis and Rosenblum 1974a , b , 1975 , 1977 , 1978a , 1979 , 1981 ). The initial volume, The Effect of the Infant on the Caregiver (Lewis and Rosenblum 1974a ), was so influential that the term caregiver became the preferred term, replacing the old term caretaker. The book became the major reference on the interactive nature of social development —that the social development of the child involves an interaction between the mother’s effect on the infant and the effect of the infant on the mother. It was translated into several languages, and 15 years after publication, a meeting sponsored by the National Institutes of Health reviewed the effects of this volume on the field.

4 Cognitive, Personality, and Social Development From Infancy to Adolescence

Brooks-Gunn’s work encompassed research on the cognitive, personality, and social development of infants , toddlers, and adolescents , primarily within the framework of social-cognitive theory . Major foci were the acquisition of social knowledge in young children , reproductive processes in adolescence, and perinatal influences on children’s development. These issues were attacked in laboratory experiments, other cross-sectional and longitudinal studies, and experimental interventions . (A fuller account appears in Brooks-Gunn 2013 .)

4.1 Social Knowledge in Infants and Toddlers

In collaboration with Lewis, Brooks-Gunn carried out a series of studies on the development of early knowledge about the self and others in infancy and toddlerhood. They investigated how and when young children began to use social categories, such as gender, age, and relationship, to organize their world and to guide interactions (Brooks and Lewis 1976 ; Brooks-Gunn and Lewis 1979a , b , 1981 ) as well as the development of self-recognition as a specific aspect of social cognition (Lewis and Brooks-Gunn 1979b , c ; Lewis et al. 1985 ). This developmental work was embedded in genetic epistemology theory as well as social-cognitive theory , with a strong focus on the idea that the self (or person) only develops in relation to others and that the self continues to evolve over time, as does the relation to others.

The studies demonstrated that social knowledge develops very early. Infants shown pictures of their parents, strange adults, and 5-year olds and asked, Who is that? were able to label their parents’ pictures as mommy and poppy, labeling their fathers’ pictures more accurately and earlier than their mothers’ (Brooks-Gunn and Lewis 1979b ). Shown pictures of their parents and strange adults, infants smiled more often and looked longer at their parents’ pictures (Brooks-Gunn and Lewis 1981 ). And when infants were approached by strangers—5-year-old boys and girls, adult men and women, and a midget woman—the children discriminated among them on the basis of age and height, smiling and moving toward the children but frowning and moving away from the adults and, compared to the other adults, watching the midget more intently and averting their gaze less (Brooks and Lewis 1976 ).

4.2 Reproductive Events

4.2.1 menstruation and menarche.

Brooks-Gunn’s interest in the emergence of social cognition broadened to its role in the development of perceptions about reproductive events, at first menstruation and menarche. Her focus was on how social cognitions about menstruation and menarche emerge in adolescence and how males’ and females’ cognitions differ. Brooks-Gunn and Diane Ruble, then at Princeton University, began a research program on the salience and meaning of menarche and menstruation, especially in terms of definition of self and other in the context of these universal reproductive events (Brooks-Gunn 1984 , 1987 ; Brooks-Gunn and Ruble 1982a , b , 1983 ; Ruble and Brooks-Gunn 1979b ). They found that menstruation was perceived as more physiologically and psychologically debilitating and more bothersome by men than by women (Ruble et al. 1982 ). In addition, their research debunked a number of myths about reproductive changes (Ruble and Brooks-Gunn 1979a ), including the one that menarche is a normative crisis experienced very negatively by all girls. In fact, most girls reported mixed emotional reactions to menarche that were quite moderate. These reactions depended on the context the girls experienced: Those who were unprepared for menarche or reached it early reported more negative reactions as well as more symptoms (Ruble and Brooks-Gunn 1982 ).

4.2.2 Pubertal Processes

Brooks-Gunn’s research further broadened to include pubertal processes. With Michelle Warren , a reproductive endocrinologist at Columbia University, she initiated a research program on pubertal processes and the transition from childhood to early adolescence. Brooks-Gunn and Warren conducted longitudinal studies of girls to chart their emotional experiences associated with pubertal changes and the socialization practices of families . The work included measurement of hormones to better understand pubertal changes and possible emotional reactions. The investigations followed girls who were likely to have delayed puberty because of exercise and food restriction (dancers training in national ballet companies as well as elite swimmers and gymnasts) and girls attending private schools—many of the girls were followed from middle school through college (Brooks-Gunn and Warren 1985 , 1988a , b ; Warren et al. 1986 , 1991 ).

The private-school girls commonly compared their pubertal development and had no difficulty categorizing their classmates’ development (Brooks-Gunn et al. 1986 ). Relatedly, the onset of breast development for these girls correlated positively with scores on measures of peer relationships, adjustment, and body image, but pubic hair was uncorrelated, suggesting that breast growth may be a visible sign of adulthood, conferring enhanced status (Brooks-Gunn and Warren 1988b ).

The context in which the girls were situated influenced their reactions. In a context where delayed onset of puberty is valued (the dance world—most professional ballerinas are late maturers), dancers with delayed puberty had higher scores (relative to on-time dancers) on a body-image measure (Brooks-Gunn, Attie, Burrow , Rosso , & Warren , Brooks-Gunn et al. 1989 ; Brooks-Gunn and Warren 1985 ). (They also had lower scores on measures of psychopathology and bulimia; Brooks-Gunn and Warren 1985 .) In contrast, in contexts where delayed onset is not valued (swimmers, private-school students/nonathletes), delayed and on-time girls did not differ in their body images (Brooks-Gunn, Attie et al., Brooks-Gunn et al. 1989 ; Brooks-Gunn and Warren 1985 ).

Two publications in this program, in particular, were very widely cited, according to the Social Science Citation Index: Attie and Brooks-Gunn ( 1989 ), on eating problems, and Brooks-Gunn et al. ( 1987 ), on measuring pubertal status, with 389 and 323 citations through 2015, respectively.

4.2.3 Adolescent Parenthood

Given Brooks-Gunn’s research interest in menarche and other pubertal processes , it is not surprising that she moved on to research on pregnancy and parenthood, events that presage changes in self-definition as well as social comparisons with others. Brooks-Gunn joined Frank Furstenberg, a family sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania, in a 17-year follow-up of a group of teenage mothers who gave birth in Baltimore in the early 1970s (Furstenberg et al. 1987a , b , 1990 ). They charted the trajectories of these mothers as well as their children, who were about the age that their mothers had been when they gave birth to them. The interest was in both how well the mothers were doing and how the mothers’ life course had influenced their children.

In brief, the teenage mothers differed widely in their life chances: About one third were on welfare and three quarters had jobs, usually full-time ones. Characteristics of the mothers’ family of origin and of their own families (e.g., higher levels of education) and their attendance at a school for pregnant teenagers predicted the mothers’ economic success.

The outcomes for their teenage children were “strikingly poor” (Brooks-Gunn 1996 , p. 168). About one third were living with their biological father or stepfather. Half had repeated at least one grade in school, and most were sexually active. Maternal characteristics were linked to the children’s behavior. Children of mothers who had not graduated from high school were 2.4 times as likely as other children, and children of unmarried mothers were 2.2 times as likely, to have repeated a grade. And children of unmarried mothers were 2.4 times as likely to have been stopped by the police, according to their mothers.

The Furstenberg et al. ( 1987b ) monograph chronicling this study, Adolescent Mothers in Later Life, won the William J. Goode Book Award from the American Sociological Association’s Sociology of the Family Section and is considered one of the classic longitudinal studies in developmental psychology.

Brooks-Gunn and Lindsay Chase-Lansdale, then at George Washington University, also began a study of low-income, Black multigenerational families (grandmother/grandmother figure–young mother–toddler) in Baltimore to investigate family relationships, via home visits (Chase-Lansdale et al. 1994 ). One issue was the parenting by the grandmother and mother, as observed separately in videotaped interactions of them aiding the child in working on a puzzle. The quality of parenting depended on whether they resided together and on the mother’s age. Mothers’ parenting was lower in quality when they lived with grandmothers. (Residing with the grandmothers and sharing child caring may be stressful for the mothers, interfering with their parenting.) Grandmothers’ parenting was higher in quality when they lived with younger mothers than when they lived apart, but it was lower in quality when they lived with older mothers rather than apart. (Coresiding grandmothers may be more willing to help younger mothers, whom they view as needing assistance in parenting, than older mothers, whom they see as capable of parenting on their own.)

4.3 Perinatal Influences

Another line of research expanded beyond teenage parents to look at perinatal conditions, such as low birth weight and pregnancy behavior (e.g., smoking, no prenatal care), that influence parenting and children’s development. Poor families and mothers with low education were often the focus of this research, given the differential rates of both early parenthood and adverse perinatal conditions as a function of social class.

In a joint venture between ETS, St. Luke’s–Roosevelt Hospital, and Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, Brooks-Gunn studied low-birth-weight children and their parents, many from disadvantaged families because of the greater incidence of low-birth-weight children in these families. The work led to her thinking about how to ameliorate cognitive, emotional, and academic problems in these vulnerable children (Brooks-Gunn and Hearn 1982 ).

Brooks-Gunn joined Marie McCormick , a pediatrician then at the University of Pennsylvania, in a 9-year follow-up of low-birth-weight infants from previous multisite studies (Klebanov et al. 1994 ; McCormick et al. 1992 ). The focus was on very low birth weight infants, for more of them were surviving because of advances in neonatal intensive care.

At age 9, the low-birth-weight children did not differ from normal-birth-weight children on most aspects of classroom behavior, as reported by their teachers, but they had lower attention/ language skills and scholastic competence and higher daydreaming and hyperactivity; these differences were most pronounced for extremely low birth weight children. This pattern of differences resembles attention deficit disorder (Klebanov et al. 1994 ). The low-birth-weight children also had lower mean IQs and, at home, more behavioral problems, as reported by their mothers. The adverse health status of these children underscores the importance of efforts to reduce the incidence of premature births (McCormick et al. 1992 ).

4.4 Interventions With Vulnerable Children

4.4.1 low-birth-weight children.

