Psychology undergraduate and graduate students at Sacramento State’s 2010 annual psychology research conference do not just ask questions when they are curious about a topic of interest. They take their interests a step further by conducting research and gathering and analyzing data.

Today’s conference, which was held in the University Union’s Redwood Room, showcased what students were doing in areas of study such as social and organizational, clinical, behavioral, developmental, biological, health and multicultural psychology.

It was a sampling of the research projects that they had submitted to other conferences and conventions around the nation.

“These research conferences are a way for students to share their insights with students and faculty as well as other psychology majors,” said Bahareh Abhari, a third year psychology graduate student and co-organizer of the conference.

Laminated posters displayed theses and “extensive” research done in all the areas of study.

Students appeared to gravitate toward the social and organizational and multicultural psychology boards that had research projects on college students regarding violence exposure, pornography, academic motivation, and parent discipline.

Multicultural Psychology

The American Psychological Association defines multicultural psychology as the study of behavior and mental process under diverse cultural conditions.

One of the projects was titled “Ethnic Differences in Parent Disciplining Practices of Asian, African, Latino/a, and White America College Students.”

“My research is primarily focused on parent discipline in different ethnic groups and is a pre-cursor to my thesis where I am interested in seeing the correlation between parent discipline and physical abuse,” said Bahareh Abhari, one of the main researchers to the project.

Abahri presented her research in the Asian American Psychological Association conference earlier this year.

She said her inspiration stemmed from wanting to know why there is an over-representation of ethnic minorities in physical abuse cases reported to the child protective services and the county police.

Other researchers involved in the project were unavailable for comment.

Another project titled “African American Male College Students’ Extracurricular Activities and Academic Motivation” caught students’ attention.

“Right now at Sacramento State African Americans have the lowest retention rate,” said Marque Willis, junior psychology major and author of the project. Marque Willis “

Willis said he believes the low retention rates for African American males are due to the lack of sense of belonging and academic motivation.

“My research has shown that those two things go hand in hand. We lack social integration because there are not many of us on campus to begin with,” Willis said. “And I believe that is a huge factor in the lack of academic motivation.”

The one thing that combats the lack of belonging and lack of academic motivation is extracurricular activities, Willis said.

Willis presented his research at the 16th annual Southeastern Association of Educational Opportunity Program Personnel Research Conference in Atlanta, Georgia.

He said his African American friends who dropped out of college were the inspiration behind his research.

“When I first started at Sac State I had nine African American friends that I met in the dorms. My sophomore year it went down to six because three of them had dropped out. Now, there are only two out of the original nine friends left,” Willis said. “I wanted to do some research on something that I could potentially help change here on campus.”

Social and Organizational Psychology

The American Psychology Association defines social and organizational psychology as the study of how people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others.

Megan Maas, a psychology graduate student, said she got the idea for her social and organizational psychology research project from her job as a nanny for a ten-year-old boy who had an Internet porn fascination.

Her award winning project, which was recognized at the 16th annual Southeastern Association of Educational Opportunity Program Personnel Research Concerence, is titled “The Influence of Internet Pornography on College Students: An Empirical Analysis of Attitudes, Affect, and Sexual Behavior.”

Maas said she thinks Internet porn addiction is the symptom of Americans being “entertained to death” and wanting instant sexual gratification.

“It gets to the point where the real stuff just does not do it for them anymore and that is so unfortunate,” Maas said.

Her research focused primarily on the negative affects pornography to an individual’s sexuality.

“Think of it (pornography addiction) as an addiction to Facebook,” Maas explained to a group of students. “Some people get so into Facebook now that they get more enjoyment out of socializing with people on Facebook then face-to-face interactions.”

Laila Barakat can be reached at lbarakat@statehornet.com.