STEM 1 is taught by Dr. Crowthers. In STEM 1, each student develops and conducts an independent research project, ultimately culminating in a presentation at February STEM Fair, and a written STEM Thesis regarding their project. My project is titled "The Effect of Age on Emotional Response to Color-Based Visual Stimuli." If you'd like to read more about my project, continue reading below.
Phrase 1: How does the age of an individual affect emotional responses to color-based visual stimuli?
Phrase 2: If the age of the individual is increased, then their self reported reactions to red-based stimuli will increase in positivity. Typically, these colors are associated with danger or a warning, but in accordance with the age-positivity theory, responses should become increasingly positive with aging.
Abstract: Some of the health benefits of positive thinking can include a lengthened life span, lowered levels of depression and stress, and increased cardiovascular health. The age-related positivity effect is a trend in many existing experiments that shows that as age increases, overall positivity tends to increase as well . This is thought to be a result of the amygdala becoming less sensitive to negative stimuli over time, becoming unable to associate the stimuli with a negative emotion . Therefore, with age, people would be less likely to associate a certain color with a negative emotion. To further assess how overall positivity is connected to aging, a survey was distributed to a group of participants (n=20). The participants were asked to self-report their emotional responses to different color-based images using the Discrete Emotions Questionnaire . Each individual was categorized into one of three age groups , and differences between the positive and negative affectivity of the images between each group were analyzed using a one-way ANOVA test. The only significant variance between age groups occurred in the negative affectivity of red-based imagery, F (2,14) = 8.913, p = 0.004
This is the final draft of my STEM 1 Thesis, which was written and put together over the course of my project. It details my motivation for the project, my research, my methods, my data collection, analysis, and the conclusions that I ultimately took away from the project, as well as any future work that I might considering pursuing on this topic.
During February, every junior has the opportunity to present their independent research projects at the STEM Fair, which takes place at WPI's Odeum. This is a copy of the file that I used to make my STEM poster, and includes a summarization of my project that I used to present my findings to the judges. After the fair, I was named one of the runners-up to represent Mass Academy at the Worcester Regional Science and Engineering Fair.
In June 2020, I presented my project at the National Consortium of Secondary STEM Schools (NCSSS) Student Research Symposium over Zoom. To the left is the digital poster that I constructed and used to talk about my research and findings.