Activities and Exercises for the topics of:
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new link as of June 1, 2008
Social Psychology for Educators - A new site has been created by Hunter Gehlbach with help from a grant from the Association for Psychological Science Teaching Fund. The site provides ideas for how social psychology can be used in the classroom. There is not much there yet, but you will find some "pedagogical practices" (one-page descriptions of how social psych concepts can be applied in a classroom), and eventually some lesson plans and videos. Nice idea, Hunter. [added 4/16/08]
Critical thinking case - Not directly a social psych activity, but this well-developed case and the extensive accompanying materials and activities from a text on Critical Thinking, Thoughtful Writing provide a variety of means of teaching critical thinking and writing through a court case. [added 9/22/07]
Icebreakers - Sarah Estow from Guilford College shared some excellent "icebreakers" for illustrating social psychology principles at the SPSP Teaching Pre-conference. For example, she has begun the semester with
"Lying to your peers" - Students were to go around the room and tell two true and one untrue thing about themselves. Students tried to guess which were true and which were untrue. She was able to connect this exercise to self-concept, stereotyping and impression formation among other concepts.
"Professor profile" - At the beginning of the course, students completed questionnaires about their instructor (Sarah), identifying what they thought would be her hometown, favorite music, favorite movies, etc. They also rated how confident they were in these judgments. She then had them discuss how easily they formed these impressions, what data they used, confidence vs. accuracy, and more.
"24-hour sex change" - Students anonymously completed a questionnaire identifying their sex and whether or not, if given the chance, they would want to change sexes for 24 hours. She also asked them what they would do as that other sex for those 24 hours. You could do this as another ethnicity for a day. [added 7/6/07]Reading questions - Nick DiFonzo assigns his students reading questions to accompany Susan Fiske's Social Beings (2004) text. These one-page assignments are then brought to class to serve as a basis for discussion. Although you may not use this text, the assignment serves as a good model of how to encourage reading and discussion in a course. [added 7/5/06]
Debates in the Classroom
Useful or not? Talk among yourselves. I occasionally use debates in class to promote student engagement and discussion of a topic. Sometimes I randomly assign them to a position (good way to illustrate the saying-is-believing effect) and sometimes I let them choose which side they will be on. Topics I have used include:
What topics have you had students debate? I would be interested in hearing how you have used debates in your classes and the topics you have used. Send me replies at jfmueller@noctrl.edu. I will share them with the rest of the group. [added 7/5/06]
Service learning in psychology courses - The link takes you to an article from the APS Observer about ways to integrate service learning in psychology courses. Another such article with examples can be found here. More info can be found at the National Service-learning Clearinghouse. [added 1/13/06]
Variety of topics: Take surveys/tests online - Students can take interactive surveys/tests, some of which are part of research projects. Well designed. [added 4/06/04]
Critical thinking (and more) - Jeffry Ricker is the moderator of one of the best discussion lists on the Internet, PESTS (Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically). He maintains an excellent website for PESTS that includes activities and exercises as well as a good collection of articles and other teaching materials related to promoting a skeptical/critical mind.
Isn't Social Psychology All Just Common Sense? - 33-question quiz [added 2/1/03]
Another Common Sense Test - interactive T/F test on some common misperceptions such as "opposites attract"
Thinking Critically about Social Psychology - these activities ask students to read an online article and then answer some critical thinking questions - from Brehm, Kassin & Fein, Social Psychology 5/e, Houghton Mifflin [added 11/07/02]
Necessary and sufficient conditions - excellent explanation of these concepts with good examples and practice exercises from Norman Swartz
Variety of activities - quite a few in-class activities and discussion questions for many topics from Mark Whatley
NetLabs - over 60 activities to accompany Brehm/Kassin/Fein's text Social Psychology, 5/e - Shockwave Plug-in required for most activities - can be downloaded for free at the site
What is social psychology? - students visit extensive Social Psychology Network site in this activity to explore the nature of social psychology (accompanies Social Psychology, Third Edition by Aronson, Wilson, and Akert)
Unique tutorial on polling - "'Good morning. You are listening to WQXL radio. It's election day! This morning, the Journal-Times reported that the latest polls indicate Republican Higgins leading Democrat incumbent Fletcher by a slight margin of 7%, with a margin of error of +/- 5%. If these numbers hold, Higgins will be the first woman this city has ever elected mayor.' In an election season, it's common to hear news reports regarding poll results. What do these figures mean and where do we get them? Follow a year in a fictitious election campaign for an inside look at the mathematics behind the polls and the news you hear every day." [added 4/11/08]
Recreating Bargh, Chen, and Burrows (1996) in class - Jennifer Tickle presented a very interesting class activity at the 2007 SPSP teaching pre-conference. Remember the Bargh et al. study in which students were primed for old age, and then walked more slowly down the hall? Jennifer describes how you can recreate that study in your class and then discuss relevant social psychological and methodological issues. [added 7/7/07]
Correlation or Causation? - updated - I have added quite a few more links to my collection of popular press articles that often include questionable headlines. I use the links on this page to teach about the language of correlations versus causal relationships, the type of research commonly associated with each, and how to evaluate the quality and quantity of evidence to support such claims. I also have added an assignments section that includes brief tasks that could be used as in-class activities or out-of-class assignments. I would love to hear of any activity/assignment ideas you have or create to accompany this resource. I will add them to the site. Thanks. [added 1/1/07]
Correlations - from Traci Craig's Introduction to Social Psychology course [added 7/5/06]
Hypothesis generation - from Traci Craig's Introduction to Social Psychology course [added 7/5/06]
Critiquing a study - from Traci Craig's Introduction to Social Psychology course [added 7/5/06]
Name that method - an exercise in which students identify scenarios as either correlational, experimental or quasi-experimental, and then identify the variables involved -- from Paul Fuglestad's Intro to Social Psychology course [added 2/22/06]
Levels of measurement and statistics - Interactive quizzes/games mirrored after Who Wants to be a Millionaire. See how you do! [added 1/8/06]
Illusory correlations - Excellent PowerPoint demonstration adapted and developed by Marcel Yoder -- You can send students to this link and they can complete the activity, or you can use this as an in-class activity. As Marcel suggests and research has demonstrated, this illusory correlation between distinctive events can also be connected to stereotyping and prejudice. Scott Plous provides a good description of such a link in his overview of prejudice research at the Understanding Prejudice website. [added 1/8/06]Research ethics quiz - From Christopher Federico's Intro to Social Psychology course [added 1/5/06]
