Reaction Time: Sports and Religion

Publication Date

Fall 2015

Advisor(s) - Committee Chair

Fredrick Grieve (Director), Amy Brausch, Sally Kuhlenschmidt

Degree Program

Department of Psychology

Degree Type

Master of Arts

Abstract

Individuals attend to a variety of various stimuli on a daily basis and their brains decide what to attend to and what to tune out. How the brain chooses what is most important to pay attention to is decided with threat level, novelty, emotion, and other criteria. The current study looked at responses from 41 participants who identified high or low with University of Kentucky, Western Kentucky University, and/or Christianity. The participants where shown two images, the UK logo and either the WKU logo, an out-ofstate team logo, or a Christian symbol. Directly after the two images were presented, a dot appeared on the screen and the participants tapped a key on the keyboard to indicate on which side of the screen the dot was placed. The hypothesis stated that participants’ mean reaction time for identifying the side of the screen the dot was on when under a logo or a symbol with which the participants highly identify would be faster than the mean reaction time to a dot under logos or symbols with which the participant had low identification. However, results of this study did not show statistically significant differences in the mean reaction times of the participants.

Disciplines

Cognition and Perception | Psychology | Social Psychology

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