Research ideas for essays and dissertations



Quick Facts. Our projects are:

  • Exciting: cutting edge research on social media, intelligence, personality, and the online user.
  • Fun: join a team of enthusiast that do their research for fun as well as science!
  • Unique: work with unique databases never before explored.
  • Highly competetive: we can supervise only a few students each year. Don't bother if you are not aiming high! (and by 'high' we mean publication in Science)

Remember: first of all we want to hear your own ideas! 

Example project titles:

  • Relationship between the psycho-demographic profile and position on the social network?
  • Can social networks be recreated from the relative positions of people pictured?
  • To what extent are our facebook friends similar to us?
  • Predicting Consumer Preferences with Personality.
  • Developing tests - make your own IQ test and publish it online!
  • Can political views/religion/favourite artist  be predicted by personality?
  • Do gender differences in personality relate to film or book preference?
  • How reliable is facebook profile information? (comparison of personal data collected during interview with facebook profile contents)
  • Can personality be assessed by looking at the profile picture?
  • Interpersonal differences in profile pictures.
  • How is personality related to satisfaction with life?
  • The role of personality in subject choice at University.
If you have any questions, or would like to talk to us, write to: Professor John Rust.

Please remember that the final decision on your project will rest with your supervisor. All projects are subject to ethics approval. Necessary paperwork is available here.