Applying Psychological Principles to Everyday Problems

Deadline: Week 14 before the start of your scheduled recitation (see course calendar in syllabus).

 

Submission policy: This assignment must be submitted using the Turnitin submission link in your TA’s Blackboard page. Assignments will not be accepted via email under any circumstances. Late assignments, even if by 1 second late, will not be accepted. Technology-related problems will not be an acceptable excuse for failing to submit this assignment by the deadline. Be sure you give yourself plenty of time to resolve any computer issues or questions ahead of the deadline. Please note: Pop-up blockers might prevent a proper upload of your assignment (e.g., turn off your pop-up blocker or use a different internet search engine). No assignments will be accepted even if you have a screenshot of your submission attempt before the deadline, or even if you provide the “last modified” date in a Word doc. Bottom line, the only way you will earn credit is if you submit the assignment before the deadline via Turnitin. You will know you successfully submitted this assignment when you receive an email confirmation from Turnitin; if you do not receive confirmation, you did not properly submit your assignment. It is your responsibility to ensure you properly submitted your assignment.

 

Academic Integrity policy reminders: Assignments are to be done entirely independently. If you have questions, ask your TA or Professor Houck for help. Do NOT share your assignment in any form with any student for any reason. Do not ask others for their work. Responses must be in your own words – do not copy/paste anything from any source. Doing so violates the academic integrity expectations for this course, and will result in a referral to the Center for Learning and Student Success (CLASS) – the office that handles academic integrity cases.

 

Purpose: The purpose of this assignment is to help you identify and apply psychological concepts, especially those associated with attitude and behavior change (Chapter 12), and techniques used to persuade behavior.

 

Directions: Imagine that you have been hired to bring about change in one of the following areas:

 

1. Get people to stop discriminating against a particular minority group (e.g., by hiring more people from this group or by changing their attitude toward it).

 

2. Get people to adopt one or more conservation or health behaviors (e.g., recycling, wearing seatbelts, volunteerism, exercising, drinking water, etc.).

 

3. Get people to vote for a particular candidate.

 

4. Help reduce violence in society (e.g., prevent mass shootings)

 

5. Promote gender equality in the workplace.

 

6. Some other problem that interests you (must be approved by your TA).

 

Your task is to develop strategies for changing one of the above real-world issues.

 

· You must incorporate at least 3 specific concepts (research findings or theoretical principles) discussed in lecture, recitation, and/or your text to back up your choices of strategies.

 

· These 3 concepts must be from 3 different chapters.

 

· You must cite these 3 concepts with the page # and paragraph # in your text, or a slide # from lecture and/or recitation.

 

In a 2 page, double-spaced paper (12 pt. font, Times New Roman), explain why you are using the various strategies by succinctly answer the following questions:

 

1. Describe in detail the problem area have you chosen to work on and why.

 

2. Describe the specific goals that you have set for this change program (this is like an operational definition!). In other words, what specific behavior(s) should change as a result of your efforts (e.g., increased number of hours volunteered per week, reduced automobile driving, etc.).

 

3. What strategies would you use to produce the changes described in question #2, and what are the theoretical principles or research findings on which your strategies are based? Give specific, concrete examples and cite page #’s in your text. (For instance, if you develop a public campaign, what would your ad look like? What would you say to people as you conducted your door to door campaign?)

 

4. How would you know if your program has been successful? That is, how will you actually measure the amount of change in the behavior(s) you described in question #2?

 

Any one of the following will result in an automatic 2-point grade deduction for each error:

 

(1) Failure to use full sentences and proper grammar/spelling

 

(2) Failure to format your paper properly (2 pages, double-spaced, 12-point font, Times New Roman, 1” margins)