Brooks-Gunn and McCormick also collaborated on two other research programs involving interventions with biologically vulnerable children, the majority of whom were poor. One program focused on reducing the incidence of low-birth-weight deliveries by providing pregnant women with child-rearing and health information. This program used a public health outreach model to locate pregnant women who were not enrolled in prenatal care; the intervention was located at Harlem Hospital. This effort was a logical extension of Brooks-Gunn’s work on adolescent mothers in Baltimore (Brooks-Gunn et al. 1989 ; McCormick et al. 1987 , 1989a , b ).

The women in the program were very disadvantaged: One fifth were adolescents , three quarters were single, and half had not graduated from high school. The birth weight of their infants was unrelated to traditional risk factors: mother’s demographic (e.g., education) and psychosocial characteristics (e.g., social support). This outcome suggests that low birth weight in poor populations is largely due to poverty per se. Birth weight was associated with the adequacy of prenatal care (Brooks-Gunn et al. 1988 ; McCormick et al. 1987 ).

The outreach program was extensive—four local people searching for eligible women over the course of a year, each making roughly 20 to 25 contacts daily—but recruited only 52 additional women, at a cost of about $850 each. The labor-intensive and expensive nature of this outreach effort indicates that more cost-effective alternatives are needed (Brooks-Gunn et al. 1988 , 1989 ).

The other program involved the design and implementation of an early intervention for premature, low-birth-weight infants : enrollment in a child development education center and family support sessions. This program was initiated in eight sites and included almost 1000 children and their families; randomization was used to construct treatment and control groups. These children were followed through their 18th year of life, with the intervention from birth to 3 years of age being evaluated by Brooks-Gunn (Infant Health and Development Program 1990 ). The 3-year-olds in the intervention group had higher mean IQs and fewer maternally reported behavior problems, suggesting that early intervention may decrease low-birth-weight infants’ risk of later developmental disability .

4.4.2 Head Start

Brooks-Gunn also carried out a notable evaluation of Head Start, based on data from an earlier longitudinal study conducted at ETS in the 1970s. The ETS–Head Start Longitudinal Study, directed by Shipman ( 1972 , 1973 ), had canvassed poor school districts in three communities in an effort to identify and recruit for the study all children who were 3 ½ to 4 ½ years old, the Head Start population. The children were then assessed and information about their families was obtained. They were reassessed annually for the next 3 years. After the initial assessment, some children had entered Head Start, some had gone to other preschool programs, and some had not enrolled in any program. Clearly families chose whether to enroll their children in Head Start, some other program, or none at all (by processes that are difficult if not impossible to measure). But, by having the children’s assessments and familial and demographic measures at age 3, it was possible to document and control statistically for initial differences among children and families in the three groups. Children’s gains in ability in these groups could then be compared.

In several studies of two communities (Lee et al. 1988 , 1990 ; Schnur et al. 1992 ), Brooks-Gunn and her collaborators investigated differences in the children’s gains in the Head Start and other groups as well as preexisting group differences in the children’s demographic and cognitive characteristics. Black children enrolled in Head Start made greater gains on a variety of cognitive tests than their Black peers in the other groups by the end of the program (Lee et al. 1988 ) and diminished gains after 2 years (Lee et al. 1990 ). (The gains for the small samples of White children did not differ between the Head Start and other groups in the initial study; these children were not included in the follow-up study.) These findings imply that Head Start may have some efficacy in improving participants’ intellectual status. The Head Start children were the most disadvantaged (Schnur et al. 1992 ), seemingly allaying concerns that Head Start does not take the neediest children (Datta 1979 ).

5 Conclusion

As this review documents, ETS was a major center for basic and applied research in developmental psychology for decades. The number and quality of investigators (and their prodigious output) made for a developmental psychology program that rivaled the best in the academic community.

The research was wide ranging and influential, spanning the cognitive, personality, and social development of infants , children, and adolescents , with an emphasis on minority, working-class, and disabled individuals; addressing key theoretical, substantive, and methodological issues; using research methods that ran the gamut: laboratory and field experiments, correlational studies, surveys, and structured observations; and impacting theory, research, and practice across developmental psychology.

In common with ETS’s research in cognitive, personality, and social psychology (Stricker, Chap. 13 , and Kogan, Chap. 14 , this volume), this achievement was probably attributable to the confluence of ample institutional and financial support, doubtless due to the vision of Chauncey, who saw the value of a broad program of psychological research.

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Thanks are due to Nick Telepak for retrieving publications and to Isaac Bejar, Randy Bennett, and Ann Renninger for reviewing a draft of this chapter.

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Kogan, N., Stricker, L.J., Lewis, M., Brooks-Gunn, J. (2017). Research on Developmental Psychology. In: Bennett, R., von Davier, M. (eds) Advancing Human Assessment. Methodology of Educational Measurement and Assessment. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58689-2_15

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Research in Developmental Psychology

What you’ll learn to do: examine how to do research in lifespan development.

Desk shown from above, pair of hands seen gesturing towards a graph

How do we know what changes and stays the same (and when and why) in lifespan development? We rely on research that utilizes the scientific method so that we can have confidence in the findings. How data are collected may vary by age group and by the type of information sought. The developmental design (for example, following individuals as they age over time or comparing individuals of different ages at one point in time) will affect the data and the conclusions that can be drawn from them about actual age changes. What do you think are the particular challenges or issues in conducting developmental research, such as with infants and children? Read on to learn more.

Learning outcomes

Explain how the scientific method is used in researching development
Compare various types and objectives of developmental research
Describe methods for collecting research data (including observation, survey, case study, content analysis, and secondary content analysis)
Explain correlational research
Describe the value of experimental research
Compare the advantages and disadvantages of developmental research designs (cross-sectional, longitudinal, and sequential)
Describe challenges associated with conducting research in lifespan development

Research in Lifespan Development

How do we know what we know.

An important part of learning any science is having a basic knowledge of the techniques used in gathering information. The hallmark of scientific investigation is that of following a set of procedures designed to keep questioning or skepticism alive while describing, explaining, or testing any phenomenon. Not long ago a friend said to me that he did not trust academicians or researchers because they always seem to change their story. That, however, is exactly what science is all about; it involves continuously renewing our understanding of the subjects in question and an ongoing investigation of how and why events occur. Science is a vehicle for going on a never-ending journey. In the area of development, we have seen changes in recommendations for nutrition, in explanations of psychological states as people age, and in parenting advice. So think of learning about human development as a lifelong endeavor.

Personal Knowledge

How do we know what we know? Take a moment to write down two things that you know about childhood. Okay. Now, how do you know? Chances are you know these things based on your own history (experiential reality), what others have told you, or cultural ideas (agreement reality) (Seccombe and Warner, 2004). There are several problems with personal inquiry or drawing conclusions based on our personal experiences.

Our assumptions very often guide our perceptions, consequently, when we believe something, we tend to see it even if it is not there. Have you heard the saying, “seeing is believing”? Well, the truth is just the opposite: believing is seeing. This problem may just be a result of cognitive ‘blinders’ or it may be part of a more conscious attempt to support our own views. Confirmation bias is the tendency to look for evidence that we are right and in so doing, we ignore contradictory evidence.

Philosopher Karl Popper suggested that the distinction between that which is scientific and that which is unscientific is that science is falsifiable; scientific inquiry involves attempts to reject or refute a theory or set of assumptions (Thornton, 2005). A theory that cannot be falsified is not scientific. And much of what we do in personal inquiry involves drawing conclusions based on what we have personally experienced or validating our own experience by discussing what we think is true with others who share the same views.

Science offers a more systematic way to make comparisons and guard against bias. One technique used to avoid sampling bias is to select participants for a study in a random way. This means using a technique to ensure that all members have an equal chance of being selected. Simple random sampling may involve using a set of random numbers as a guide in determining who is to be selected. For example, if we have a list of 400 people and wish to randomly select a smaller group or sample to be studied, we use a list of random numbers and select the case that corresponds with that number (Case 39, 3, 217, etc.). This is preferable to asking only those individuals with whom we are familiar to participate in a study; if we conveniently chose only people we know, we know nothing about those who had no opportunity to be selected. There are many more elaborate techniques that can be used to obtain samples that represent the composition of the population we are studying. But even though a randomly selected representative sample is preferable, it is not always used because of costs and other limitations. As a consumer of research, however, you should know how the sample was obtained and keep this in mind when interpreting results. It is possible that what was found was limited to that sample or similar individuals and not generalizable to everyone else.

Scientific Methods

The particular method used to conduct research may vary by discipline and since lifespan development is multidisciplinary, more than one method may be used to study human development. One method of scientific investigation involves the following steps:

Determining a research question
Reviewing previous studies addressing the topic in question (known as a literature review)
Determining a method of gathering information
Conducting the study
Interpreting the results
Drawing conclusions; stating limitations of the study and suggestions for future research
Making the findings available to others (both to share information and to have the work scrutinized by others)

The findings of these scientific studies can then be used by others as they explore the area of interest. Through this process, a literature or knowledge base is established. This model of scientific investigation presents research as a linear process guided by a specific research question. And it typically involves quantitative research , which relies on numerical data or using statistics to understand and report what has been studied.

Another model of research, referred to as qualitative research, may involve steps such as these:

Begin with a broad area of interest and a research question
Gain entrance into a group to be researched
Gather field notes about the setting, the people, the structure, the activities, or other areas of interest
Ask open-ended, broad “grand tour” types of questions when interviewing subjects
Modify research questions as the study continues
Note patterns or consistencies
Explore new areas deemed important by the people being observed
Report findings

In this type of research, theoretical ideas are “grounded” in the experiences of the participants. The researcher is the student and the people in the setting are the teachers as they inform the researcher of their world (Glazer & Strauss, 1967). Researchers should be aware of their own biases and assumptions, acknowledge them, and bracket them in efforts to keep them from limiting accuracy in reporting. Sometimes qualitative studies are used initially to explore a topic and more quantitative studies are used to test or explain what was first described.

A good way to become more familiar with these scientific research methods, both quantitative and qualitative, is to look at journal articles, which are written in sections that follow these steps in the scientific process. Most psychological articles and many papers in the social sciences follow the writing guidelines and format dictated by the American Psychological Association (APA). In general, the structure follows: abstract (summary of the article), introduction or literature review, methods explaining how the study was conducted, results of the study, discussion and interpretation of findings, and references.

Link to Learning

Brené Brown is a bestselling author and social work professor at the University of Houston. She conducts grounded theory research by collecting qualitative data from large numbers of participants. In Brené Brown’s TED Talk The Power of Vulnerability , Brown refers to herself as a storyteller-researcher as she explains her research process and summarizes her results.