"Demonstrating the importance of question wording on surveys" - Laura Madson, in a recent issue of Teaching of Psychology, provides an interesting exercise, with questions, for illustrating how easily survey wording can affect responses. Students are also able to practice data analysis. A variation of this exercise can be found at Mark Mitchell's Research Designed Explained website on this page. [added 3/3/05]
Statistics and research methods tutorials - good set of online tutorials on a variety of topics with a little interactivity for students [added 3/3/05]
SurveyWiz - This simple-to-use tool by Michael Birnbaum allows you or your students to create surveys for use on the Web or elsewhere. [added 6/9/04]
Thinking critically about causality and ethics - a few exercises for students to distinguish between correlations and causal relationships, from Julie Wright's Social Psychology course [added 4/06/04]
Hypothesis generation worksheet - a step-by-step guide to help students develop a good hypothesis, from Clifton Oyamat's Personality and Social Behavior course [added 3/22/04]
Evaluating scientific claims - Terry Humphreys presents his students with a nice, brief exercise on identifying common errors in evaluating scientific claims. Could be used as a brief paper assignment or an in-class activity, and, as Terry notes, it could be adapted for any psychology course including social. For the answer key, you can e-mail Terry at terryhumphreys@trentu.ca. [added 7/23/03]
Internal Validity Tutorial - "In Part 1 of this tutorial, you will be introduced to nine sources of threat to internal validity. First, some relevant terms are defined. Then, some background explanation for a hypothetical experiment is presented. Finally, each of the nine threats is described, followed by an example and a contrasting nonexample as applied to the hypothetical experiment. An explanation is included of why the example represents a threat to internal validity and why the nonexample is not a threat. "In Part 2 of this tutorial, you will be asked to classify 36 hypothetical experiments as internally valid or not. If not, you must select the threat to internal validity from one of the nine sources introduced in Part 1." [added 2/4/03]
Evaluating Research - several interactive exercises on evaluating research from Brehm, Kassin & Fein, Social Psychology 5/e, Houghton Mifflin [added 11/07/02]
Several activities - good activities or assignments on confounding variables, operational definitions, correlation coefficients and a few more
Participate in psychology experiments - at this site you can 1) have your students participate in lab experiments from which you can download (in an Excel spreadsheet) the class' data for in-class analysis, 2) have your students participate in ongoing, online studies, and 3) view demonstrations of experiments without participating
Challenging misconceptions - "An in-class demonstration that aids in combating belief in psychics and in a claim made by some philosophers of science"
Critical thinking psychology exercises - excellent set of activities on inference vs. observation, operational definitions, correlations, jumping to conclusions, faulty thinking and thinking creatively - could be used as in-class or out-of-class activities
Research Methods
Research methods tutorials - large number of tutorials written by students in a graduate course
Research Methods Lab - very well-designed, interactive review of five research methods - includes description of five methods, examples in different disciplines, practice activities and quizzes for check on understanding - requires free Shockwave plug-in which can be downloaded at the site
Which methodology? - interactive exercise asking students to visit Social Psychology Network's link to online studies to determine which methodology is being used and answer other questions - current link to SPN doesn't work; correct link is here (accompanies Social Psychology, Third Edition by Aronson, Wilson, and Akert)
Research design - in groups, students design studies and answer related questions based on given variables
Statistical Activities
Statistical literacy - detailed, interactive modules to teach statistical concepts [added 4/11/08]
Data sets - The Center for the Teaching of Statistics makes 25 data sets available. [added 4/4/08]
"Web Interface for Statistics Education" (WISE) - links to tutorials, interactive exercises/demos, glossaries and more
Visualizing statistical concepts - excellent set of links to interactive illustrations and activities for a variety of statisical concepts from Chip Reichardt
Probability and statistics - many interactive, online activities and resources illustrating these concepts
Causal and Statistical Reasoning - The folks at Carnegie-Mellon University have created an excellent instructional site on causal reasoning. (Note: I had difficulty making it work in Netscape Navigator, but I got most of it to work in Internet Explorer.) Click on "Guest Access" to enter and use the site. It includes extensive instructional modules with interactive demonstrations and exercises. You will need to check your "System Requirements" at the site to make sure you have the necessary downloads to make the modules and "Applets and Shockwave" lab to work. No extra software is needed to use the large number of case studies included which illustrate the media confusing causal relationships with correlations and other such phenomena. Very well done. [added 8/30/02]
Randomness - excellent, extensive site on randomness tailored for different levels of statisical understanding - includes interactive exercises, interactive quiz and more
"Interact" and affect control theory - "Interact is a computer program that displays verbal descriptions of what people might do in a given situation, of how they might respond emotionally to events, and of how they might attribute qualities or new identities to themselves and other interactants in order to account for unexpected happenings." From David Heise, this is the web-based version of his program illustrating many principles of Affect Control Theory. More about the theory can be found here. [added 3/30/04]
In-class demonstration of the self-serving bias - adapted from Dana Dunn's article "Demonstrating a self-serving bias" (accompanies Psychology: An Introduction, 10/e by Morris and Maisto) [added 9/4/02]
Interactive modules - Toni Schmader has designed five interactive instructional learning modules on self-related topics such as self-monitoring and gender identity - note: shockwave plug-in needed - once you have installed the plug-in and clicked on a link to a module you still may not be able to make it work because the "more" button you need to click from the main screen of each module may not be visible at the bottom of the screen - you may need to remove some of the toolbars in your browser or switch to a higher screen resolution (e.g., 1024x768) to find the More button to begin each module
Social identity - paper assignment that could be used as in-class or out-of-class exercise - from Michael Schmitt
Group identity - paper assignment that could be used as in-class activity or discussion starter - from Michael Schmitt
Self Lab - based on Markus, 1977, JPSP - from a Research Methods in Social Cognition course - courtesy of Janet Ruscher
Perspectives on self - in groups, students evaluate certain research findings from several perspectives on self
Are your feelings predictable? - interesting exercise from Affect Control Theory tutorial - more exercises at this site
Availability heuristic - Several activities related to the availability heuristic were shared recently on the TIPS (Teaching in the Psychological Sciences) listserv. Annette Kujawski Taylor described the following demo she uses: "Yes, I got this one from an old human memory text book that is no longer in print (Zechmeister and Nyberg) but it still works great. Read the names of 20 oscar or emmy winning actors (female) from the 1930s/1940s. You can find the names online. Then read the names of 18 oscar or emmy winning actors (male) from the last 10 years. Then ask if you read more men's or women's names. Most will reply more men's names. The women's names are more obscure and less likely to be encoded as they try to recall which they heard more of. (Of course you can do it opposite as well as far as gender names go.)"
