Question: what is your favourite psychological research and why?

Ashleigh Johnstone answered on 12 Jun 2023:

I’m fascinated by work done by Norman Mackworth in the 1940s – he wanted to understand why some radar operators failed to notice unexpected events near the end of long shifts. So basically, why did attention drop after long sessions? He ran some cool experiments which told us how long people can actually sustain a high level of attention for (not as long as you’d expect!) which then helped inform how long shifts should be for radar operators. I’ve always thought it was a cool example of a psychologist solving a real world problem with psychology 😁