Research Methods and Objectives

The main categories of psychological research are descriptive, correlational, and experimental research. Research studies that do not test specific relationships between variables are called descriptive, or qualitative, studies . These studies are used to describe general or specific behaviors and attributes that are observed and measured. In the early stages of research, it might be difficult to form a hypothesis, especially when there is not any existing literature in the area. In these situations designing an experiment would be premature, as the question of interest is not yet clearly defined as a hypothesis. Often a researcher will begin with a non-experimental approach, such as a descriptive study, to gather more information about the topic before designing an experiment or correlational study to address a specific hypothesis. Some examples of descriptive questions include:

“How much time do parents spend with their children?”
“How many times per week do couples have intercourse?”
“When is marital satisfaction greatest?”

The main types of descriptive studies include observation, case studies, surveys, and content analysis (which we’ll examine further in the module). Descriptive research is distinct from correlational research , in which psychologists formally test whether a relationship exists between two or more variables. Experimental research goes a step further beyond descriptive and correlational research and randomly assigns people to different conditions, using hypothesis testing to make inferences about how these conditions affect behavior. Some experimental research includes explanatory studies, which are efforts to answer the question “why” such as:

“Why have rates of divorce leveled off?”
“Why are teen pregnancy rates down?”
“Why has the average life expectancy increased?”

Evaluation research is designed to assess the effectiveness of policies or programs. For instance, research might be designed to study the effectiveness of safety programs implemented in schools for installing car seats or fitting bicycle helmets. Do children who have been exposed to the safety programs wear their helmets? Do parents use car seats properly? If not, why not?

Research Methods

We have just learned about some of the various models and objectives of research in lifespan development. Now we’ll dig deeper to understand the methods and techniques used to describe, explain, or evaluate behavior.

All types of research methods have unique strengths and weaknesses, and each method may only be appropriate for certain types of research questions. For example, studies that rely primarily on observation produce incredible amounts of information, but the ability to apply this information to the larger population is somewhat limited because of small sample sizes. Survey research, on the other hand, allows researchers to easily collect data from relatively large samples. While this allows for results to be generalized to the larger population more easily, the information that can be collected on any given survey is somewhat limited and subject to problems associated with any type of self-reported data. Some researchers conduct archival research by using existing records. While this can be a fairly inexpensive way to collect data that can provide insight into a number of research questions, researchers using this approach have no control over how or what kind of data was collected.

Types of Descriptive Research

Observation.

Observational studies , also called naturalistic observation, involve watching and recording the actions of participants. This may take place in the natural setting, such as observing children at play in a park, or behind a one-way glass while children are at play in a laboratory playroom. The researcher may follow a checklist and record the frequency and duration of events (perhaps how many conflicts occur among 2-year-olds) or may observe and record as much as possible about an event as a participant (such as attending an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and recording the slogans on the walls, the structure of the meeting, the expressions commonly used, etc.). The researcher may be a participant or a non-participant. What would be the strengths of being a participant? What would be the weaknesses?

In general, observational studies have the strength of allowing the researcher to see how people behave rather than relying on self-report. One weakness of self-report studies is that what people do and what they say they do are often very different. A major weakness of observational studies is that they do not allow the researcher to explain causal relationships. Yet, observational studies are useful and widely used when studying children. It is important to remember that most people tend to change their behavior when they know they are being watched (known as the Hawthorne effect ) and children may not survey well.

Case Studies

Case studies involve exploring a single case or situation in great detail. Information may be gathered with the use of observation, interviews, testing, or other methods to uncover as much as possible about a person or situation. Case studies are helpful when investigating unusual situations such as brain trauma or children reared in isolation. And they are often used by clinicians who conduct case studies as part of their normal practice when gathering information about a client or patient coming in for treatment. Case studies can be used to explore areas about which little is known and can provide rich detail about situations or conditions. However, the findings from case studies cannot be generalized or applied to larger populations; this is because cases are not randomly selected and no control group is used for comparison. (Read The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Dr. Oliver Sacks as a good example of the case study approach.)

A person is checking off boxes on a paper survey

Surveys are familiar to most people because they are so widely used. Surveys enhance accessibility to subjects because they can be conducted in person, over the phone, through the mail, or online. A survey involves asking a standard set of questions to a group of subjects. In a highly structured survey, subjects are forced to choose from a response set such as “strongly disagree, disagree, undecided, agree, strongly agree”; or “0, 1-5, 6-10, etc.” Surveys are commonly used by sociologists, marketing researchers, political scientists, therapists, and others to gather information on many variables in a relatively short period of time. Surveys typically yield surface information on a wide variety of factors, but may not allow for an in-depth understanding of human behavior.

Surveys are useful in examining stated values, attitudes, opinions, and reporting on practices. However, they are based on self-report, or what people say they do rather than on observation, and this can limit accuracy. Validity refers to accuracy and reliability refers to consistency in responses to tests and other measures; great care is taken to ensure the validity and reliability of surveys.

Content Analysis

Content analysis involves looking at media such as old texts, pictures, commercials, lyrics, or other materials to explore patterns or themes in culture. An example of content analysis is the classic history of childhood by Aries (1962) called “Centuries of Childhood” or the analysis of television commercials for sexual or violent content or for ageism. Passages in text or television programs can be randomly selected for analysis as well. Again, one advantage of analyzing work such as this is that the researcher does not have to go through the time and expense of finding respondents, but the researcher cannot know how accurately the media reflects the actions and sentiments of the population.

Secondary content analysis, or archival research, involves analyzing information that has already been collected or examining documents or media to uncover attitudes, practices, or preferences. There are a number of data sets available to those who wish to conduct this type of research. The researcher conducting secondary analysis does not have to recruit subjects but does need to know the quality of the information collected in the original study. And unfortunately, the researcher is limited to the questions asked and data collected originally.

Correlational and Experimental Research

Correlational research.

When scientists passively observe and measure phenomena it is called correlational research . Here, researchers do not intervene and change behavior, as they do in experiments. In correlational research, the goal is to identify patterns of relationships, but not cause and effect. Importantly, with correlational research, you can examine only two variables at a time, no more and no less.

So, what if you wanted to test whether spending money on others is related to happiness, but you don’t have $20 to give to each participant in order to have them spend it for your experiment? You could use a correlational design—which is exactly what Professor Elizabeth Dunn (2008) at the University of British Columbia did when she conducted research on spending and happiness. She asked people how much of their income they spent on others or donated to charity, and later she asked them how happy they were. Do you think these two variables were related? Yes, they were! The more money people reported spending on others, the happier they were.

Understanding Correlation

Scatterplot of the association between happiness and ratings of the past month, a positive correlation (r = .81)

With a positive correlation , the two variables go up or down together. In a scatterplot, the dots form a pattern that extends from the bottom left to the upper right (just as they do in Figure 1). The r value for a positive correlation is indicated by a positive number (although, the positive sign is usually omitted). Here, the r value is .81. For the example above, the direction of the association is positive. This means that people who perceived the past month as being good reported feeling happier, whereas people who perceived the month as being bad reported feeling less happy.

A negative correlation is one in which the two variables move in opposite directions. That is, as one variable goes up, the other goes down. Figure 2 shows the association between the average height of males in a country (y-axis) and the pathogen prevalence (or commonness of disease; x-axis) of that country. In this scatterplot, each dot represents a country. Notice how the dots extend from the top left to the bottom right. What does this mean in real-world terms? It means that people are shorter in parts of the world where there is more disease. The r-value for a negative correlation is indicated by a negative number—that is, it has a minus (–) sign in front of it. Here, it is –.83.

Scatterplot showing the association between average male height and pathogen prevalence, a negative correlation (r = –.83).

Experimental Research

Experiments are designed to test hypotheses (or specific statements about the relationship between variables ) in a controlled setting in an effort to explain how certain factors or events produce outcomes. A variable is anything that changes in value. Concepts are operationalized or transformed into variables in research which means that the researcher must specify exactly what is going to be measured in the study. For example, if we are interested in studying marital satisfaction, we have to specify what marital satisfaction really means or what we are going to use as an indicator of marital satisfaction. What is something measurable that would indicate some level of marital satisfaction? Would it be the amount of time couples spend together each day? Or eye contact during a discussion about money? Or maybe a subject’s score on a marital satisfaction scale? Each of these is measurable but these may not be equally valid or accurate indicators of marital satisfaction. What do you think? These are the kinds of considerations researchers must make when working through the design.

The experimental method is the only research method that can measure cause and effect relationships between variables. Three conditions must be met in order to establish cause and effect. Experimental designs are useful in meeting these conditions:

The independent and dependent variables must be related. In other words, when one is altered, the other changes in response. The independent variable is something altered or introduced by the researcher; sometimes thought of as the treatment or intervention. The dependent variable is the outcome or the factor affected by the introduction of the independent variable; the dependent variable depends on the independent variable. For example, if we are looking at the impact of exercise on stress levels, the independent variable would be exercise; the dependent variable would be stress.
The cause must come before the effect. Experiments measure subjects on the dependent variable before exposing them to the independent variable (establishing a baseline). So we would measure the subjects’ level of stress before introducing exercise and then again after the exercise to see if there has been a change in stress levels. (Observational and survey research does not always allow us to look at the timing of these events which makes understanding causality problematic with these methods.)
The cause must be isolated. The researcher must ensure that no outside, perhaps unknown variables, are actually causing the effect we see. The experimental design helps make this possible. In an experiment, we would make sure that our subjects’ diets were held constant throughout the exercise program. Otherwise, the diet might really be creating a change in stress level rather than exercise.

A basic experimental design involves beginning with a sample (or subset of a population) and randomly assigning subjects to one of two groups: the experimental group or the control group . Ideally, to prevent bias, the participants would be blind to their condition (not aware of which group they are in) and the researchers would also be blind to each participant’s condition (referred to as “ double blind “). The experimental group is the group that is going to be exposed to an independent variable or condition the researcher is introducing as a potential cause of an event. The control group is going to be used for comparison and is going to have the same experience as the experimental group but will not be exposed to the independent variable. This helps address the placebo effect, which is that a group may expect changes to happen just by participating. After exposing the experimental group to the independent variable, the two groups are measured again to see if a change has occurred. If so, we are in a better position to suggest that the independent variable caused the change in the dependent variable . The basic experimental model looks like this:

The major advantage of the experimental design is that of helping to establish cause and effect relationships. A disadvantage of this design is the difficulty of translating much of what concerns us about human behavior into a laboratory setting.