A variation of this that I have done is to read the students a list of names at the beginning of class. The list contains male and female names. There are a few more male names on the list. But just about all the female names are famous ones while none of the male names is. So, when I get to the heuristic later in the class period and ask them whether there were more males or females on the list of names I read to them earlier, they usually believe there were more female names because those are more available. However, sometimes by the time I get to this little demo my students have figured out that I am a tricky social psychologist and they guess that there were more males. Even though they may have "spoiled" my demo, they at least can explain why they guessed what they did and why the more common response is "females." Also, even if they have guessed that there were more males on the list, if I asked them to write down all the names they can remember they see that female names are much more available.
Others suggested using the classic example of having students guess whether there are more words in the English language beginning with the letter "k" or with "k" as the third letter. I had always heard that there were two or three times as many words with "k" as the third letter. However, some on the list questioned whether this was true or not. Jim Clark did some further investigation of this question and came up with the following:
"Wikipedia attributes this example of the availability heuristic to Stuart Sutherland. R does appear to work as stated in Wikipedia and again attributed to Sutherland.
R in first position 2386
R in third position 4247Other on-line sources attribute the 3:1 ratio to Tversky & Kahnemann. Following up on that lead, brings us to Tversky & Kahnemann. There, the choice of consonants (K, L, N, R, V) is based on Mayzner & Tresselt's (1965) "extensive word count." All work for the KFR database (i.e., more frequent in position 3 than 1), except for K, although the counts for V are relatively closer than the other letters. An abstract of the Mayzner & Tresselt study indicates that they only considered about 20,000 words from 3 to 7 letters long. Limiting KFR to this length range did not modify the results for K (i.e., K was still more common in position 1).
The same search revealed a 1998 JEP:LMC paper. The authors concluded: "Tversky and Kahneman's (1973) findings on letter frequency judgment have become one of the stock-in-trade examples of a "bias" in the heuristics-and-biases literature. The results of three studies indicate that this chapter in the heuristics-and-biases literature needs to be rewritten."
For a demo, it would seem that L, N, and R are better choices than K or V. From KFR,
L 1490 in position 1 and 2649 in position 3
N 897 in position 1 and 3500 in position 3
R 2386 in position 1 and 4247 in position 3K 547 in position 1 and 240 in position 3
V 686 in position 1 and 817 in position 3"I think the next time I use this example I will use the letter "r" instead of the letter "k." [added 4/16/08]
Primacy effect - Here are two demos I use to illustrate the primacy effect. I imagine these originally came from some other sources in my distant and long-forgotten past.
1) I split the class in half, telling one half to look away. Then I show the other half a list of 5 or 6 attributes of a person (warm, honest, intelligent, rude, clumsy) one at a time. I tell them to pick a number from 1-10 to describe how much they think they would like this person from 1 (not at all) to 10 (very much). After the one half has written down a number, I then tell the other half to turn back and look to the front. Then I tell them I am going to have them do the same thing. I grab another stack of sheets with one attribute each listed on them. I then show them the new stack one at a time. The only difference between the two stacks is the order of the attributes. Obviously, the positive traits are first for the first group and the negative ones are first for the second group. The first group sees what the second group receives and realizes I just reversed the order.
2) Then I do the second demo. I read a list of words. All of the words are either "yes" or "no." There are more "no's" on the list, but there are more "yes's" at the beginning of the list.
Then I start with the second demo first, and I ask them if they thought there were more yes's, more no's or the same amount. This demo almost always works. The majority says more yes's. I ask them why. This demo is good for illustrating one cause of the primacy effect -- the diminished attention as the list goes on.
