The Research Internship Experience: Part 1
First thoughts, aspirations, and the road ahead.
Coming into my last semester of classes before I begin my Honours year, the Research Internship subject (PSYC3361) was easily the subject I was most looking forward to.
I saw PSYC3361 as an opportunity to gain valuable insight into the research process — to learn how to critique research designs and papers, and to learn the nitty-gritty procedures when it comes to testing participants. Moreover, the course is designed differently to our usual subjects and I saw its potential as reprieve while I navigate my semester of 4 Psychology subjects.
Hopefully that sheds some light on my expectations and motivations heading into the subject.
The Present — Week 3
Fast-forwarding to the present, it is now Week 3. I was assigned Professor Ben Newell as my research supervisor (my first preference!). His research area is in decision-making and risk which were the areas that interested me the most.
So far, I have met with him and his PhD students several times. He provided me with some background reading to do, and some of the readings were dense, to say the least…

I took this snippet from one of the papers I needed to read as part of my background research. I can honestly say I had never seen a violin plot prior to this paper, and I don’t know if I will ever see one again.
Overall, I found the papers challenging to read and comprehend, but I like that! To me, those feelings of confusion and frustration are indicators that I’m learning.
My Research Area

I should probably cover what I will be researching! I’ll try my best to keep it short, and hopefully it remains easy to follow.
“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”
The first thing you need to understand is “the simultaneous underweighting and overestimation of rare events”. Fancy, I know. I’ll try to illustrate with an example similar to the one used in Barron and Yechiam’s (2009) study.
Imagine your goal is to accumulate as many points as possible. You are given two choices:
- Option 1: You are guaranteed to lose 3 points.
- Option 2: One of two things will happen. You might lose 0 points, but you might also lose 20 points.
Unbeknown to you, the two choices have an equal expected value. Option 2 has been designed so that there is a 15% chance you lose 20 points, and an 85% chance you lose 0. This means that, technically, it shouldn’t make a difference which choice you make over many trials in the long-run.
Every time you make a choice between the two options, you are also asked to estimate the probability that Option 2 would result in a loss of 20 points. (The correct answer is 15%).
While this happens over many trials, you (the participant) show peculiar, contradictory behaviour.
- You estimate the probability of losing 20 points to be greater than 15%. That is, you overestimate the rare event.
You choose Option 2 (the risky choice) more than half the time. Remember, the expected values of the two options should be equal if the chance of the rare event is 15%. If you believe the probability is greater than 15%, you should be choosing Option 1 (the safe option) every time. And yet you don’t. You underweight the rare event.
Clearly, the two behaviours don’t match up! And as psychologists, it is our job to explain why.
I’ll leave it there for now — I feel like I might go on forever (and I also want something to write about in future posts). For now, all you need to know is that Ben has suggested a potential explanation and that is hopefully what we will get to test this semester!
What’s Next?
There’s still lots to be done before I can start testing participants. Off the top of my head:
- Ben and I need to agree on our final research design (I’d say we’re 95% there!).
- Because it is a new study, someone will need to code the program we’ll use to test participants.
- Plus, we’ll need it approved by the ethics committee.
But hopefully, I’ll be able to start collecting data very soon :)
To finish off, I wanted to share 3 of my current goals for this semester (mostly so I can hold myself accountable).
- I want to be well-prepared for the final presentation. I want to know my study inside-out, and be ready to address questions from the audience.
- I want to finish this subject feeling confident in my abilities going into Honours next year.
- Most importantly, I want to successfully balance this subject with everything else that is going on. The workload fluctuates and can definitely be demanding, so I want myself to manage this well moving forward.