Developmental Research Designs

Now you know about some tools used to conduct research about human development. Remember, research methods are tools that are used to collect information. But it is easy to confuse research methods and research design. Research design is the strategy or blueprint for deciding how to collect and analyze information. Research design dictates which methods are used and how. Developmental research designs are techniques used particularly in lifespan development research. When we are trying to describe development and change, the research designs become especially important because we are interested in what changes and what stays the same with age. These techniques try to examine how age, cohort, gender, and social class impact development.

Cross-sectional designs

The majority of developmental studies use cross-sectional designs because they are less time-consuming and less expensive than other developmental designs. Cross-sectional research designs are used to examine behavior in participants of different ages who are tested at the same point in time. Let’s suppose that researchers are interested in the relationship between intelligence and aging. They might have a hypothesis (an educated guess, based on theory or observations) that intelligence declines as people get older. The researchers might choose to give a certain intelligence test to individuals who are 20 years old, individuals who are 50 years old, and individuals who are 80 years old at the same time and compare the data from each age group. This research is cross-sectional in design because the researchers plan to examine the intelligence scores of individuals of different ages within the same study at the same time; they are taking a “cross-section” of people at one point in time. Let’s say that the comparisons find that the 80-year-old adults score lower on the intelligence test than the 50-year-old adults, and the 50-year-old adults score lower on the intelligence test than the 20-year-old adults. Based on these data, the researchers might conclude that individuals become less intelligent as they get older. Would that be a valid (accurate) interpretation of the results?

Text stating that the year of study is 2010 and an experiment looks at cohort A with 20 year olds, cohort B of 50 year olds and cohort C with 80 year olds

No, that would not be a valid conclusion because the researchers did not follow individuals as they aged from 20 to 50 to 80 years old. One of the primary limitations of cross-sectional research is that the results yield information about age differences not necessarily changes with age or over time. That is, although the study described above can show that in 2010, the 80-year-olds scored lower on the intelligence test than the 50-year-olds, and the 50-year-olds scored lower on the intelligence test than the 20-year-olds, the data used to come up with this conclusion were collected from different individuals (or groups of individuals). It could be, for instance, that when these 20-year-olds get older (50 and eventually 80), they will still score just as high on the intelligence test as they did at age 20. In a similar way, maybe the 80-year-olds would have scored relatively low on the intelligence test even at ages 50 and 20; the researchers don’t know for certain because they did not follow the same individuals as they got older.

It is also possible that the differences found between the age groups are not due to age, per se, but due to cohort effects. The 80-year-olds in this 2010 research grew up during a particular time and experienced certain events as a group. They were born in 1930 and are part of the Traditional or Silent Generation. The 50-year-olds were born in 1960 and are members of the Baby Boomer cohort. The 20-year-olds were born in 1990 and are part of the Millennial or Gen Y Generation. What kinds of things did each of these cohorts experience that the others did not experience or at least not in the same ways?

You may have come up with many differences between these cohorts’ experiences, such as living through certain wars, political and social movements, economic conditions, advances in technology, changes in health and nutrition standards, etc. There may be particular cohort differences that could especially influence their performance on intelligence tests, such as education level and use of computers. That is, many of those born in 1930 probably did not complete high school; those born in 1960 may have high school degrees, on average, but the majority did not attain college degrees; the young adults are probably current college students. And this is not even considering additional factors such as gender, race, or socioeconomic status. The young adults are used to taking tests on computers, but the members of the other two cohorts did not grow up with computers and may not be as comfortable if the intelligence test is administered on computers. These factors could have been a factor in the research results.

Another disadvantage of cross-sectional research is that it is limited to one time of measurement. Data are collected at one point in time and it’s possible that something could have happened in that year in history that affected all of the participants, although possibly each cohort may have been affected differently. Just think about the mindsets of participants in research that was conducted in the United States right after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

Longitudinal research designs

Middle aged woman holding own photograph of her younger self.

Longitudinal research involves beginning with a group of people who may be of the same age and background (cohort) and measuring them repeatedly over a long period of time. One of the benefits of this type of research is that people can be followed through time and be compared with themselves when they were younger; therefore changes with age over time are measured. What would be the advantages and disadvantages of longitudinal research? Problems with this type of research include being expensive, taking a long time, and subjects dropping out over time. Think about the film, 63 Up , part of the Up Series mentioned earlier, which is an example of following individuals over time. In the videos, filmed every seven years, you see how people change physically, emotionally, and socially through time; and some remain the same in certain ways, too. But many of the participants really disliked being part of the project and repeatedly threatened to quit; one disappeared for several years; another died before her 63rd year. Would you want to be interviewed every seven years? Would you want to have it made public for all to watch?

Longitudinal research designs are used to examine behavior in the same individuals over time. For instance, with our example of studying intelligence and aging, a researcher might conduct a longitudinal study to examine whether 20-year-olds become less intelligent with age over time. To this end, a researcher might give an intelligence test to individuals when they are 20 years old, again when they are 50 years old, and then again when they are 80 years old. This study is longitudinal in nature because the researcher plans to study the same individuals as they age. Based on these data, the pattern of intelligence and age might look different than from the cross-sectional research; it might be found that participants’ intelligence scores are higher at age 50 than at age 20 and then remain stable or decline a little by age 80. How can that be when cross-sectional research revealed declines in intelligence with age?

The same person, "Person A" is 20 years old in 2010, 50 years old in 2040, and 80 in 2070.

Since longitudinal research happens over a period of time (which could be short term, as in months, but is often longer, as in years), there is a risk of attrition. Attrition occurs when participants fail to complete all portions of a study. Participants may move, change their phone numbers, die, or simply become disinterested in participating over time. Researchers should account for the possibility of attrition by enrolling a larger sample into their study initially, as some participants will likely drop out over time. There is also something known as selective attrition— this means that certain groups of individuals may tend to drop out. It is often the least healthy, least educated, and lower socioeconomic participants who tend to drop out over time. That means that the remaining participants may no longer be representative of the whole population, as they are, in general, healthier, better educated, and have more money. This could be a factor in why our hypothetical research found a more optimistic picture of intelligence and aging as the years went by. What can researchers do about selective attrition? At each time of testing, they could randomly recruit more participants from the same cohort as the original members, to replace those who have dropped out.

The results from longitudinal studies may also be impacted by repeated assessments. Consider how well you would do on a math test if you were given the exact same exam every day for a week. Your performance would likely improve over time, not necessarily because you developed better math abilities, but because you were continuously practicing the same math problems. This phenomenon is known as a practice effect. Practice effects occur when participants become better at a task over time because they have done it again and again (not due to natural psychological development). So our participants may have become familiar with the intelligence test each time (and with the computerized testing administration). Another limitation of longitudinal research is that the data are limited to only one cohort.

Sequential research designs

Sequential research designs include elements of both longitudinal and cross-sectional research designs. Similar to longitudinal designs, sequential research features participants who are followed over time; similar to cross-sectional designs, sequential research includes participants of different ages. This research design is also distinct from those that have been discussed previously in that individuals of different ages are enrolled into a study at various points in time to examine age-related changes, development within the same individuals as they age, and to account for the possibility of cohort and/or time of measurement effects. In 1965, K. Warner Schaie described particular sequential designs: cross-sequential, cohort sequential, and time-sequential. The differences between them depended on which variables were focused on for analyses of the data (data could be viewed in terms of multiple cross-sectional designs or multiple longitudinal designs or multiple cohort designs). Ideally, by comparing results from the different types of analyses, the effects of age, cohort, and time in history could be separated out.

Challenges Conducting Developmental Research

The previous sections describe research tools to assess development across the lifespan, as well as the ways that research designs can be used to track age-related changes and development over time. Before you begin conducting developmental research, however, you must also be aware that testing individuals of certain ages (such as infants and children) or making comparisons across ages (such as children compared to teens) comes with its own unique set of challenges. In the final section of this module, let’s look at some of the main issues that are encountered when conducting developmental research, namely ethical concerns, recruitment issues, and participant attrition.

Ethical Concerns

You may already know that Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) must review and approve all research projects that are conducted at universities, hospitals, and other institutions (each broad discipline or field, such as psychology or social work, often has its own code of ethics that must also be followed, regardless of institutional affiliation). An IRB is typically a panel of experts who read and evaluate proposals for research. IRB members want to ensure that the proposed research will be carried out ethically and that the potential benefits of the research outweigh the risks and potential harm (psychological as well as physical harm) for participants.

What you may not know though, is that the IRB considers some groups of participants to be more vulnerable or at-risk than others. Whereas university students are generally not viewed as vulnerable or at-risk, infants and young children commonly fall into this category. What makes infants and young children more vulnerable during research than young adults? One reason infants and young children are perceived as being at increased risk is due to their limited cognitive capabilities, which makes them unable to state their willingness to participate in research or tell researchers when they would like to drop out of a study. For these reasons, infants and young children require special accommodations as they participate in the research process. Similar issues and accommodations would apply to adults who are deemed to be of limited cognitive capabilities.

When thinking about special accommodations in developmental research, consider the informed consent process. If you have ever participated in scientific research, you may know through your own experience that adults commonly sign an informed consent statement (a contract stating that they agree to participate in research) after learning about a study. As part of this process, participants are informed of the procedures to be used in the research, along with any expected risks or benefits. Infants and young children cannot verbally indicate their willingness to participate, much less understand the balance of potential risks and benefits. As such, researchers are oftentimes required to obtain written informed consent from the parent or legal guardian of the child participant, an adult who is almost always present as the study is conducted. In fact, children are not asked to indicate whether they would like to be involved in a study at all (a process known as assent) until they are approximately seven years old. Because infants and young children cannot easily indicate if they would like to discontinue their participation in a study, researchers must be sensitive to changes in the state of the participant (determining whether a child is too tired or upset to continue) as well as to parent desires (in some cases, parents might want to discontinue their involvement in the research). As in adult studies, researchers must always strive to protect the rights and well-being of the minor participants and their parents when conducting developmental research.

Recruitment

An additional challenge in developmental science is participant recruitment. Recruiting university students to participate in adult studies is typically easy. Unfortunately, young children cannot be recruited in this way. Given these limitations, how do researchers go about finding infants and young children to be in their studies?

