No abstract

As participant recruitment and data collection over the Internet have become more common, numerous observers have expressed concern regarding the validity of research conducted in this fashion. One growing method of conducting research over the Internet involves recruiting participants and administering questionnaires over Facebook, the world’s largest social networking service. If Facebook is to be considered a viable platform for social research, it is necessary to demonstrate that Facebook users are sufficiently heterogeneous and that research conducted through Facebook is likely to produce results that can be generalized to a larger population. The present study examines these questions by comparing demographic and personality data collected over Facebook with data collected through a standalone website, and data collected from college undergraduates at two universities. Results indicate that statistically significant differences exist between Facebook data and the comparison data-sets, but since 80% of analyses exhibited partial η2 < .05, such differences are small or practically nonsignificant in magnitude. We conclude that Facebook is a viable research platform, and that recruiting Facebook users for research purposes is a promising avenue that offers numerous advantages over traditional samples.

This article describes an innovative neuropsychopharmacology laboratory that can be incorporated into any research methods class. The lab consists of a set of interconnected modules centered on observations of methamphetamine-induced behavioral changes in mice and is designed to provide students with an opportunity to acquire basic skills necessary for conducting research. To assess the practical utility of this new laboratory, an empirical study was conducted to determine whether different formats of the lab produce similar learning gains. The results suggest that both the live and the media-based variations of this lab are similarly effective. Thus, to facilitate the adoption of the lab, especially in its media-based format, all necessary materials are made available on a dedicated website.

This study examined the hypothesis derived from Terror Management Theory that reminders of death would influence both belief in a just world and Schadenfreude, in response to reading about members of a religious out-group affect by a natural disaster. Christian students (N = 88, M age = 19.9) were primed with thoughts of death or dental pain before reading about a natural disaster that destroyed either a Christian Church or an Islamic Mosque. Participants then completed measures of belief in a just world and schadenfreude. Mortality salience did not affect schadenfreude but social desirability may have masked this effect. Mortality salience did increase beliefs in a just world when a natural disaster affected a religious out-group, suggesting that cultural worldview may be buttressed by evidence that bad things happen to proponents of opposing belief systems.

The present article examined differences in personifications of personal and typical death as a function of attitudes about death. Ninety-eight students enrolled in psychology classes were randomly assigned to personify death as a character in a movie depicting either their own deathbed scene or the deathbed scene of the typical person prior to completing the Death Attitude Profile-Revised. The results supported the conceptual distinction between attitudes about personal death and death in general. Participants in the personal death condition personified death more frequently as a gentle-comforting image and less frequently as a cold-remote image than did participants in the typical death condition. The results also further validated the relation between personifications of death and death attitudes. Across both conditions, participants who selected the grim-terrifying image reported more fear of death and death avoidance; whereas, participants who selected the cold-remote or robot-like images reported more neutral acceptance.