Presenting my poster at the 2023 Undergraduate Research Poster Competition.

Author: Sophia Chier | Major: Psychology | Semester: Spring 2023

This past spring semester, I received my second round of funding from the Honors College for my research that I conducted in Japan in the Fall 2022 semester. I wrote a blog post detailing my research and experiences in Japan last semester, so I will try not to repeat too much information in this one. However, very briefly, my name is Sophia Chier, and in Fall 2022 I studied abroad in Nishinomiya, Japan, and collected data from students there to test for something called longevity bias. My thesis advisor, Dr. Scott Eidelman, does research on longevity bias- or the belief that things that have existed for longer are inherently better- and we wanted to see if longevity bias would be present in a Japanese population. We specifically hypothesized that Japanese people would show higher scores of longevity bias compared to previous studies done in American populations, due to their respect for older things. We also tested for ingroup bias, or the tendency of people to prefer things relating to their ingroup (i.e., preferring ones own religion, preferring to talk to people of the same race/gender, etc.)We did this by showing students a painting and manipulating their knowledge of the age of the painting and the nationality of the artist.

After returning to the U.S. in February, I focused on analyzing the data I collected from the study. What Dr. Eidelman and I found was completely opposite of what we expected; participants actually marginally preferred the painting when they believed it was newer rather than older. Furthermore, when separating the participants’ results by gender, we found that they differed significantly: female students preferred the painting when they believed that it was done by an American artist and was younger, whereas male participants preferred the painting when they believed it was done by a Japanese artist and was older. The results were only marginally significant, so this study isn’t really generalizable, but it was still very interesting to see that our hypothesis was incorrect.

There were several factors that I discussed in my final Honors Thesis that we thought could have skewed these results to be opposite of what we hypothesized: the sample was not big enough, the students represented came from a private Christian university (which is a minority in Japan) and the gender representation was very inequal (73% female).  Therefore, the sample was not very representative of the population, and we concluded that this study needs to be replicated a few times in Japan to accurately state the results.  However, I believe this is a good first start in bringing this new sociopsychological concept of longevity bias into Japan. If the marginally significant findings in this study can point to anything, it is that, in Japan, there are some pretty steep differences in opinions and mindsets in terms of gender. I think taking gender differences into account can certainly guide and inspire future research that will take place in Japan.

I was able to present these findings at the Undergraduate Research Poster Competition in April, and I was shocked to win first place in my category! Even though the results were unexpected, it was really wonderful to get to talk to people about what an amazing experience it was to be ablet to travel abroad and experience the culture that I have always been interested in researching firsthand.  I feel really honored that the lovely people at the Honors College found my research to be interesting enough to even give me a spot at the poster competition, much less win a prize for it.

Now that I have defended my Honors Thesis and graduated, I have a lot to look forward to. I want to continue researching psychology in Japan, so after I take a language proficiency test this coming winter of 2023, I am planning to move back and go to graduate school there.

Thanks to the Honors College funding I received, I got to discover my passion and will get to continue my education like I have always wanted. I would like to especially thank Dr. Eidelman for being my advisor, Dr. Mitch Brown for being part of my committee and being such an encouraging and kind mentor, and Mafumi Omura and Dr. Tatsuya Fukushima of the Japanese program for creating a wonderful program that cultivated my love of learning for the Japanese language and culture.