The answer to this question varies along multiple dimensions. Researchers must consider the number of participants they need and the financial resources available to them, among other things. Location may also be an important consideration. Researchers who need large numbers of infants and children may attempt to recruit them by obtaining infant birth records from the state, county, or province in which they reside. Researchers can choose to pay a recruitment agency to contact and recruit families for them. More economical recruitment options include posting advertisements and fliers in locations frequented by families, such as mommy-and-me classes, local malls, and preschools or daycare centers. Researchers can also utilize online social media outlets like Facebook, which allows users to post recruitment advertisements for a small fee. Of course, each of these different recruitment techniques requires IRB approval. And if children are recruited and/or tested in school settings, permission would need to be obtained ahead of time from teachers, schools, and school districts (as well as informed consent from parents or guardians).

And what about the recruitment of adults? While it is easy to recruit young college students to participate in research, some would argue that it is too easy and that college students are samples of convenience. They are not randomly selected from the wider population, and they may not represent all young adults in our society (this was particularly true in the past with certain cohorts, as college students tended to be mainly white males of high socioeconomic status). In fact, in the early research on aging, this type of convenience sample was compared with another type of convenience sample—young college students tended to be compared with residents of nursing homes! Fortunately, it didn’t take long for researchers to realize that older adults in nursing homes are not representative of the older population; they tend to be the oldest and sickest (physically and/or psychologically). Those initial studies probably painted an overly negative view of aging, as young adults in college were being compared to older adults who were not healthy, had not been in school nor taken tests in many decades, and probably did not graduate high school, let alone college. As we can see, recruitment and random sampling can be significant issues in research with adults, as well as infants and children. For instance, how and where would you recruit middle-aged adults to participate in your research?

A tired looking mother closes her eyes and rubs her forehead as her baby cries.

Another important consideration when conducting research with infants and young children is attrition . Although attrition is quite common in longitudinal research in particular (see the previous section on longitudinal designs for an example of high attrition rates and selective attrition in lifespan developmental research), it is also problematic in developmental science more generally, as studies with infants and young children tend to have higher attrition rates than studies with adults. Infants and young children are more likely to tire easily, become fussy, and lose interest in the study procedures than are adults. For these reasons, research studies should be designed to be as short as possible – it is likely better to break up a large study into multiple short sessions rather than cram all of the tasks into one long visit to the lab. Researchers should also allow time for breaks in their study protocols so that infants can rest or have snacks as needed. Happy, comfortable participants provide the best data.

Conclusions

Lifespan development is a fascinating field of study – but care must be taken to ensure that researchers use appropriate methods to examine human behavior, use the correct experimental design to answer their questions, and be aware of the special challenges that are part-and-parcel of developmental research. After reading this module, you should have a solid understanding of these various issues and be ready to think more critically about research questions that interest you. For example, what types of questions do you have about lifespan development? What types of research would you like to conduct? Many interesting questions remain to be examined by future generations of developmental scientists – maybe you will make one of the next big discoveries!

Lifespan development is the scientific study of how and why people change or remain the same over time. As we are beginning to see, lifespan development involves multiple domains and many ages and stages that are important in and of themselves, but that are also interdependent and dynamic and need to be viewed holistically. There are many influences on lifespan development at individual and societal levels (including genetics); cultural, generational, economic, and historical contexts are often significant. And how developmental research is designed and data are collected, analyzed, and interpreted can affect what is discovered about human development across the lifespan.

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115 Developmental Psychology Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best developmental psychology topic ideas & essay examples, 💡 interesting topics to write about developmental psychology, 📌 simple & easy developmental psychology essay titles, 👍 good essay topics on developmental psychology, ❓ developmental psychology essay questions.

The Significance of Lifespan Development in the Practice of Counseling Psychology The physical aspect of lifespan development is one of the important ones: it is related to the growth and development of the body and changes in the body and the brain.
Contribution Ancient Great Thinkers to the Growth and Development of Psychology Then, the relationship between the mind and the body perplexed ancient philosophers and this led to the development of psychology as an independent field of knowledge that considers both philosophy of the mind and physiology […] We will write a custom essay specifically for you by our professional experts 808 writers online Learn More
The History Development of Psychology: The Understanding of Human Behavior The aim of the paper is to identify the reasons that have shaped and led to the development of the history of psychology.
Developmental Psychology: Designing Educational Toys Nwokah argues that the educational value of a toy depends on the stage of development of the kid and that toys should be designed in such a way that they align with the child’s developmental […]
Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development – Psychology From birth to about the age of two years, a child goes through the sensorimotor phase of development. In addition, it is possible for some children to demonstrate the overlapping characteristics of the bordering stages […]
Theories of Developmental Psychology Ainsworth also invented the notion of the attachment figure as a secure pedestal which a child can use to explore the society.
Developmental Psychology: Executive Functions It is linked to the ability of a person to control behavior. They are linked to the ability of a person to be creative.
Developmental Psychology: The Impact of Family-Of-Origin on Adulthood Being a man, I have learned to take responsibilities aimed at providing for the needs and giving direction to members of my family.
Developmental Psychology of an Immigrant Family Krish, the middle child, belongs to the category of middle childhood, which follows the previous stage and lasts until the age of 12.
Developmental Psychology as Scientific Study The second step is to pinpoint the causes of behavior changes, such as the significance of genetic or biological variables, the impact of different experiences, and the effect of peers, parents, and other people.
Developmental Psychology Analysis It is critical to understand techniques for teaching reading in schools and kindergartens and their value in terms of children’s development.
Adolescent Development: Adolescent Psychology Due to the transition to the interactions between an individual and a group observed at the adolescent stage of development, the main features of psychological change in adolescents include alterations in self-identification and group belonging, […]
The Midlife Crisis in Developmental Psychology The midlife crisis exists, and it is associated with an awareness of the limitations of youth and the transience of the time allotted for life.
Renee Baillargeon Biography and Her Contribution to the Developmental Psychology She is the Alumni Distinguished Professor of Psychology and a faculty member of the Center for Advanced Study at the University of Illinois.
Self Concept: Developmental Psychology When I began to wonder about my inner self, sometimes I was sure to understand the real me and have a divided definition of who I am.
Child Development and Evolutionary Psychology Judging from the point of view of fitness the authors analyze the evolved psychological mechanisms in the perspective of their adaptivity, apply functional analysis to it, and deal with such mechanisms as pregnancy-related sickness.
Developmental Psychology: Autism and Vaccination Vaccination of infants is widely used today as the pattern of endemic diseases can be explained in terms of interplay of social, physical and biological factors in an area that is conducive to a continuous […]
Lifespan Development: Adolescent Psychology Physical changes occur in the child during the period of adolescence as they hit puberty. It is known as the formal operational period and is the fourth stage in the life of the individual.
Development Psychology: Aging Attitudes in Mass Media Considering the problem of attitudes towards aging in mass media, one can observe that the elderly population is having been viewed in a different manner if compared to the people of young age.
Lifespan Development Psychology: Observation at Cosmo Park Finally, the paper will discern the parenting style that the parents were using on the subject being observed.”Life Span is the study of life from the womb to the tomb”.
The Development of American School Psychology The major reasons for envisage educational psychology at length as “the technical study of psychology in learning” focus on the marked compensation of this beginning for concentrating research and teaching on the important harms of […]
Developmental Psychology of a Child During pregnancy, it is the role of the mother to ensure that she attends clinics in order for the health of the baby and the mother to be checked.
Developmental Psychology. Birth Process One should keep that information and be able to help others as you still benefit so no ignorance to what the doctor advices you.
Developmental Psychology: Cognitive Theories For Piaget the human psyche was the only evolutionary product that performed the function of balancing the human being with the world, and was and instrument of adaptation to the environment.
Developmental Psychology: Language Acquisition When examining the notion of language acquisition and understanding, it is prudent that one first considers the age of the child. In order for a child to acquire language, it is necessary for the child […]
Developmental Psychology and Behavioral Factors Therefore, the factor of behavior is not subject exclusively to hereditary influence and is the result of accumulated experience and the perception of the environment.
Parenting Topic in Developmental Psychology The involvement of parents is key since it is in the family where the moral foundations and principles are laid, which shapes the human character in the future.
Developmental Psychology. “Erik Erikson” by McLeod In this theory, intelligence is both logical and biological; logical in that it depends on the acquisition of habits and the individual’s responses to his or her environment.
Developmental Psychology: Franz Kafka and Social Learning It is true that the writer’s life was not particularly eventful, and the majority of defining events took place in his psyche.
Lifespan Development and Its Stages in Psychology The choice of this research method is preconditioned by the need to investigate the way cognitive processes among this age group occur and find out factors that result in the appearance of differences between participants.
Developmental Psychology by Wim Beyers and Inge Seiffge-Krenke Also, in this analysis, the original association between identity development at the age of 15 and the intimacy at the age of 25 was reduced to non-significant levels, confirming the mediating role of relational identity […]
Behaviorism in Development of Psychology The primary goal of this paper is to draw attention to the topic of behaviorism and explain its importance to the development of psychology in the long-term.
Developmental Psychology: From Infancy to Adulthood It is, however, important to note that motor development ability mainly depends on the weight and organization of the body of a child. Language development is mainly the ability of a child to use and […]
Development of Creativity – Psychology The child energy directed at exploration and learning was used to the fullest and resulted in a massive increase of divergent thinking and creativity.
Neuroscience and Child Development – Psychology In this regard, the adoption of neuroscience findings in the development of new childhood theories and policies could lead to enhanced interventions for improved life outcomes.
Infant Developmental Theories – Psychology It should be stated that at the infant stage of development, Vygotsky considers the separation of a child from the mother and the creation of the basis for the further development of a human being.
Developmental Psychology: Kathleen Stassen Views Why? The group of children that I would like to study as a developmental psychologist is ‘play years.’ Play is a very important part of development in the early and late childhood years.
Childhood Developmental Stages in Psychology Social Development of this skill means that a child is capable of interacting with people and understanding the meaning of relationships.
Adolescence and Adulthood Developmental Stages – Psychology The onset of adolescence marks the refinement of most individuals’ thinking abilities because at this stage the majority of individuals would have attained control in their thinking process.
Theory of Cognitive Development – Psychology The sensorimotor stage is the first phase of cognitive development. The cognitive development theory by Piaget is a clear indication of how children swiftly transform themselves from one stage to another.
Definition of Developmental Psychology Developmental psychology is a branch of science which researches and analyses the main peculiarities and stages of the development of a human being.
Understanding Developmental Psychology It begins by defining developmental psychology; then it examines some of the application of developmental psychology in life and completes by reviewing the benefits of developmental psychology.
Concept of Cognitive Development in Psychology Various studies show that the human memory develops and changes with the age of an individual. The physical growth of the brain affects the behavioral changes throughout the growth process.
The Development Psychology: Parents’ Probability of Having Another Children In conjunction to this argument, the purpose of the study topic is to create awareness to the people in the society that the characteristics of the first born child affects siblings birth in the family […]
Developmental Theories in Psychology Moreover, it shows the similarities and differences among these theories and how they account for normal and abnormal child and adolescent psychological and physical development in children and adolescents with specific reference to physical, cognitive, […]
How Do the Research Findings of Cognitive, Developmental and Social Psychology Apply to Real World Issues? Research in development psychology has also aided in predicting interpersonal relationships and moral reasoning with regard to the stage of development that a person is in.
Developmental Psychology Theories of Piaget and Vygotsky Piaget proposed the theory of “Developmental Growth of Schemata” which explores the role of schemata in relation to acquisition of new experiences.
Moral Development and Its Relation to Psychology These stages reveal the individual’s moral orientation expanding his/her experiences and perceptions of the world with regard to the cognitive development of a person admitting this expansion. The views of Piaget and Kohlberg differ in […]
Developmental Psychology Contribution to Improving Children’s Lives
Child Abuse and the Legal System – Forensic Developmental Psychology: Unveiling Four Common Misconceptions
The Theory Of Developmental Psychology
The Developmental Psychology Of A Child
Developmental Psychology: The Development Of Human Beings
Autism Spectrum Disorder And Developmental Psychology
The Evolution of Developmental Psychology
Vygotsky On Developmental Psychology And Education
Heroin Addiction Treatment and the Impact of Developmental Psychology
The Use of Developmental Psychology for Treatment of Drug Addiction
Why It Is Important To Study Developmental Psychology
Prenatal Development and Developmental Psychology
The First Virtual Computer Generated Symposium on Developmental Psychology
Various Age Groups and Developmental Psychology
Piaget: Developmental Psychology and Child Development
The Importance of Developmental Psychology to Society
History And Research Methods Of Developmental Psychology
Developmental Psychology and Typical Baby
Pregnancy and Childhood According to Developmental Psychology
Developmental Psychology and Fully-grown Teenager
Developmental Psychology and Emotional Development
Educational, School and Developmental Psychology
How has Developmental Psychology Contributed to Improving Children’s Lives?
The Evolutionary Theories Within The Developmental Psychology Of Attachment
Thinking and Intelligence Developmental Psychology
Theoretical Perspectives Relevant to Developmental Psychology
Autism: How Developmental Psychology Can Inform Practice
How Can Teachers Use Theories and Findings from Developmental Psychology to Inform Classroom Practice
Drug Addiction Treatment Through Developmental Psychology
Teratogens and Developmental Psychology
Social And Cognitive Developmental Psychology
The Life Span Theory in Developmental Psychology
Sigmund Freud : Influences On Developmental Psychology
Theories: Developmental Psychology and Phase Early Adulthood
Child Obesity in Developmental Psychology: Nurture Or Nature
Developmental Psychology and a Premier Virtual Computer Generated Symposium
The Role of Relationship between an Infant and Caregiver in Developmental Psychology
Adolescence: Developmental Psychology and Social Work
Ted Bundy Through the Developmental Psychology Lens
Novelty, Attention, and Challenges for Developmental Psychology
The Use of Developmental Psychology in the Classroom
How Can Teachers Use Theories and Findings From Developmental Psychology to Inform Classroom Practice?
How Could Children’s Storybooks Promote Empathy in Developmental Psychology?
What Are Autism Spectrum Disorder and Developmental Psychology?
What Are Four Common Misconceptions in Child Abuse and the Legal System Forensic Developmental Psychology?
What Is the Connection Between Cognitive Developmental Psychology and Law?
What Are the Differences Between Major Theoretical Perspectives of Developmental Psychology?
What Are Developmental Psychology and Attention Social-Emotional Development?
What Is the Connection Between Developmental Psychology and the Different Parenting Types?
What Are Piaget’s and Siegler’s Theories of How Children Use Reasoning to Solve Various Problems?
What Do You Mean by Developmental Psychology?
What Are the Three Major Issues in Developmental Psychology?
What Is the Main Focus of Developmental Psychology?
What Is an Example of Developmental Psychology?
What Are the Five Theories of Development?
What Are the Seven Stages of Development?
What Is Developmental Psychology in Education?
Why Is It Essential to Study Developmental Psychology?
Which Question Is Most Important to Developmental Psychology?
Who Was the Most Famous Developmental Psychologist?
What Is the Nature of Developmental Psychology?
What Are the Branches of Developmental Psychology?
What Ages Do Developmental Psychologists Work With?
What Is Developmental Psychology for Kids?
How Can Developmental Psychology Be Used to Understand Child Development?
What Is the Role of Parents in Children’s Developmental Psychology?
Why Is Developmental Psychology Critical in Social Work?
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Research Paper Guide

