Date: 01-Dec-2021

Effect of Sleep Quality on Working Memory

By: Anmol S, Roxana Sanat-Pisheh & Amaya Robles-Delgado

This research paper discusses the results of an experiment conducted in a university classroom. The experiment consisted of 35 participants, each was given a questionnaire asking if they felt well-rested or not then a word recall test was administered. The test was scored out of 15 words, those categorized as sleep-deprived scored an average of 5.125 words and those categorized as well-rested scored an average of 6.857. Those well-rested scored almost two words more on average than the sleep-deprived group. The results of this experiment are consistent with the results found in other research concerning the effects of sleep on learning and memory.

The Covid-19 Pandemic has Students Leaning more Towards Online Courses

By: Daniela Guirola, Eva Mercier, Francesca Carton, Julian Denham-Rohlicek & Samantha Albanese

Over the past two years, the world has stopped due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Schools, businesses, and various social gatherings were no longer occurring in person. Meeting people became increasingly difficult as connections with the outside world shifted to online platforms. This sudden change brought caused many to question the possible anxiety and stress students might experience when returning to in-person learning. This study seeks to understand the potential worry students might have when returning to class, specifically to see if there is an increase in social anxiety or academic anxiety. A quasi-experimental research design was conducted using a survey to measure participants from two groups, an online and an in-person group from a Psychology 101 course at Capilano University. The sample consisted of 13 participants from the online class and 18 participants from the in-person course. The results suggested that both groups preferred an online learning environment.

Investigating the Relationship Between Stress and Diet in University Students

By: Farzad Salami, Nur Farhana (Franny) Abdullah, Connor Polh & Massimo McFayden

This study was conducted to establish a correlation between the quality of a University students’ diet and their overall stress and anxiety level. We used an online survey format to acquire both the person’s self-reported diet and perceived stress levels. We will be using a convenience sampling strategy for our population, consisting of four first-year psychology students classes. With that information, we will establish a significant correlation between different diet types, I.E. (high calorie/low nutrition diet and low calorie /high nutrition diets) foods and high stress in the students using Pearson’s correlation coefficient to analyze our data. Our results found no significant correlation between diet, sleep and coffee intake vs. stress levels. However, we did find that students overall had an abnormally high-stress level.

Anxiety in the Times of Covid-19

By: Keely Boehnke, Amrita Singh, Maheep Singh & Muskan Rana

As the pandemic of COVID-19 rose many countries issued lockdowns and social isolation in an attempt to curb the spread of the virus. As these lockdowns progressed, many were left disconnected from people and their previous social worlds. During this time previous research has been conducted to examine the potential implications on human mental health and moreover on our ability to be resocialized after isolation. Our study examines the effects the social isolation of COVID-19 has had on one’s anxiety levels in social situations. To research this we created two surveys to be sent to a small sample population, where one group (randomly selected) was sent a survey asking about their comfortability pre Covid, and the other was sent a survey asking about their comfortability post Covid. To eliminate potential variation, the two surveys depict identical social situations using imagery. The findings of our study show that there is indeed an increase in anxiety levels in certain social situations post Covid compared to pre Covid.

Self-Esteem and Body Dissatisfaction From the Use of Instagram*

By: Lauren Rafter, Michaela Salvino, Brittaney Brusatore & Neusha Sharafi-Tehrani

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between social media use, namely Instagram, and body dissatisfaction and self-esteem. This research study involved 35 participants who were all enrolled in an Introduction to Psychology course at Capilano University. The participants’ ages varied from 17 to 20 years old. The participants were given a questionnaire that measured a number of factors, including their degree of Instagram use (the number of hours they spend on the platform on a regular basis), body satisfaction, and self-esteem. The study’s findings were not statistically significant, however, there were still minor differences across groups. The heavy usage group, which rated somewhat higher in body dissatisfaction than the other groups, showed consistent differences. We feel that if there had been a larger number of participants in the study, we would have discovered more significant results.

AME Stress and Sleep

By Marcel Unkhoff, Elisha Sharma & Amirhossein Forouzandehbakhsh

Our study looked at the relationship between the quality of sleep and level of stress in university students through a correlational study. We wanted to see what impact sleep quality had on a university students stress levels. Our study included a random group of 19 introduction psychology students at Capilano University. The sample size was randomized, and thus we had a mix of races, gender, and sexes in our study. The students were given a survey with a total of 38 questions to measure their sleep quality and stress levels. Through our results we found that there was a significant relationship between sleep quality and stress levels in university students. Although, we cannot say that sleep quality directly causes stress levels to go up there is a strong relationship between the two and students should try to get a proper nights rest to help their stress levels stay down.

Effects of Partial Face Covering on Understanding Emotion

By: Megan Adams, Julian Fleming & Angel Hoffe

The purpose of this study was to determine if covering the nose, mouth, and chin with a face mask affects a person’s ability to accurately identify different facial expressions and emotions. This study included 50 participants who were enrolled in Introduction to Psychology 1, Psychology 100 at Capilano University. Participants in our experiment were shown a series of 24 faces one at a time ranging in 6 different emotional expressions (Sadness, Anger, Fear, Disgust, Neutrality and Happiness). The participants were asked to identify which emotion was shown on each face, half with masks and half without. Neutrality showed better identification with a mask on and happiness had the exact same results for both masked and unmasked faces. For all of the other emotions, the participants were more successful at identifying the emotion on the unmasked face. The results collected showed that most of the expressions shown were more difficult for participants to correctly identify when a mask was partially covering the face.

Social Media Content Focused on Financial Success Negatively Influences…

By: Simran Soni & Kavya Dhawan

This study examined the relationship between motivational content based on financial success, videos based on cute animals and how they affect participants in a negative or positive way. The study included Capilano university students who were enrolled in Introduction to psychology 100 and 101 at Capilano university. Students were divided into two groups named version A and Version B. Total participants were 16 students, half of them were shown videos of financial success and half of them were shown videos of cute animals, after watching videos they answered all the questions. Version B group were shown video of cute animals and treated as control group, Version A were shown video of financial success and treated as experimental group. The mean value of version A and version B indicates higher mean values of treatment group from which we concluded that participants have negative effect of watching videos based on motivational financial success, the results conducted using the JASP Independent T-Tests appropriately fits with our hypothesis that impact of financial success is not a long term affect, it just affect participants when they watched a video after that they will never think about it as the videos based on cute animals gives them relief and increase their self-esteem and leave a positive impression on participants.

Stress and Academic Performance

By: Victoria Wall

This research investigated how stress can affect academic performance and how mindfulness exercises may reduce stress levels while writing exams. The study consisted of a 12-question online survey assessing stress levels before, during and after exams and whether mindfulness exercises increased or decreased stress. The study included 39 participants recruited voluntarily from an Intro to Psychology course at Capilano University. Of those 39 students, only 33 finalized the survey. The results rejected the hypothesis that mindfulness exercises reduced stress levels. However, it concluded a positive correlation between practicing mindfulness and confidence prior to test-taking.

Social Media and Self-Assessment

By: Zoe Stryd

This research project examined the impact of certain kinds of social media on how successful participants felt they were, their levels of optimism, their confidence in their abilities, and their willingness to take professional risks. Participants were randomly assigned to view a compilation of short videos taken from popular social media site TikTok that either focused on financial success (investing, cryptocurrency, NFTs, making money through affiliate marketing or real estate investing) or a neutral control (cute animal videos). The group assigned to view the financial success videos reported higher levels of confidence in their abilities. There were not significant differences in responses to the questions that measured optimism, risk taking, or how successful the participants felt they were.

* Winner of the poster competition (voted on by attendees)