Psychology students launch experimental laboratory. Subjects wanted! ****************************************************************************************** * Psychology students launch experimental laboratory. Subjects wanted! ****************************************************************************************** Student-centred and interdisciplinary, the Prague Laboratory for Experimental Social Scien [ URL "http://pless.cz/"] ) is an initiative of students of the Department of Psychology, of the founders, Bc. Mgr. Marek Vranka, [ URL "https://is.cuni.cz/studium/eng/kdojekdo/ind do=detailuc&kuc=38681"] explains more in an interview with iForum. How is the new laboratory integrated into the Department of Psychology? Intensive negotiations are underway with the management of the Department and the Faculty settle the organization of the laboratory. But since our ambition was to launch data colle possible, not all formal aspects have been settled. The first research projects conducted have been in the hands of Ph.D. students of psychology; our future plans include co-operat members of the Department (for example, with doc. Petr Kulišťák in a project on the influe training) and an active role of the Laboratory in practical teaching of experimental psych plan will be easier to fulfill because of a grant that we have been awarded from the Facul funds. Furthermore, our ambition is to initiate the establishment of an Ethics Commission, a body missing at the CU FA and which would approve research applications. An Ethics Commission´s often required if publications are to appear in journals abroad. Who is currently involved in the management of the Laboratory? The projects now running are managed by Mgr. Ing. Štěpán Bahník, Jana Dlouhá and myself, b several other students interested in helping out with the Laboratory´s operation or PR. Th mentioned will be used, among other things, to pay out student scholarships, which will ho undergraduates in particular. Your web page says that the laboratory aspires to interdisciplinarity by being open to stu fields, especially social sciences. Is it really open to anyone from Charles University? In principal, anyone from CU can join us; however, it must be borne in mind that the possi the laboratory are oriented to social sciences. The laboratory is in full compliance with researchers in philosophy, political science, aesthetics and similar fields; on the other yet no equipment for research that involves, for instance, collection of physiological dat If anyone is interested in conducting their experiments in our laboratory, they can e-mail the project briefly. Providing that the research plan has a sufficient standard and is fea existing technical conditions of the laboratory, a time schedule will be compiled. What we can offer is, especially, the possibility to contact potential research subjects v and the premises, which we have been invited to use by the Department of Logic. We will al share our know-how on the preparation and administration of the research design. The Faculty of Arts is already home to a psychology laboratory, LABELS. What would you say difference between LABELS and the new student laboratory? Each laboratory has a different type of equipment and can therefore be used for different research. LABELS has an eye-tracking device and CRT monitors, so it is suitable for resear these instruments (psychophysics in particular). By contrast, PLESS has more computers, ma suitable for research projects which can be administered on a large scale via computers. Furthermore, the two laboratories differ in the type of expertise and research interests. abroad, it is fairly common for departments of psychology to have more than one laboratory find our two laboratories as an opportunity to, at least to some extent, come closer to th in psychology. As either laboratory has its strong and weak points, students can decide fo which of the two places suits better their type of research and their needs. Does PLESS have any other ambitions apart from being a site for experiments? PLESS, in addition to research as such, seeks to popularize and bring experimental methods students of psychology and other fields; in order to do this, PLESS has set up a social ne to bring news and information about interesting experiments conducted in different parts o furthermore, PLESS has launched courses open to any member of the Charles University commu the basics of designing, administering and evaluating modern experimental designs. Finally, PLESS places special emphasis on building excellent relationships with experiment Apart from receiving financial or material reward, the participants are given, as part of after the study, detailed information about the subject-matter of the experiment; the aim their participation has helped us and to tell them about things which they can use in thei personal lives. Could you be more specific about the ongoing research at PLESS? It is problematic to talk about the ongoing research since any detail about a research pro psychology may have an impact on (potential) participants. Let me just say that we have no collecting data for a large international study conducted by professors from two leading U Running simultaneously in over thirty laboratories in different parts of the world (in cou as Canada and Turkey), the study´s major objective was to replicate twelve different psych which had been published before. Replications are currently a huge hit in psychology – especially after it turned out last known and important studies had been impossible to repeat with the same results in differe although the researchers involved had done their utmost best. Replications, i.e. studies i different team of researchers seeks to reach the same results that have been published, us same or a very similar design, had previously been accepted by very few people and were ha journals. As a result, a huge number of psychological phenomena were considered to be prov their existence had only been proved by a study with a relatively small sample obtained by researchers. Luckily, that has changed. One of the studies proving the new trend is the Many Labs Repli in which PLESS participated. The twelve effects studied included, for instance, the anchor people who, just before being asked about the height of Mt. Everest, are presented a highe normally guess a higher figure of the height than people presented with a lower figure) or of money priming or the U.S. flag (i.e. people, by merely being presented with a picture o flag, will change their attitudes to social issues or their consent to political actions t government). It will be interesting to see whether these effects can be observed again and how differen in different countries, cultures or language mutations. Another extremely important thing the results of research conducted in laboratories versus via the internet as an increasing psychological studies are being conducted via the internet, although it is not absolutely such results may be distorted in some way and whether they can easily be generalized. The study will be published in a special issue of the journal Social Psychology; once publishe available on our website at pless.cz [ URL "http://pless.cz/orsee/public/index.php?languag laboratory´s Facebook page [ URL "https://www.facebook.com/pages/Studentsk%C3%A1-experimen laborato%C5%99-v-Celetn%C3%A9/167704156726154"] . If anyone is interested in participating in any of the experiments, please register in the live in or come to Prague. Participants are normally rewarded (depending on the organisers