Psychology Research Paper Topics

200+ Engaging Psychology Research Paper Topics for Students in 2024

18 min read

Easy Psychology Research Topics For Students

Whether you're a high school student seeking inspiration for a research project, or a college student looking for a compelling topic for your next paper, we've got you covered.

In the following sections, we'll explore psychology research topics selected specifically for each academic level, ensuring that there's something for everyone to explore and engage with.

Psychology Research Topics for High School Students

Peer Pressure and its Influence on Decision-Making in Adolescence
Understanding Teenage Sleep Patterns and its Effects on Academic Performance
Examining the Effects of Parental Divorce on Teenagers' Emotional Well-being
Gender Stereotypes and their Impact on High School Students' Career Aspirations
Exploring the Link Between Nutrition and Mental Health in Adolescents
Teenage Rebellion: Causes and Consequences
The Role of Family Dynamics in Adolescent Behavior
Effective Strategies for Managing Test Anxiety in High School Students
The Impact of Extracurricular Activities on Teenagers' Mental Health
Mental Health Awareness and Support Programs for High School Students

Psychology Research Paper Topics for College Students

The Psychology of Procrastination: Causes and Solutions
Mental Health Stigma in College Settings: Breaking Down Barriers
Examining the Relationship Between Academic Stress and Performance Anxiety
The Impact of College Transition on Students' Mental Health
Understanding the Psychology of Imposter Syndrome Among College Students
The Psychology of Group Projects: Dynamics and Conflict Resolution Strategies
The Role of Identity Development in College Students' Psychological Well-being
Cultural Adjustment Challenges Among International College Students
Examining the Impact of Student Debt on Mental Health and Well-being
The Psychology of Career Decision-Making Among College Students

Research Topics in Psychology for University Students

The Influence of Personality Traits on Academic Achievement in University Students
Understanding the Psychology of Leadership: Traits and Behaviors
Psychological Resilience in the Face of Adversity: Factors and Interventions
Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Psychological Disorders and Treatment
The Impact of Technology on Human Interaction and Communication Patterns
Cognitive Development Across the Lifespan: Theories and Applications
Workplace Psychology: Organizational Behavior and Employee Motivation
Exploring the Link Between Emotional Intelligence and Success in University Students
The Psychology of Creativity: Processes and Influencing Factors
Stress Management Techniques for University Students: Mindfulness and Relaxation Strategies

Criminal Psychology Research Paper Topics

Understanding the Motives Behind White-Collar Crimes
Juvenile Delinquency: Risk Factors and Intervention Strategies
The Role of Psychopathy in Criminal Behavior
Psychological Effects of Wrongful Convictions on Innocent Individuals
The Influence of Media Portrayals on Perceptions of Crime and Criminality
Psychological Profiling in Criminal Investigations: Advantages and Limitations
The Relationship Between Substance Abuse and Criminal Behavior
Forensic Assessment of Competency to Stand Trial: Issues and Considerations
Gender Differences in Criminal Behavior: Biological and Sociocultural Factors
The Psychological Effects of Incarceration on Inmates and Their Rehabilitation

Biological Psychology Research Paper Topics

The Role of Neurotransmitters in Mental Health Disorders
Brain Plasticity: Mechanisms and Implications for Learning and Memory
Genetic Influences on Behavior: Twin and Adoption Studies
The Neuroscience of Addiction: Understanding Brain Circuitry and Reward Pathways
Neuro Develop Mental Illness: Causes, Symptoms, and Treatments
The Role of Hormones in Aggression and Social Behavior
Neuroimaging Techniques in Studying Brain Structure and Function
Neurological Basis of Psychiatric Disorders: Insights from Brain Imaging Studies
Animal Models in Biological Psychology Research: Ethical Considerations and Validity
Epigenetics and Behavior: Interactions Between Genes and Environment

Developmental Psychology Research Paper Topics

Attachment Theory: Parent-Child Relationships and Emotional Development
Cognitive Development in Infancy: Piagetian and Vygotskian Perspectives
The Impact of Parenting Styles on Child Behavior and Personality Development
Language Acquisition in Children: Theories and Stages of Development
Socialization and Peer Influence in Adolescence: Effects on Identity Formation
Understanding the Long Term Effects of Divorce on Children's Developmental Outcomes
The Role of Play in Child Development: Cognitive, Social, and Emotional Benefits
Developmental Trajectories of Mental Health Disorders in Adolescence
The Influence of Early Childhood Education on Academic Achievement
Neurodevelopmental Disorders in Children: Diagnosis and Intervention Strategies

Forensic Psychology Research Topics

Eyewitness Testimony: Reliability and Factors Affecting Accuracy
The Psychology of False Confessions: Causes and Consequences
Competency to Stand Trial Evaluations: Legal and Ethical Considerations
Risk Assessment in Criminal Justice: Predicting Recidivism and Dangerousness
Criminal Responsibility and Insanity Defense: Psychological and Legal Perspectives
Psychological Autopsy: Investigating Psychological Factors in Criminal Cases
Jury Decision-Making: Biases and Influences on Legal Outcomes
Interrogation Techniques: Ethical and Psychological Considerations
Psychological Factors in Wrongful Convictions: Exonerations and Lessons Learned
The Role of Forensic Psychology in Child Custody Evaluations

