Teaching Resources for Chapter 1

Chapter 1 Overview

• Outline
• Key Issues
• Key Terms
• Professor-oriented summary (Talking points, visuals, and some humor)
• Powerpoint lecture/Chapter outline

Chapter 1 section of the student website  

Detailed lecture outlines from the authors 

• Scientific psychology versus other ways of knowing
• In defense of scientific psychology
• The importance of research
  
• Powerpoint lecture/Chapter outline
• Bonus powerpoint lectures (password is the first nonhyphenated word on page 3 of the Instructor's Manual)

• Contrast science with nonscientific and pseudoscientific approaches
• Walk students through a 10-slide, interactive presentation on what science is (courtesy of our publisher)
• Go over the professor-oriented summary
• Present a more critical view of science. For example, you could discuss
  • Kuhn's critique of science by assigning and lecturing over our web appendix on Kuhn's challenge to science or you could discuss the
  • Piltdown Man hoax and its lessons for science using either the skeptic's dictionary website's entry, a 7-minute PBS podcast,  or  the PBS video "The Boldest Hoax," a NOVA episode on the Piltdown man. (The episode [No. 3202] originally aired 1/11/2005.)

Handouts 

• Detailed Learning Objectives for Chapter 1
• Chapter 1 crossword puzzle

Activities/Demonstrations/Videos

• Lab-type activities
  • The Monty Hall Problem (handout): A fun demonstration of (a) how the correct answer is not always the intuitive one and of (b) how the empirical approach can get us the correct answer.
  • Use these handouts (and some pennies) to have students do a simple activity that will help them understand the role of chance in human behavior.

  • You could have students do a variation of Newton’s (1990) tapper-listener study. In that study, participants formed pairs. One member was the tapper; the other was the listener. The tapper picked out a song from a list of well-known songs and tapped out the rhythm of that song to the listener. Then, the tapper predicted how likely it was that the listener would correctly guess the song. Finally, the listener guessed the song. Although tappers predicted that listeners would be right 50% of the time, listeners were right less than 3% of the time.  To do this activity, have students form pairs, assign one member to be the tapper and one to be the listener, and then give students these handouts.

    •  Note that you can extend this activity by (a) having students take turns being the tapper and the listener and (b) having tappers tap out more than one song.

  • Have students develop a "Research Methods Script"
  • Take Morgan's advice and have students do a self-management project
  • Develop students' library literacy
• Demonstrations
  • Confirmation bias exercise (powerpoint)
  • Instructions for a  fun and magical demonstration of the reason scientists value predictions
• Quizzes
  • To show students that common sense is often not enough to avoid being fooled, have students take this "gullibility quiz" from the Museum of hoaxes.
  • Give students a test of scientific literacy (although not validated, it is a good way to dispel some myths about science)
• Student Presentations
  • Have students read and discuss two articles that discuss bias in popular reports of published research (link to reference and handouts to help students understand the articles)
  • Have students rebut common objections to scientific psychology
  • Have students read and summarize an article from the American Psychological Association's Research in Action page.
• Videos (and Activities) That Should Promote Scientific Thinking
  • Help students see the importance of science by having them view the PBS/Frontline video: "Prisoners of Silence."
    • Handout with student discussion questions from Stephen Chew
    • The video is available on Youtube.
      • Entire episode
      • Episode in 4 parts
  • Help students see the importance of critical thinking by having them view the PBS Nova video: "Secrets of the Psychics."
    • You can buy a copy from Amazon
    • You can also show it using youtube
      • Entire episode
      • In sections

        Part 1  Overview

        Part 2  (Uri Geller and Peter Popoff exposed)

        Part 3  (Astrology and the Barnum effect)

        Part 4  (Debunking Russian psychics)

        Part 5  (Psychic healing)

        Part 6   Psychics and cold readings
  • Show a clip from Mythbusters and have students discuss it (for specific instructions, click here)
  • To show that ignorance can be expensive, you can show students this picture about the expense of bottled water. For a life-and-death example, you can discuss these statistics  illustrating the problem with using cell phones while driving.

Assign readings that will help students appreciate the importance of understanding research

• Have students read this online  booklet from Head Start that answers the question "Why do research?" The bulletin does a good job of relating effective research to effective practice. If you just want to show that research is applied, you do not need to have them read the entire bulletin. You could just assign the first five pages and one article--or just the first five pages. If you wanted to assign the entire bulletin, you could assign different articles to different groups (the articles are short, easy to understand--and there is a wonderful glossary on page 6).
• Assign this Web Appendix to stress the fact that the research class allows students to refine and demonstrate marketable skills. Alternatively, you could have students find graduate school applications, employment ads, and articles that illustrate the importance of research to getting into graduate school, being a clinical psychologist, or getting a job.
• As mentioned in the "student presentation" section, you could have students read articles that discuss bias in popular reports of published research (this link not only provides a reference to two such articles, but also provides handouts that will help students understand those articles)

  Notes and Reminders:

  

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