Then I ask the first group to describe what I did in the first demo. After they do I ask each group for its results. I just have them give their numbers out loud and I add them up quickly in my head. Then I divide each total by the number of students in each group and get the average rating. This usually works, but not always. But they still understand the point, and see another possible source of the effect -- maintaining one's initial hypothesis. [added 4/16/08]"Teach students about schematic processing" - abstract of an article in the latest issue of Teaching of Psychology [added 4/4/08]
False memory test - Ken Paller and colleagues have created an online version of the memory test they used in their research. Here is a second link to the demo. [added 12/24/07]
Oppression and privilege - Another interesting talk at the 2007 SPSP pre-teaching conference included a prejudice activity from Dena Samuels, a sociologist at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs. She reads a fairly long list of prompts to her students for which they are to stand up in class if the prompt applies to them. For example, "if people routinely mispronounce your name ... please stand up." Or, "If you are often expected to attend classes on your religious holidays ... please stand up." Or, "If you have never been followed around in a store ... please stand up." She asks them to explicitly look around the room to see who is standing and who is not each time. That leads into a discussion of oppression in her class (e.g., "How does oppression play out in your life?" and "How did it feel to stand up?"). The complete article describing it will soon appear in the following source:
Samuels, D. (2007). "Connecting to Oppression and Privilege: A Pedagogy for Social Justice." In Scott, Barbara M. and Marcia Texler Segal, (Eds.), Race, Gender, and Class in Sociology: Toward an Inclusive Curriculum, 6th Ed. Washington, DC: American Sociological Association. [added 7/7/07]
Stereotypes of body type - an in-class activity described in this article entitled "Some of my friends are fat, others are thin and some are built like Arnold Schwarzenegger: A body typing exercise that teaches critical thinking" [added 7/5/06]
Spot the fake smile - an online activity from the BBC [added 1/10/06]
Illusory correlations - Excellent PowerPoint demonstration adapted and developed by Marcel Yoder -- You can send students to this link and they can complete the activity, or you can use this as an in-class activity. As Marcel suggests and research has demonstrated, this illusory correlation between distinctive events can also be connected to stereotyping and prejudice. Scott Plous provides a good description of such a link in his overview of prejudice research at the Understanding Prejudice website. [added 1/8/06]
Confirmation bias demonstration - I conduct a briefer version of this activity in my social psych course to also illustrate the overconfidence phenomenon. I have everyone stand up. I tell them they can sit down when they are sure they know the rule of which I am thinking. I give them a couple examples of series of numbers that fit the rule: 1, 5, 9 and 17, 21, 25. At least a third of the class sits down at this point. They're sure! Then I solicit other examples of three-number series and tell them whether or not those series also fit the rule. Eventually, someone says "1,2,3" or "6, 31, 88." I say, "yes, that fits the rule." Some aren't so sure anymore; others are more sure they know the rule. Hardly anyone ever guesses my rule though. The rule I use is any ascending whole numbers. They usually don't think to ask "5, 5.5, 6" or something like that. [added 4/8/05]
Teaching about judgment heuristics - Recently published in Teaching of Psychology, this article by James Shepperd and Erika Koch demonstrates that only teaching about the errors that heuristics can lead to may be less effective than also illustrating how heuristics can lead to good judgments. [added 3/3/05]
Take a presidential candidate quiz? - Have you seen or taken one of the online quizzes to help you sort out which presidential candidate bests fits your views? This site provides links to four good ones that your students might find interesting to complete and/or analyze. [added 4/5/04]
Mere exposure effect [added 3/31/04]
Monty Hall dilemma - interactive site where students can experience the dilemma and have it explained [added 3/23/04]
Hot hand effect - a brief, interactive example of the hot hand effect that students can read about and try out [added 11/17/03]
Recognize emotions accurately? - This interactive activity asks you to match facial expressions with the correct emotional label. After "playing," you are given stats about how often players from a few different cultures correctly matched the expressions with the emotions. Shockwave is required. [added 7/23/03]
The pseudoscience of therapeutic touch - Yes, I know, this activity is written for grades 5-8. But it is a very well-designed activity that could be used by any age to explore pseudoscientific beliefs, placebo effects and more. [added 7/21/03]
Actor-observer effect - adapted from Mary Kite's article "Observer biases in the classroom" (accompanies Psychology: An Introduction, 10/e by Morris and Maisto) [added 9/4/02]
Attributions Lab - based on Clary & Tesser, 1983, PSPB - from a Research Methods in Social Cognition course - courtesy of Janet Ruscher
Schema Lab - based on Zadny & Gerard, 1974, JESP - from a Research Methods in Social Cognition course - courtesy of Janet Ruscher
Schema Lab - based on Maass et al., 1989, JPSP - from a Research Methods in Social Cognition course - courtesy of Janet Ruscher
Encoding Lab - based on Wegner et al., 1987, JPSP - from a Research Methods in Social Cognition course - courtesy of Janet Ruscher
Memory Lab - based on Hoffman et al., 1981, JPSP - from a Research Methods in Social Cognition course - courtesy of Janet Ruscher
Social Inference Lab - based on Macrae, 1992, PSPB - from a Research Methods in Social Cognition course - courtesy of Janet Ruscher
Magic trick - interactive trick illustrating how schemas can affect judgment (accompanies Social Psychology, Third Edition by Aronson, Wilson, and Akert)
Evaluate articles - in groups, students answer questions about specific articles on stereotyping and attributions
Fundamental Attribution Error - whole class demonstration of the fundamental attribution error (and how you may not be as smart as they thought you were)
Belief-o-matic - An online personality quiz about your religious and spiritual beliefs -- "Answer 20 questions about your concept of God, the afterlife, human nature, and more, and Belief-O-Matic will tell you what religion (if any) you practice...or ought to consider practicing." [added 1/1/07]
Attitude/Behavior consistency (cognitive dissonance) - from Jeff Bartel [added 2/22/06]
Intentional action - good interactive online exercise on intentional action from Joshua Knobe - also read a recent article describing the research associated with it, or a much longer article by the author summarizing this research [added 1/15/06]
Mere exposure effect [added 3/31/04]
Inducing cognitive dissonance - adapted from Carkenord and Bullington's article "Bringing cognitive dissonance to the classroom" (accompanies Psychology: An Introduction, 10/e by Morris and Maisto) [added 9/4/02]
