Students present 11th annual psychology fair

Friday, May. 27, 2016

SALT LAKE CITY — Inquiring minds at Judge Memorial Catholic High School filled the gymnasium May 16 as the advanced placement psychology students presented their final research projects to judges.

“I think it’s just interesting to understand how people think,” said Rylee Jaleel-Jarvis who, with partner Max Butcher, won the prize for Most Original Study.

Their project, titled “The Unbiased Brain,” tested gender inequality with an experiment that had males and females perform certain tasks involving functions such as memory, critical thinking and problem-solving.

“I think it’s interesting to see how the brain works and how it’s all connected together, and how one section of psychology is related to the next,” Butcher said. 

The two seniors were among the 125 students at JMCHS to take the advance placement psychology exam this year and present their final research projects in the annual psychology fair.

“The purpose behind the project is so that they can apply what they’ve learned all year long,” said Ron Hill, who teaches the AP psychology classes.

For the projects, the students turn into research psychologists “to understand how to go through the scientific process,” forming a hypothesis and testing it with an experiment, he added.

Students face the challenge of forming a good hypothesis – “creating something that is going to judge human behavior,” Hill said – then crafting a strong survey and a testing method to support the hypothesis. 

The experiments frequently deal with issues that interest the students, such as culture, gender or race; others focus on traditional psychological areas such as the Stroop effect, Hill said.

Last year, the winning experiment dealt with cultural stereotypes; this also was the focus of one of this year’s experiments, “Can You See My Halo?,” conducted by sophomore Sakina Masud and senior Loveleen Ghuman.

Both of them are cultural minorities at the school; Masud is of mixed Irish and Pakistani heritage, while Ghuman is Indian. As a Muslim and a Sikh, they are religiously diverse as well.

“I’ve grown up, observing how, since I’m kind of different, how I’m treated differently,” Masud said, explaining why they chose to do an experiment that tested the halo effect, which states that physically attractive people tend to be perceived as having more positive attributes than others.

The experiment also attempted to address how different races have different ideas of beauty, but they had a challenge getting enough participants of varied ethnicity, Ghuman said.

“I love the brain,” said Ghuman, who wants to go into the field of neuroscience, and “part of neuroscience is finding out why the brain works the way it does and how it affects our interaction with people.”

The students’ research for their projects was generally sound, said Frank Witby, a University of Utah School of Medicine faculty member who was among the fair’s judges. “They seem bright and young and ambitious, and they’re willing to explore interesting ideas.”

Over the years, the fair has grown; it began as a second-semester project but now that the AP program has expanded from two classes up to five, “the studies have gotten more intense, become more applicable to what they’re trying to do,” Hill said.

Last year the fair had 37 studies; this year there were 58, “so the interest has really increased quite a bit,” said Hill, who plans to approach psychology teachers at the other two Utah Catholic high schools to see if they might be interested in expanding the psychology fair to include their students, similar to the annual diocesan science fair.

Psychology fair winners 

1st place: Gigi Spilman and Annalise Hodge, “The Science of Sweet Talk”

2nd place: Hailey Pierce and Mason Orr, “How Familiar is Familiar”

3rd place: Keegan Malony and Keola Palau, “Underage Sentencing”

Most Original Study: Max Butcher and Rylee Jaleel-Jarvis, “The Unbiased Brain”

Best Presentation: Reilly Edgar, “Does It Really Matter What They Say?”

Mr. Hill Award: Lauren Pasternak, Alex Aubry, Megan Aubry, and Isaac 

                                  Guyunn “Contagious Laughter” 

                                  and Thalia Tran, “In Front of Your Eyes”