Jay went to work right away in the hunt for research topics. He retrieved three notecards and a pen from his backpack, ready to write down his choices, and entered [i][b]‘Psychology of…’[/b][/i] into the Google search engine. Dozens of web articles popped up in response, so he scrolled down the list and skimmed the titles of each as he looked for something to pique his interest. The options were seemingly endless. He whistled quietly as he read subject after subject. He had had no idea how diverse psychology was. It was going to be harder than he thought to choose just three.

[center][i][b]Psychology of Sport and Exercise
Psychology of Color
Psychology of Violence
Psychology of Social Status
Psychology of Selfies[/b][/i][/center]

Jay paused to laugh at that last one. He found it funny that some scientist in the world took the time and effort to study people taking pictures of themselves. Then again, somebody had to do it eventually. It seemed like everything else had been studied already. He continued down the list:

[center][i][b]Psychology of Eating
Psychology of Attractiveness
Psychology of Survival[/b][/i][/center]

He stopped again, his cursor hovering over the last title. Growing up in a family of outdoorsy people, he had always been fascinated with survival. He had been camping with his brother and father countless times—like [i]real[/i] camping: in the middle of the mountains with no bathrooms and just a nearby stream for water—so he felt like he had a pretty solid understanding of survival. However, he had never once thought about the processes of his brain when he was out in the wilderness. It might have been interesting to study. He wrote it down on one of the three notecards, along with ‘Psychology of Obedience and Roleplaying’—he was still too interested in that one to pass it up—and ‘Psychology of Tattoos’—he didn’t know if Anna had any tattoos, but he had three, himself, so it could have been interesting to study what caused a person to choose whether or not to permanently mark his or her body.

Having picked out his three research subjects, Jay turned the cards face down and shuffled them together with Anna’s choices in the center of the table. He watched as she selected one at random, and was pleased to see it was his favorite option: ‘Psychology of Survival.’ He grinned, excited to come up with a plan as to how they would go about researching the chosen topic. She didn’t seem quite as enthusiastic as he was, but he hoped he could change her mind. She was probably just uncomfortable about the idea of survival, like many other girls he knew. But also like many other girls, she would probably warm up to it with time.

“I don’t have any specific ideas for it right now,” Jay answered her question with a shrug. He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms over his chest. “We have to study each other though, right? I was thinking we could put together some sort of survival situation and see how the other person responds. I don’t know what that would look like yet, but it’s one option.” He offered her a friendly smile. “You don’t have to worry. It wouldn’t be anything intentionally dangerous, and I have a lot of experience, so I can make sure we stay safe.”