Components of an attitude - interactive semantic differential scales which allows user to "see how psychologists measure the affective and cognitive components of attitudes" [added 7/19/02]
Battleground God - interesting exercise in consistency of beliefs - you are asked a series of T/F questions, and then you receive an analysis of how rationally consistent your answers were [added 3/21/02]
How do we form social stereotypes? - interactive module accompanying Psychology, Sixth Edition, by David G. Myers, Worth Publishers
Affect Lab - based on Forgas, 1999, JPSP - from a Research Methods in Social Cognition course - courtesy of Janet Ruscher
Attitudes Lab - based on Petty & Cacioppo, 1984, JPSP - from a Research Methods in Social Cognition course - courtesy of Janet Ruscher
Genes,
Gender and Culture
Body image on magazine covers - After clicking this link, let the site load. You will know it is done when an "unveil the fraud - click here!" button appears on the magazine cover. Click it and learn how magazine covers are retouched to make the model's image appear even more attractive and less attainable. [added 12/22/06]
Gender out-of-class exercises - Many extra credit activities that are mostly appropriate for outside of class, from Patricia Frazier's Psychology of Women course [added 1/5/06]
Gender Activities and Exercises - A variety of activities collected by Amy Hackney from subscribers to the Teaching Social Psychology Newsletter. [added 8/12/05]
In the addendum to the last issue I sent out a request from subscriber Amy Hackney for activity or demo ideas for her psych of gender class. Quite a few of you answered her request and supplied some good ideas. That was much appreciated. So I asked Amy if I could share those with the rest of you. I hope that is okay with the original contributors. You can find these ideas at the above link.Genes, Gender and Culture: "How male or female is your brain?"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/news/page/0,12983,937443,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,13026,937913,00.html
Simon Baron-Cohen, an expert in autism, presents a couple interactive questionnaires purportedly testing whether you are more an empathizer or a systemizer. The second link takes you to an article by Baron-Cohen further explaining these differences. [added 4/8/05]Variety of gender tasks - Students can choose from a variety of interesting tasks in Mary Losch's Psychology of Gender Differences course. These could serve simply as activities to engage in or as assignments to be completed and graded. Scroll down page. [added 11/22/04]
A Cross-cultural perspective teaching module - Subscriber Bernie Carducci has graciously allowed me to share his recent presentation at APA (2003) on an interesting in-class demonstration he developed to help his students better appreciate different cultural perspectives. At the heart of the activity is the cross-cultural comparison of personal ads. Two ads he shares are from the San Francisco Chronicle and two others are from the India Tribune, "a California newspaper with a readership of primarily immigrant families from India." [added 11/9/03]
Gender stereotypes in advertising - adapted from Jones' article "Gender stereotyping in advertisements" (accompanies Psychology: An Introduction, 10/e by Morris and Maisto) [added 9/4/02]
Identifying sexual harassment - adapted from Robin Warshaw's article "Is this sexual harassment?" (accompanies Psychology: An Introduction, 10/e by Morris and Maisto) [added 9/4/02]
Cultural Pursuit - looks like an interesting game developed by staff at Skidmore College that could be adapted to the classroom - must send away for materials at a nominal price
Cults - students respond to questions after visiting Heaven's Gate site and reading Zimbardo article on cults (accompanies Social Psychology, Third Edition by Aronson, Wilson, and Akert)
Compliance study - from Jeff Bartel
Demonstrating obedience - adapted from William Hunter's article "Obedience to authority" (accompanies Psychology: An Introduction, 10/e by Morris and Maisto) [added 9/4/02]
Social influence - Several activities from Baron and Byrne's Social Psychology text (9th ed.)
Social norms - paper assignment that could be used as in-class activity or discussion starter
Stanford Prison Experiment - synchronized slide-tape narration (80 slides) created by Philip Zimbardo and Greg White with discussion questions
L.A. Riots - students visit a site on the L.A. Riots and respond to questions (accompanies Social Psychology, Third Edition by Aronson, Wilson, and Akert)
Teaching persuasion through fundraising - This 75-minute activity from Debra Mashek teaches students "about the effectiveness of persuasion strategies while helping victims of a major natural disaster." This activity was awarded an honorable mention in the inaugural Action Teaching Award program from the Social Psychology Network. [added 4/7/06]
Spot the fake smile - an online activity from the BBC [added 1/10/06]
A field exercise - Robert Levine passed along this link to a recent Teaching of Psychology article written by Levine, Nathanael Fast, and Philip Zimbardo describing a very engaging exercise for students. "The assignment requires students to set themselves up as targets of a professional salesperson or other persuasion expert and to analyze their experiences using fundamental social psychological concepts." Good stuff! [added 3/3/05]
Facial expressions - Fun and interesting site at which you can manipulate facial expressions of a computer-animated character beginning with any of the eight universal emotional expressions [added 12/1/04]
Identifying persuasion techniques - adapted from Vivian Parker Makosky's article "Identifying major techniques of persuasion" (accompanies Psychology: An Introduction, 10/e by Morris and Maisto) [added 9/4/02]
Subliminal advertising - interactive exercise (requiring students to download a program) exploring efficacy of self-help tapes (accompanies Social Psychology, Third Edition by Aronson, Wilson, and Akert)
Persuasion in advertising - in groups, students evaluate ads in terms of persuasion concepts and theories
Persuasion - in groups, students make predictions about fictional situations/experiments in persuasion
The "O" train: Teaching the power of ostracism - Lisa Zadro and Kipling Williams use this in-class activity to "show students the powerful consequences of ostracism firsthand using an engaging, validated teaching tool: the "O" train." This activity was awarded an honorable mention in the Social Psychology Network's inaugural Action Teaching Award program. [added 4/6/06]
Are more heads better than one? - Dave Myers passed along this good in-class demonstration. He refers to James Surowiecki's book, The Wisdom of Crowds, in which the author makes the point that groups can make better decisions than the average individual under certain conditions (e.g., "given freely contributed inputs from varied perspectives" -- Myers). This point can be illustrated in class using the "jelly bean challenge" at the above link. As Dave suggests, "The idea would be to
* have individual class members estimate the number of beans.
