Applied Psychology student wins award for research into Covid-19 precautionary behaviour
Laura Mahady’s final year Applied Psychology project on “Predictors of Compliance with Covid-19 Precautionary Measures: Empathy, Age and Gender.”
While health organisations have attempting to reduce the spread of Covid-19 through procedures such as hand washing and social distancing, psychologists having been paying attention to factors that might influence these behaviours.
Dr Irene Connolly, who supervised the project, stated that Laura’s project “gives an insight into the relationship between empathy for others and compliance to these measures to prevent the spread of Covid-19 across different age groups and genders, in an Irish context. Future government policy could be informed by such psychological research.”
Dr John Greaney, co-ordinator of the BSc Applied Psychology degree at IADT added that “It is a great credit to Laura and her supervisor to work under these circumstances to produce such a high quality and relevant research piece”.
Laura is in the final stages of her degree and reflected that presenting at the conference “was definitely nerve-wracking but was overall a great experience to be able to speak about my own research project, and I was so delighted to win a prize for it.”