Abnormal Psychology Research Paper Topics

Understanding the Spectrum of Mood Disorders: Depression, Bipolar, and Cyclothymia
Anxiety Disorders: Causes, Symptoms, and Treatment Approaches
Schizophrenia: Neurobiological, Psychological, and Social Factors
Trauma and Stressor-Related Disorders: PTSD and Acute Stress Disorder
Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders: Understanding Obsessions and Compulsions
Dissociative Disorders: Identity, Amnesia, and Depersonalization
Sleep Disorders: Insomnia, Narcolepsy, and Parasomnias
Neurodevelopmental Disorders: Autism Spectrum Disorder and ADHD
Substance-Related and Addictive Disorders: Assessment and Treatment Approaches
Gender Dysphoria: Understanding Gender Identity and Transgender Health

Cognitive Psychology Research Topics

Memory Processes: Encoding, Storage, and Retrieval
Problem-Solving and Decision-Making: Heuristics and Biases
Cognitive Development: Piagetian and Information-Processing Perspectives
Working Memory: Capacity, Function, and Individual Differences
Executive Functions: Inhibition, Shifting, and Updating
Cognitive Neuroscience: Brain Mechanisms of Cognitive Processes
Concept Formation and Categorization: Psychological and Neural Basis
Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Modeling: Applications in Psychology
Cognitive Rehabilitation: Strategies for Improving Cognitive Functioning
Metacognition: Monitoring and Regulating Cognitive Processes

Clinical Psychology Research Topics

Anxiety Disorders: Assessment, Diagnosis, and Treatment Options
Schizophrenia Treatment: Medications, Therapy, and Psychosocial Interventions
Couples Therapy: Approaches and Effectiveness in Improving Relationship Satisfaction
Substance Use Disorders: Prevention, Assessment, and Treatment Modalities
Trauma-Focused Therapies: EMDR, Prolonged Exposure, and Narrative Exposure Therapy
Group Therapy: Benefits, Process, and Techniques for Facilitating Change
Suicide Prevention: Risk Assessment, Intervention Strategies, and Postvention Support
Eating Disorder Treatment: Multidisciplinary Approaches and Relapse Prevention Strategies
Psychodynamic Psychotherapy: Theory, Techniques, and Applications in Clinical Practice
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT): Skills Training and Effectiveness in Treating Borderline Personality Disorder

Positive Psychology Research Paper Topics

The Science of Happiness: Determinants and Measurement of Subjective Well-being
Resilience: Factors and Interventions for Building Psychological Strength
Gratitude and Well-being: Benefits of Cultivating a Thankful Mindset
Character Strengths and Virtues: Assessing and Enhancing Personal Qualities
Posttraumatic Growth: Thriving in the Aftermath of Adversity
Purpose in Life: Meaningfulness and Well-being Across the Lifespan
Empathy and Altruism: The Psychological Benefits of Helping Others
Strengths-Based Therapy: Utilizing Personal Strengths to Overcome Challenges
Humor and Laughter: Therapeutic Benefits for Physical and Mental Health
Positive Parenting: Strategies for Fostering Resilient and Happy Children

Social Psychology Research Topics

Conformity and Obedience: The Influence of Group Dynamics on Individual Behavior
Attitudes and Attitude Change: Theories and Applications in Persuasion
Prejudice and Discrimination: Causes, Consequences, and Interventions
Group Cohesion and Cooperation: Factors That Promote Effective Teamwork
Interpersonal Relationships: Attachment Styles and Relationship Satisfaction
Stereotypes and Stereotyping: Cognitive Processes and Implications for Behavior
Aggression and Violence: Biological, Psychological, and Sociocultural Factors
Prosocial Behavior: The Motivations and Benefits of Helping Others
Intergroup Relations: Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation Strategies
Social Perception and Judgment: Biases and Heuristics in Social Cognition

Lifespan Psychology Research Paper Topics

Prenatal Development: Influences on Fetal Growth and Maternal Health
Adolescent Identity Development: Exploring Identity Formation and Self-Concept
Adult Attachment Styles: Continuity and Change Across the Lifespan
Midlife Crisis: Myth or Reality? Examining Psychological Changes in Middle Adulthood
Retirement and Aging: Psychological Adjustment and Well-being in Later Life
Longevity and Health: Factors That Contribute to Healthy Aging and Quality of Life
Aging and Memory: Exploring the Effects of Aging on Memory Processes
End-of-Life Care: Psychosocial Factors in Palliative and Hospice Care Settings
Wisdom and Aging: Psychological Perspectives on Wisdom Development
Resilience in Older Adults: Coping Strategies and Adaptation to Life Transitions

History of Psychology Research Paper Topics

Origins of Psychology: Philosophical and Scientific Foundations
Structuralism vs. Functionalism: Early Schools of Thought in Psychology
Freud and Psychoanalysis: Contributions to Modern Psychology and Criticisms
Behaviorism: The Rise and Fall of Behaviorist Principles in Psychology
Gestalt Psychology: Insights into Perception and Cognitive Processes
Humanistic Psychology: The Person-Centered Approach and Self-Actualization
Evolutionary Psychology: Darwinian Perspectives on Human Behavior and Cognition
Feminist Psychology: Critiques of Traditional Theories and Gender Bias in Research
Psychobiography: Studying the Lives of Psychologists and Their Contributions
Development of Clinical Psychology: Evolution of Diagnosis and Treatment Approaches

Interesting Psychology Topics for Presentation

The Power of Nonverbal Communication: Body Language and Facial Expressions
The Psychology of Motivation: Understanding What Drives Human Behavior
Emotional Intelligence: The Key to Success in Relationships and Career
The Science of Happiness: Strategies for Cultivating a Fulfilling Life
The Psychology of Memory: How We Remember and Forget Information
Stress Management Techniques: Coping Strategies for Dealing with Chronic Pain
The Science of Sleep: Exploring the Importance of Rest and Recovery
The Psychology of Creativity: Unlocking Your Creative Potential
Understanding Personality Types: The Big Five and Beyond
The Psychology of Decision-Making: Strategies for Making Better Choices

Psychology Research Topics on Social Media

Social Media Addiction: Causes, Consequences, and Interventions
Cyberbullying: Prevalence, Effects, and Prevention Strategies
FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) and Its Effects on Mental Health and Well-being
Influencer Marketing: Psychological Persuasion Techniques and Consumer Behavior
Privacy Concerns on Social Media: Trust, Control, and Online Safety
The Psychology of Viral Content: What Makes Posts Go Viral?
Online Social Support Networks: Benefits and Limitations for Mental Health
Social Media and Body Image: Comparisons, Ideals, and Self-Esteem
The Role of Social Media in Political Polarization and Echo Chambers
Digital Detox: Strategies for Balancing Screen Time and Real-Life Connections

Psychology Research Topics Related to Human Development

The Influence of Parenting Styles on Child Development: Authoritative, Authoritarian, and Permissive Approaches
Sibling Dynamics and Their Effects on Social and Emotional Development in Childhood
The Impact of Family Structure and Dynamics on Adolescent Mental Health and Well-being
Transitioning to Adulthood: Challenges and Opportunities in Emerging Adulthood
Gender Development: Biological and Sociocultural Influences on Gender Identity Formation
The Influence of Socioeconomic Status on Academic Achievement and Educational Attainment Across the Lifespan
Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma: Understanding the Effects of Historical and Familial Trauma on Development
Resilience in Childhood: Protective Factors and Coping Strategies in the Face of Adversity
Cultural Variations in Parenting Practices and Their Implications for Child Development
Aging Well: Promoting Healthy Aging and Quality of Life in Later Adulthood

Psychology Research Topics Involving a Disorder or Type of Therapy

The Efficacy of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy in Treating Anxiety Disorders: A Meta-Analysis
Borderline Personality Disorder: Causes and Evidence-Based Treatment Approaches
Internet Addiction Disorder: Prevalence, Risk Factors, and Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment Strategies
Neurobiological Mechanisms of Depression: Insights from Brain Imaging Studies and Pharmacological Interventions
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) for Emotion Dysregulation: Skills Training and Mindfulness Practices
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD): Neurodevelopmental Profiles, Early Detection, and Intervention Strategies
Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in Children: Assessment, Diagnosis, and Multimodal Treatment Approaches
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD): Etiology, Symptomatology, and Exposure Response Prevention Therapy
Schizophrenia: Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Psychosis, Social Skills Training, and Medication Management
Bipolar Disorder: Neurobiological Correlates, Mood Stabilization, and Psychoeducation Strategies

Experimental Psychology Research Topics

Memory Processing Mechanisms in Human Brain
Perception and Attention: Investigating Selective Attention and Visual Perception
Learning and Conditioning: Classical and Operant Conditioning Paradigms and Learning Strategies
Cognitive Processes in Decision Making: Heuristics, Biases, and Rational Decision Making
Social Cognition and Attitudes: Attitude Formation, Persuasion Techniques, and Implicit Bias
Sensation and Perception: Psychophysical Methods and Sensory Thresholds
Motor Control and Coordination: Motor Learning, Skill Acquisition, and Movement Analysis
Emotion and Affect: Studying Emotional Processing, Expression, and Regulation
Neuroimaging Techniques: Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), Electroencephalography (EEG), and Event-Related Potentials (ERPs)
Psychometric Testing and Assessment: Developing and Validating Psychological Measures and Instruments

How to Select a Good Psychology Research Paper Topic

Selecting a good research paper topic is a crucial step in the paper writing process. It lays the foundation for your study and determines its scope and direction.

Here are some key steps to consider when choosing a topic:

Identify Your Interests: Start by exploring areas of psychology that genuinely interest you. Whether it's cognitive, developmental, or social psychology, selecting a topic that aligns with your passions will make the research process more engaging and rewarding.
Consider Current Trends: Stay informed about the latest developments and trends in the field of psychology. Browse recent publications, attend conferences, and follow relevant journals to identify emerging topics and areas of research that are generating interest and attention.
Narrow Down Your Focus: Once you've identified a general area of interest, narrow down your focus to a specific topic or research question. Consider the scope of your study, the available resources, and the feasibility of conducting research within your chosen area.
Evaluate the Literature: Conduct a thorough review of the existing literature to gain insights into previous research findings, gaps in the literature, and areas that warrant further investigation. Look for unanswered questions, controversies, or areas where conflicting findings exist.
Consider Practical Implications: Think about the practical implications of your research topic and its potential relevance to real-world issues or applications. Consider how your findings could contribute to theoretical advancements, clinical practice, or public policy.
Brainstorm Potential Research Questions: Generate a list of potential research questions or hypotheses that align with your chosen topic. Consider the feasibility of addressing these questions within the constraints of your study, including time, resources, and ethical considerations.