* average those estimates.
* ask for a show of hands from people who were closer to the correct answer--2845 beans--than the class answer.The anticipated result would be few hands raised, thus illustrating that, as the text will say, 'all of us together can become smarter than almost any of us alone.'" Other related questions could be explored by such variations as dividing half the class into small groups to reach a group decision about the number of jelly beans and leaving the other half to make individual judgments. [added 1/13/06]
Social facilitation - an online, interactive exercise illustrating the phenomenon [added 6/20/05]
Demonstrating deindividuation - adapted from David Dodd's article "Robbers in the classroom: A deindividuation exercise" (accompanies Psychology: An Introduction, 10/e by Morris and Maisto) [added 9/4/02]
Demonstrating group polarization - adapted from Peter Gray's article "Engaging students' intellects: The immersion approach to critical thinking in psychological instruction" (accompanies Psychology: An Introduction, 10/e by Morris and Maisto) [added 9/4/02]
Demonstrating group processes - adapted from Gardner's article "Exercises for general psychology" (accompanies Psychology: An Introduction, 10/e by Morris and Maisto) [added 9/4/02]
Group dynamics activities - many in-class and out-of-class activities from Don Forsyth's text, Group Dynamics (3rd ed.) - be sure to read the copyright info on this page [added 3/6/02]
The Pairing Game - From the following source comes this in-class activity to illustrate the matching phenomenon:
Ellis, Bruce J; Kelley, Harold H. (1999). The pairing game: A classroom demonstration of the matching phenomenon. Teaching of Psychology, 26, 118-121. Abstract: Describes 2 versions of an in-class simulation that allows students to directly experience the matching phenomenon and explore issues concerning mate selection, social exchange, and related psychological concepts. Students are randomly assigned a value (either a numerical value or a list of adjectives), which they place on their forehead so others can see it but the student cannot. The goal is to pair off with another student with as high a value as possible. The simulation, called the Pairing Game, illustrates how matching on similarity can occur, even in the absence of knowledge of one's own value and merely by seeking the highest value possible in a partner.
Jim Friedrich reports that he uses this activity and adds: "I simply have my pairs that have emerged from the game arbitrarily designate a "Partner A" and a "Partner B"; then each pair gets to plot their coordinates with Partner A on the X asis and Partner B on the Y. There's always a very nice scatterplot, as the demo itself produces pretty good matching. Even medium size correlations of r = .5 tend to look pretty vague in small-N scatterplots, but the patterns jump right out whenever I do this (with or without the actual statstistical calculation)." He adds: "The article mentioned might go nicely with a recent finding reported in the Journal of Family Psychology (I believe) showing that heterosexual relationships in which the man is slightly less attractive than the woman exhibit better interpersonal relationships. The interpretation - or at last one of them - is that one of the things that less attractive men offer to attract more attractive woman with a broader range of choices is greater attentiveness, willingness to listen, etc. I've only read a summary and haven't been able to get the original yet, so don't quote me on this. For a more formal and comprehensive treatment of using market and economic principles in an attempt to understand key elements of heterosexual relationships, I regularly assign the following article by Roy Baumeister and Kathleen Vohs. [Baumeister, Roy F; Vohs, Kathleen D. (2004). Sexual Economics: Sex as Female Resource for Social Exchange in Heterosexual Interactions. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 8, 339-363.] It always generates lots of reactions (ranging from amused to heated) and provides a good opportunity for talking about what one looks for or doesn't in good theory -- ability to parsimoniously explain a range of existing phenomena, ability to generate new testable predictions, use of principles that are "independently motivated" (developed for purposes other than for explaining the phenomena in question), etc. It also provides opportunities to talk about things like naturalistic fallacy errors and the temptation to evaluate psychological theories (provisional and testable descriptions of nature) by the way they make us feel or the social ends they might or might not serve." Here's a link to a related article. [added 5/3/08]
Creating an "average" face - Interesting site lets you create an average face from images provided. The site also explains how these average faces are created. "You can also average your own uploaded faces!" [added 4/4/08]
More fun with faces - "Morph your picture!" "Find out which celebrities you resemble!" Tells you how it works. [added 4/4/08]
Even more fun with faces - Robin Musselman used the "Human Race Machine" as part of a class to, well, I'll let Robin tell it:
"I try to think of an overarching theme each semester. In this particular semester it was the fall after the first face transplant and somewhere I had read something that this was a procedure that could have been done previously, but hadn't because of the significance of the face to individual's psyche. It really got me thinking and so I decided to use the face as a theme that fall.I don't necessarily tell students....here is the theme, but I try to interweave it throughout the semester. That same semester I was using wikis for the first time so the first day of class I took everyone's picture and then created a Who's Who in Psychology page with each class have an individual page for each student. I posted their first name and picture and then they could create from there. Introduce themselves to the class, if you will, and they continued to add to those pages throughout the semester. I gave students the right to remove their picture if they wanted to, but I think only one or two out of 120 did so.
