Initial ideas and main question

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   Coming into the EPQ lesson, I hadn't got a single idea of what to do my topic on; when told to 'do a project on whatever you want' the idea is weirdly daunting. My mind went straight to psychology since it (to me) is a very intriguing subject that I'd happily spend hours watching videos and reading studies on. I would also do a dissertation as my final piece as I study English literature and want to improve my extended writing abilities. However narrowing 'psychology' down to a less vague area only made it harder to choose from so many psychological ideas and case studies. 
   
Here were my initial ideas:
  • Moral licensing- essentially the explanation for a part of our moral compass and how we balance good and bad decisions. 
  • Psychedelics and their potential in treating mental illnesses. 
  • False memories- the way the brain can fill in missing memories and even construct completely new memories of experiences that never happened. 
   Each of these are incredibly interesting yet I was drawn to one more than the others. Moral licensing would serve for quite a good idea for maybe one or two blog posts but finding the content for any more would be impossible. Psychedelics would be a more controversial topic that I'd find much easier to talk about but there is a limiting amount of scientific data and research on their effects on a larger scale for treating mental illness. 
   
   Therefore, the initial question I am asking due to it being something I want to further look into and that I enjoyed finding more about is:

How do false memories corrupt the world around us?

   I do cover the theme of memories within psychology with one of the twenty specific case studies covering leading questions causing false memories briefly however I plan to focus on other ares of the topic of false memories as oppose to what we study within the course. For example, I would like to delve deeper into my own research on how false memories from childhood and personal events can cause identity issues, how false memories can occur due to the influence of media, and the experience of false memories of shared large-scale events. 

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