Selecting a topic for my master thesis

This semester I have competed all courses for my master educations (the final ones were Boundaries of Psychology, Skill Acquisition and Training and Neuro-ergonomics). All that is left now for both Psychology and Human Machine Communications is writing a master thesis. Even though I think it would technically be possible to combine these two masters theses into one, I’ve decided to split them up and write two theses about a fun subject.

First up: the thesis for Psychology. I have found Maarten Derksen willing to supervise my thesis. The only thing left is to select a topic for my master thesis. We have done some brainstorming together and I am currently considering these three topics:

  1. Writing a review about the development of the field of parapsychology. This is the field of science that researches telepathy, telekinesis and more stuff like that. The field has often been criticized for not developing coherent theories and a paradigm that guides research. I wonder if any progress has been made since then. Derksen suggested interviewing some active researchers in this field, there are some in Leiden. This could be fun. Usually, these researchers have strong emotional feelings about their field.
  2. Another idea is writing a similar review about the field of evolutionary psychology. This is currently a very active and developing field, looking for paradigms and theories to guide its research. This is a bit more focused on the Brain and Behavior part of my master education, but I don’t know if it’ll be as much fun.
  3. Lie detectors. Derksen is currently working on some articles about this himself, so I don’t know how I could fit in my master thesis but at least I’ll have supervisor with highly detailed knowledge about the subject. Of course, lie detectors are fun.

Does anyone have any other suggestions or any opinions about these subjects?

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