We talked about face recognition in the brain section, perception allowed for some unique illusions with face symmetery and other facial illusions, in learning and memory we talked about remembering names and/or faces, we talked about facial _expression_, the baby's innate fascination of faces, culture and beauty, I can't remember all of the little and not so little tie ins off the top of my head. I used the film Faces (with John Cleese) and the books, The Autobiography of the face, and another book (not the companion to the video Faces) The Face, which was a great resource. About 2/3 into the semester I had arranged for the Human Race Machine to come onto campus for a week and students could transform their faces into another race as well as age themselves 20 years. Students really were fascinated by this (I had seen it at a museum in Maryland....for info see, http://www.humanracemachine.com/faq.html
At the end of the semester we used the facial recognition software and many students posted those images that were "supposed" to look like them on their wiki pages. Again, students really enjoyed it and in fact, I had promised that three weeks after the semester I would "take down" the wiki pages with student pictures, etc. and then I had several students contact me asking if I still had their pages so they could transfer them to another site. All in all it was a fun semester." [added 4/4/08]
Online activity - Jean Mandernach sends her students to participate in an online experiment and then answer some questions about it. [added 1/15/06]
Face Filter - fun site where one can morph a face to fit several emotional responses and types of attractiveness [added 4/06/04]
Mere exposure effect [added 3/31/04]
How do we pick our mates? - interactive module accompanying Psychology, Sixth Edition, by David G. Myers, Worth Publishers
Prisoner's Dilemma Kit - Honestly, I don't know why anyone would purchase this product since you can play Prisoner's Dilemma for free online and you can play it in the classroom with just paper and pencil, but I offer you this website selling a "kit" for the game in case anyone would like to get the hard copy materials. [added 7/23/03]
Cooperation/Competition Experiment - from Subscriber Chris Jazwinski's Methods class, this activity could be conducted inside or outside the classroom as a demo of these concepts or as a means to collect and analyze data [added 3/13/03]
Tragedy of the Commons - In-class activity from Allyn & Bacon's Psychsite
Ingroup bias - To illustrate how easily and quickly we form ingroups and outgroups, I divide my class into those wearing tennis shoes that day and those not wearing tennis shoes. Then I have each group sit in a circle with its members. The "tennis shoe" group is assigned to list as many reasons as it can think of as to why the members of the other group did not wear tennis shoes that day. The non-tennis shoe group is assigned to list as many reasons as it can as to why the other group members are wearing tennis shoes. The listing starts out fairly neutral, but it is not long before each group's list becomes more and more derogatory, particularly when it overhears the list the other group is generating.
Interactive prisoner's dilemma - not only can you play the game, but you can manipulate a number of variables and select different strategies at this site
Interactive prisoner's dilemma - play the game; includes links to explanations
Social dilemma - a classroom activity
Bystander intervention - This is a complete lesson plan in which students, prior to the lesson, "read 'bystander scenarios' that depict people in need of help. For each scenario they predicted whether the onlooker would help the person in need and then gave reasons why an onlooker would or would not help in the specific situation. In class students compared their answers on the pre-test and compiled a set of factors that influence people in bystander situations. The instructor then introduced a research-based model of bystander intervention, and led a discussion comparing students' ideas to the model. At the end of class each student wrote an individual analysis explaining the similarities and differences between the model and his or her group's ideas of bystander behavior. As a homework assignment, students analyzed another set of bystander scenarios (post-test exercise)." Hat tip to Jim Matiya for pointing me to this resource. [added 7/8/07]
Egoism/Altruism Test - not a validated instrument, but it still contains a number of interesting scenarios that can serve as classroom examples, activities or assignments
"Can journalism kill? The case of Rwandan hate radio" - a lesson plan that contains some good possible activities and resources [added 12/24/07]
Take a heterosexual questionnaire - Interesting lesson revolves around students taking a questionnaire "to give straight people an opportunity to experience the types of questions that are often asked of gay, lesbian, and/or bisexual people." Questionnaire included. [added 12/24/07]
Michael Richards' outburst: Racist or "ragist"? - Here's an interesting debate you can have in your class regarding the actor Michael Richards' recent tirade against hecklers in a comedy club that was filled with a lot of racist comments. Columnist Eric Zorn asks: Did Richards' outburst arise from racism, or was it the result of an uncontrollable anger problem? As Zorn suggests, "Maybe the impulse to use those words came not from a desire to express his deepest, hidden views on the inherent comparative value of the races but from a momentary desire to inflict as much pain verbally as he could upon people at whom he was unjustifiably but extremely furious." Is it possible to rattle off a list of racial slurs without a racist intent or without it revealing a deep-seeded prejudice? Here is video of Richards' outburst. [added 1/1/07]
Stereotyping and segregation - an in-class activity "to show how even mild affiliative preferences at the individual level can lead to surprisingly strong patterns of segregation at the group level, without any intentional desire or plan for segregation" -- from Scott Plous' course on The Psychology of Prejudice and Discrimination [added 7/5/06]
"Responding to prejudice: A role-playing exercise" - an in-class activity "to give students an opportunity to try out and evaluate the effectiveness of various responses to prejudiced comments" -- also from Scott Plous' course on The Psychology of Prejudice and Discrimination [added 7/5/06]
"How much do you know about inequality?" - an interactive online quiz [added 7/5/06]Who has the power in society? Jessica Stahl shared this activity she experienced in a course:
"Here's an activity we did in a multicultural course I took in my doctoral program that is particularly good for conversations about hierarchies:
The instructor split the class into 2 groups--the white students and the non-white students and had each group sit in one line of chairs facing one another. (So, all the white students in one row facing the middle of the room and all the racial minority students in one row facing the middle of the room.) Then she us told that, without speaking, each group had to arrange themselves in terms of descending order of "power" held in society, with the student in each group holding the most power sitting in the chair closest to the board, and the one with the least sitting in the chair closest tot the back of the room. (So, for example, in the white students group, the men ended up at the "top" of the row, followed by the christian women, followed by the jewish/queer women.) Once we all were arranged in chairs we had to discuss our own group's process in arranging ourselves without speaking and what we observed (if anything) in the other group. An interesting phenomenon that we talked about quite a bit as a result of this exercise is that in the white students group, everyone thought they should be seated "higher" than they were, and the opposite occurred in the minority students group. That expanded into a discussion about both identity and values. You could actually do this exercise several diffrent times using different criteria to anchor the scale students are placing themselves in..." [added 2/22/06]
Case study in unintentional racism - Developed by Bob Grossman and Thomas Ford, "this case study is designed to help you explore your attitudes about race and learn about the complexity of the concept of racism." [added 2/22/06]Bob and Thomas would appreciate feedback from anyone who reads or uses this case study. You can e-mail Bob Grossman at grossman@kzoo.edu and Thomas Ford at thomas.ford@wmich.edu.