How to Write a Good Psychology Research Paper?

Writing a good psychology research paper can be a structured process if you follow these steps:

Select a Compelling Topic: Choose a research topic that interests you and is relevant. Ensure it's specific, researchable, and has a clear research question.
Review Existing Literature: Conduct a thorough literature review to understand the current state of knowledge on your topic.
Formulate a Hypothesis: Based on your research question and literature review, create a clear and testable hypothesis.
Design Your Study: Decide on your research method (experimental, survey, observational, etc.) and create a detailed research design.
Collect Data: Execute your study, following your design meticulously. Ensure ethical considerations are met.
Analyze Data: Use appropriate statistical tools to analyze your data. Interpret the results in the context of your hypothesis.
Organize Your Paper: Follow a standard research paper outline or structure with sections like Introduction, Method, Results, and Discussion. Write clearly and concisely.
Cite Sources: Properly cite all sources using a recognized citation style (e.g., APA, MLA).
Edit and Proofread: Revise your paper for clarity, coherence, and grammar. Proofread to eliminate errors.
Seek Feedback: Have peers or mentors review your paper for feedback and suggestions.

Check out this video to learn how to write a research paper more in-depth!

Remember, a good psychology research paper is not just about the content but also the presentation. By following these steps and paying attention to detail, you'll increase your chances of producing a high-quality research paper that contributes to the field.

All in all, selecting a good topic for psychology research papers is an essential aspect of conducting meaningful and impactful research in the field of psychology.

By choosing topics from the above list, researchers can ensure that their ideas are both engaging and academically practical.

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Psychology Research Paper Topics

In the list of psychology research paper topics below we have attempted to capture psychology’s vast and evolving nature in the 16 categories and more than 100 topics.

100+ Psychology Research Paper Topics

H istory of psychology.

History of Psychology
Psychology Before 1900
Psychology in the 20th Century
Psychology Into the 21st Century
Women and Minorities in Psychology

Mental Health

Agoraphobia
Alzheimer’s Disease
Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa (Eating Disorders)
Antisocial Personality Disorder
Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
Borderline Personality Disorder
Conduct Disorder
Dissociative Disorders
Mental Retardation
Mood Disorders
Narcissistic Personality Disorder
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
Panic Attacks
Personality Disorders
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS)
Psychopathology
Schizophrenia
Sexual Disorders
Somatization and Hypochondriasis
Substance Abuse

Psychology Research and Analytic Techniques

Statistical Techniques and Analysis
Nonexperimental Research Methods
Experimental Designs
Single-Subject Designs
Qualitative Research
Ethics of Psychological Research

Neuroscience

Biological Psychology
Neurotransmission
Traditional Neuroscience Research Methods
Imaging Techniques for the Localization of Brain Function
Drug Addiction
Behavioral Pharmacology

Sensory Processes and Perception

Psychophysics
States of Consciousness
Somatosensory Systems

Evolution and Behavior

Evolutionary Psychology
Evolutionary Perspectives on Mate Preferences
Animal Learning and Behavior
Animal Cognition
Comparative Psychology

Basic Learning Processes

Classical Conditioning
Recent Trends in Classical Conditioning
Taste-Aversion Learning
Operant Conditioning
Recent Trends in Operant Conditioning
Social Learning
Stimulus Equivalence

Individual Differences and Personality

Psychometrics
Testing and Assessment
Personality Development
Personality Psychology
Intelligence

Cognitive Psychology

Memory and Eyewitness Testimony
Repressed and Recovered Memory
Language and Language Development
Thinking and Problem Solving
Critical Thinking
Artificial Intelligence

Developmental Psychology

Prenatal Development and Infancy
Childhood and Adolescence
Adulthood and Aging
Disabilities
Death, Dying, and Bereavement
Nature Versus Nurture

Social Psychology

Social Cognition
Attitudes and Attitude Change
Group Processes
Social Influence
The Nature of Love
Prejudice and Stereotyping

Health, Stress, and Coping

Health Psychology
Stress and Stressors
Coping Skills
Positive Psychology
Human Performance in Extreme Environments

Clinical Psychology

Abnormal Psychology
Ethics of Therapists
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)
Anxiety Disorders
Psychoactive Substance Use Disorders
Psychotherapy
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy
Family Therapy
Pharmacotherapy
Forensic Clinical Psychology
Sexual Offending Behavior

Applied Psychology

Industrial and Organizational Psychology
Human Factors
Community Psychology
Sport Psychology
Environmental Psychology
Psychology and the Law
Applied Behavior Analysis
Organizational Behavior Management

Human Diversity

Gender and Sexual Orientation
Multiple Axes of Human Diversity
Psychology and Religion
Cross-Cultural Psychology and Research
International Psychology

Assessment and Psychotherapy

Assessment of Mental Health in Older Adults
Behavior Therapy
Behavioral Medicine
Biofeedback
Child Sexual Abuse
Classifying Mental Disorders
Clinical Assessment
Cognitive Therapy
Community Mental Health
Constructivist Psychotherapies
Coping with Stress
Couples Therapy
Depression—Applied Aspects
Domestic Violence Intervention
Meditation and the Relaxation Response
Personality Assessment
Premenstrual Syndrome Treatment
Psychoanalysis
Psychopharmacology
Sexual Dysfunction Therapy
Standards for Psychotherapy
Support Groups

Browse More Psychology Research Paper Topics:

Applied Behavior Analysis Research Paper Topics
Biological Psychology Research Paper Topics
Clinical Psychology Research Paper Topics
Cognitive Psychology Research Paper Topics
Community Psychology Research Paper Topics
Comparative Psychology Research Paper Topics
Consumer Psychology Research Paper Topics
Counseling Psychology Research Paper Topics
Evolutionary Psychology Research Paper Topics
School Psychology Research Paper Topics

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The cutting-edge research paper topics include the following:

Conducting Research on the History of Psychology

Browse examples of psychology research papers to find sample research papers on psychology topics. Whether the research paper deals with a traditional topic or a cutting-edge topic, you will find that it presents the materials in a decidedly contemporary manner. We hope that students will enjoy reading the research papers on different topics in psychology as much as we have enjoyed collecting them for you.

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After being insulted, writing down your feelings on paper then getting rid of it reduces anger

A research group in Japan has discovered that writing down one's reaction to a negative incident on a piece of paper and then shredding it or throwing it away reduces feelings of anger.

"We expected that our method would suppress anger to some extent," lead researcher Nobuyuki Kawai said. "However, we were amazed that anger was eliminated almost entirely."

This research is important because controlling anger at home and in the workplace can reduce negative consequences in our jobs and personal lives. Unfortunately, many anger management techniques proposed by specialists lack empirical research support. They can also be difficult to recall when angry.

The results of this study, published in Scientific Reports , are the culmination of years of previous research on the association between the written word and anger reduction. It builds on work showing how interactions with physical objects can control a person's mood.

For their project, Kawai and his graduate student Yuta Kanaya, both at the Graduate School of Informatics, Nagoya University, asked participants to write brief opinions about important social problems, such as whether smoking in public should be outlawed. They then told them that a doctoral student at Nagoya University would evaluate their writing.

However, the doctoral students doing the evaluation were plants. Regardless of what the participants wrote, the evaluators scored them low on intelligence, interest, friendliness, logic, and rationality. To really drive home the point, the doctoral students also wrote the same insulting comment: "I cannot believe an educated person would think like this. I hope this person learns something while at the university."

After handing out these negative comments, the researchers asked the participants to write their thoughts on the feedback, focusing on what triggered their emotions. Finally, one group of participants was told to either dispose of the paper they wrote in a trash can or keep it in a file on their desk. A second group was told to destroy the document in a shredder or put it in a plastic box.

The students were then asked to rate their anger after the insult and after either disposing of or keeping the paper. As expected, all participants reported a higher level of anger after receiving insulting comments. However, the anger levels of the individuals who discarded their paper in the trash can or shredded it returned to their initial state after disposing of the paper. Meanwhile, the participants who held on to a hard copy of the insult experienced only a small decrease in their overall anger.

Kawai imagines using his research to help businesspeople who find themselves in stressful situations. "This technique could be applied in the moment by writing down the source of anger as if taking a memo and then throwing it away when one feels angry in a business situation," he explained.

Along with its practical benefits, this discovery may shed light on the origins of the Japanese cultural tradition known as hakidashisara ( hakidashi refers to the purging or spitting out of something, and sara refers to a dish or plate) at the Hiyoshi shrine in Kiyosu, Aichi Prefecture, just outside of Nagoya. Hakidashisara is an annual festival where people smash small discs representing things that make them angry. Their findings may explain the feeling of relief that participants report after leaving the festival.

Anger Management
Social Psychology
Disorders and Syndromes
Educational Psychology
Consumer Behavior
Anger management
Social psychology
Cognitive dissonance
Self-awareness
Obsessive-compulsive disorder
Collaboration

Story Source:

Materials provided by Nagoya University . Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference :

Yuta Kanaya, Nobuyuki Kawai. Anger is eliminated with the disposal of a paper written because of provocation . Scientific Reports , 2024; 14 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-57916-z

Cite This Page :

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research paper topics for developmental psychology

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Psychology Research Topics Involving a Disorder or Type of Therapy

Topics of Psychology Research Related to Human Cognition

Topics of Psychology Research Related to Human Development

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Topics of Psychology Research Related to Famous Experiments

Topics of Psychology Research About Historical Figures

Psychology Research Topics About a Specific Career

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61 intriguing psychology research topics to explore

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Mental health in post-secondary students

The impacts of cyberbullying

Chronic pain and mental health

The long-term effects of insomnia

The efficacy of mental health treatment options

The impact of social media and digital platforms

Psychotropic medications for mental health

Anxiety and depression disorders

Bipolar disorder

Schizoaffective disorder

Access to mental health services

Systemic racism and mental health

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