This assignment has students visit a book retailer to critically evaluate the portrayal of the science of psychology in the popular media. Click here for a link to the assignment. Photo by Megan (Markham) Bucknall on Unsplash
Students are given a list of personality descriptions based on the 12 signs of the zodiac and have to choose which one best describes them. We then discuss how these personality descriptions are written vague enough to apply to many people. This activity is similar to the classic Forer effect (Forer, 1949). Forer used generalized …
Activity: Using Zodiac-based Personality Descriptions to Teach about Biases in Thinking Read More »
This activity involves students analyzing a famous editorial about the existence of Santa Claus in terms in terms of different ways of knowing (e.g., intuition, authority, logic, and the scientific method). Click here for a link to the assignment. Photo by krakenimages on Unsplash
On this short (4:05) clip from Last Week Tonight, John Oliver outlines how to be a better consumer of scientific information (e.g., don’t give too much significance to individual studies) and how communication to the public can misinterpret findings altogether.