Stereotype threat - a teaching case study from Bob Grossman [added 2/22/06]Bob and Thomas would appreciate feedback from anyone who reads or uses this case study. You can e-mail Bob Grossman at grossman@kzoo.edu and Thomas Ford at thomas.ford@wmich.edu.
Assessing attitudes towards groups - from Jeff Bartel [added 2/22/06]
Test your aging IQ - online activity from secretsofaging.org [added 1/10/06]
Illusory correlations - Excellent PowerPoint demonstration adapted and developed by Marcel Yoder -- You can send students to this link and they can complete the activity, or you can use this as an in-class activity. As Marcel suggests and research has demonstrated, this illusory correlation between distinctive events can also be connected to stereotyping and prejudice. Scott Plous provides a good description of such a link in his overview of prejudice research at the Understanding Prejudice website. [added 1/8/06]
Facing History and Ourselves - Wow! I imagine some of you, particularly high school teachers, are familiar with this site. But I had not spent much time exploring it. There are a lot of good resources here. It is primarily geared to high school teachers, but there are activities, video clips, case studies and more that can be used by any instructor. Click on the Resources link to find some of these tools. For example, after going to the Resources page, click on the link to Online Modules. Some of these you will not be able to access. But the "Choose to Participate" module takes you to three different stories you and your students can investigate. Not in our town "examines how citizens in Billings, Montana came together to combat a series of hate crimes in 1993." Includes a fairly long video excerpt and other related resources. Worth exploring. [added 1/5/06]
Variety of activities - Tolerance.org also provides an excellent collection of activities/lesson plans geared primarily to high school and collegiate levels to teach students to fight hate and promote tolerance. High quality. [added 1/5/06]Variety of activities - This is an excellent site produced by a class at Ball State University. The page I have linked to "links" to a variety of exercises you can use in or out of class on prejudice, stereotyping and bullying. Unfortunately, the links were not working for me. However, if you put your cursor over the link of a particular activity, such as "KKK Application," which "illustrates how easily people might be lured into joining organizations that promote prejudice and intolerance," the full address of that activity should show up in the bottom-left corner of your screen. You can then type in that address to get to the actual activity. [added 1/5/06]
What is Race? - Here are a few interactive online activities designed to test one's knowledge about race. For example, you can try out "Sorting People," in which you can see if you can tell somebody's race by looking at them. This site accompanies the documentary "Race -- The power of an illusion." [added 1/5/06]
A role-playing exercise - Here is an article from Teaching of Psychology by Scott Plous describing an interesting exercise he has used. As the article notes, scenarios Scott has used for the role-playing are available on request from him. [added 4/8/05]
Geography Game - from Valerie Pruegger, this activity asks students to stand at various points in the room representing where they currently live relative to Calgary, Canada (the classroom's location) which is designated the center of the room. Then, students pick points, relative to Calgary, that represent where they were born, where there parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, etc. were born. Illustrates aspects of immigration, diversity and discrimination. Obviously can be adapted to other locales. [added 4/8/03]
Understanding/assessing prejudice - a few exercises with more to come at UnderstandingPrejudice.org - created by Scott Plous and others as a supplement to Understanding Prejudice and Discrimination, McGraw-Hill [added 12/06/02]
Institutional discrimination exercise
Variety of activities - This is an excellent site produced by a class at Ball State University. The page I have linked to "links" to a variety of exercises you can use in or out of class on prejudice, stereotyping and bullying. Unfortunately, the links were not working for me. However, if you put your cursor over the link of a particular activity, such as "KKK Application," which "illustrates how easily people might be lured into joining organizations that promote prejudice and intolerance," the full address of that activity should show up in the bottom-left corner of your screen. You can then type in that address to get to the actual activity. [added 1/5/06]
Critical thinking case - Not directly a social psych activity, but this well-developed case and the extensive accompanying materials and activities from a text on Critical Thinking, Thoughtful Writing provide a variety of means of teaching critical thinking and writing through a court case. [added 9/22/07]
Various activities and other resources - Some of you may have seen this resource found at the American Psychology-Law Society website. It describes a number of law related activities, demonstration materials, Internet resources and other teaching materials. [added 1/1/07]
"And Justice for All?" - Accompanying an NBC Dateline program, this site provides an interactive exercise. "Each year, hundreds of letters from prisoners sentenced to spend the rest of their lives behind bars arrive at the law offices of Kathleen Zellner & Associates in Naperville, Illinois. Read some of them and decide whether you would pursue any of these cases. These cases are real. By clicking below, you’ll be able to investigate these cases for yourself and decide what you would do." [added 2/1/03]
Resources for the Teaching of Social Psychology is a part of the CROW Project, Course Resources on the Web. CROW is sponsored by the Associated Colleges of Illinois and generously supported by UPS. This site was created by Jon Mueller, Professor of Psychology at North Central College, Naperville, IL. Send comments to Jon.