A good youtube video for cognitive miser:
I also show a Where’s Waldo and talk about how we think — categorize, discard. I get them to describe how they go through the image trying to find Waldo.
And, to make things more interesting, I talk about “Hot” and “Cold” cognitions. Check out this research. Students found it interesting. There is also this Washington Post article I use for one of the paper options.
For Schemas, I ask them to list what characteristics make a dog. How do these differentiate from a cat? What is dogginess? I also ask them to close their eyes and picture a dog and ask them to tell me what they pictured. That is their doggiest dog (mine is a golden retriever).
In honor of the Scatterplot Mario Kart Wii tournament tonight (you going down, suckas), I thought I’d explain how I used Mario Kart Wii in the classroom. I hope to publish on this and present at ASA, but you get a short view of it here.
My wonderful co-author (Killa!) and I set up two MK Wii tournaments for my social psych students — 0ne control and one experimental. Basically, you lecture on minimal group dynamics (stress Sherif’s Robber’s Cave) and Tajfel’s experiments with under & over estimators and Klee v. Kandinsky. Then you have them do the dot estimation task (you can get slides here). When they arrive the day of the tournament(s), split them into teams based on over or under-estimators (really, it’s random, but you tell them that it’s based on score). You can also have a control tournament where you tell them that teams are random.
Then you play Wii. You have fun, encourage smack talk, and the like.
After the tournament, you have them fill out some kind of survey depending on what you want to stress (we used personality traits — likable, smart, etc. — but you could do resource distrubution if you wanted to use this for an inequality class). After that, you just do some simple data entry and analysis to compare different types of results. Show these and lead a discussion about them. What differences do you see? How does that vary between the “experimental group” or “random group?” Does it matter who wins? Then discuss how it’s different from minimal group paradigms (actually saw each other, knew who each other was, etc.). You can also ask how to increase differences (a game that calls for direct co-operation, like basketball, instead of taking turns) and eliminate them (through co-opperating with each other to beat the instructor. I did have one student play me, he kicked my butt).
Great news! This is actually a justifiable method. In a pre-test & post-test quiz, students who actively participated in the tournaments improved their grades MORE than those who were simply in attendance to listen to both lectures (the pre-test and post-test lecture days). I won’t present the statistics here, but there is clear evidence that playing Mario Kart Wii IMPROVES GRADES!!! (Jury’s still out on whether it improves evaluations.)
My students didn’t really enjoy it, but it allowed me to look like a dork for them. So, that was funny at least, even if this wasn’t:
I like giving explanations in flowchart or picture form. Here is SSI:
And Stryker’s Identity Theory:
For exchange theory, I showed a variety of different network shapes. I then asked for volunteers and put them in these following networks:
I then asked them to exchange note cards, in the way exchange theory does (limited number of exchanges, want other people’s paper) and showed who in the network had power. I also talked about network breaks in the Y shape. They seemed to enjoy this. I’m sure some has written up how to do this for Teaching Soc or something, but I just put it together for myself.
One of the first things I cover is research methods. This is after the overall history lecture, which there is no way I can put up here. I can give you my prelim answer, if anyone wants to know my take on the history of social psychology. I start with the publication of the Social Psychology texts and Triplett experiments (later to be called social facilitation)… But, really the first big thing I talk about is WWII and the immigration of researchers (such as Lewin and Moreno) to the U.S. and the MASSIVE effects they had on the development of sociological social psych. I trace that through experiments, social networks, Social Psych Quarterly… How those affected exchange theory and graphic theoretic formations of expectation states (Bales, etc.). It’s quite the lecture. Unfortunately, no one has truly written a history of social psychology in sociology. What does exist tends to be sidelined by psychology. There are a few good sources. If you are interested, let me know and I can post them. Anyway…
Research Methods
Well, I use the now published CRISP article findings to talk about what methods are used at what rate.Then I talk about each method (besides commentaries) and a few additional ones.
Experiments:
I show them this website to talk about how (and why) to use randomization.
I then have them vote on whether they want to watch a cartoon clip about Milgram or about the Zimbardo prison experiment. They chose the cartoon (which is quite funny and they enjoyed). Evidently, the Zimbardo clip has been removed. Here’s the cartoon:
Field Studies:
I didn’t have a clip for this, but they loved to discuss Tearoom Trade and Larry Craig. Even those who hadn’t heard about it before, remembered it weeks later when doing an informal writing — so it worked.
Network Analysis:
I used two examples – one from my own research and the other from facebook. I joined that facebook application that draws your network picture of friends. I then screen capped it and used paint.net to create an image to show. Some of them knew about this application, and I think it helped them make sense of what networks were. Of course, I contrasted this to the actual network analysis picture (directed, density, lines, nodes, centrality…).
Others:
I talked about computer simulations with the prisoner’s dilema (showing this website).
I also showed them Interact quickly (did it more on the emotions week).
Implicit Association Test for attitudes (played around with it in front of them later in the semester and talked about problems with it).
I also talked about virtual reality research. I’ve actually taken a class on it, so that was easy. I didn’t have any sources, but the students found it an interesting idea. And, I talked a bit about new physiological measures and how they are entering into social psych.
