Reference no: EM132400398

PSYC 2302 Social Experience Assignments

In this course, you will write a short (no more than two single-spaced pages) Social Experience assignment. The purpose of this assignment is:
1. to point out the relevance of social psychology to everyday life
2. to stimulate critical thinking about social psychology
3. to give you an opportunity to demonstrate mastery of course concepts

Guidelines

You should choose one specific major concept that you would like to write about. You can choose your concept by looking at the list of major concepts that is posted on Blackboard, but keep in mind that this list is just a suggestion. You may find it helpful, but you aren't limited to the concepts on the list. You are free to select any process, phenomenon, theory, or psychological tendency that is relevant to the material we're currently covering in class. Your textbook and the material discussed in lecture will be helpful in generating ideas for you to write about.

Once you've selected a concept, your assignment is to write about how it relates to a recent event in your life. The body of each entry should begin with a description of an event or experience in your life in four or five sentences. A page-long story about how you spent your weekend is too long, and one line reading, "I went out with my friends" is insufficient. You should pick a specific event or interaction and describe it in enough detail so that your subsequent discussion will make sense to someone who was not there. If you can't apply the concept to an event in your own life, you can also write about events you've heard about from other people, current events in the news, or even interactions that you watched on TV. Next you should describe how the social psychology concept you have chosen is relevant to this event. Check out Sample SE Assignment #1fora good example of an experience summary followed by a discussion of its relevance to a particular concept, the Fundamental Attribution Error. Once you've made the connection between the experience you described and the concept you've chosen, the rest of your discussion should address some (but not necessarily all) of the following questions:

- How does your current awareness of this psychological phenomenon change the way you interpret what happened during this event?
- If you (or others) had been aware of social psychological research about this phenomenon during the event, how might the outcome of the interaction have been changed?
- How will your learning about this phenomenon influence your attitudes/behavior/perceptions in the future?
- What questions do you now have after considering the event in light of psychological theory?
- What type of experiment(s) might help address these issues? Don't be too formal - just a couple of sentences about research idea will be sufficient.

You can also discuss an event that seems to be inconsistent with the topic you have chosen to write about. Take a look at Sample SE Assignment #2 for a good example of a discussion of a situation that seems like it could have led to the Fundamental Attribution Error, but didn't. In such cases, you might also want to consider some (but not necessarily all) of the following questions:

- How was this interaction inconsistent with the theory or phenomenon you have chosen?
- Why do you think the outcome of this interaction seems to be inconsistent with the phenomenon you chose?
- What aspects of the situation, if changed, would have resulted in a less surprising outcome?
- What type of experiment(s) might help answer these questions?

Attachment:- Assignment handout.rar