SRP Research Questions

My first question is "Does gender affect the level of sympathy a person has?". I've always wondered if females have the capacity to feel more sympathetic emotions than males. After reading an article, Abused Puppies Get More Sympathy Than Adult Crime Victims on testing empathy in people for my fourth current event, I began to wonder about how gender affects emotion even more.  I can test this question using adults or children, male and female, all the same age. If I used my school as a resource for people, this question would be repeatable because of all the different classes we have. I believe I should get to do this question because learning about human emotions is something I am passionate about. It would also provide background information if I were to do my second research question for another science fair project. 

My second question is  "Does age affect how sensitive you are to emotion?". Based on an abstract I read for my third current event, The Brain Basis of Emotion: An Analytic Review, I want to know if your emotions get stronger or weaker as you age. This question is testable, and repeatable. I would be using people as the test subjects, so I can use friends from school parents' co-workers, etc. I also do believe this question is concise. I should get to do this project because it ties into my first research question, but it's different, so I'm not doing the same project. 

My final research question is "Does talking to yourself actually make you smarter?". I read an article for my first current event called Talking Yourself Makes You Smarter, in which researchers did an interesting experiment to prove this question true. Even though the scientists that conducted the experiments are trained professors, I want to see if I can recreate, or even expand this project myself. Again, using a school environment, this question would be testable and repeatable. I think i should get to do this project because I feel that I could add some originality to the experiments, and I'm the question would open up different possibilities for background research.


Aside from these 3 questions, there's a question that Ceileigh (http://watermarkscience.blogspot.com/), my soon-to-be science fair partner came up with, which is "Are people actually more beautiful than they perceive?" You can check out her blog for more info. Either my first or her second question will be what our project is about.