General Psychology PSY 2012

Writing Assignment: Social Psychology

Instructions: Social Psychology is tied in people's minds to "Common Sense" psychology, because we all pretend to be scientists, predicting and explaining people's behavior every day. Here's your chance to be a little more thoughtful than just the snap judgments you are usually allotted in time.

(1) Identify a social phenomenon by making observations of your world.

(2) Theorize why you think this behavior or phenomenon exists. Likely, there is research already linked to this observation that has been discussed in class or in your book (state it, define it, cite where you learned it from).

(3) Now come up with your own way to study this phenomenon (safely!). This could mean doing a different behavior and see if people react differently, or this could mean taking a survey about the phenomenon. Describe to me what you plan to do.

(4) Finally, report your results (even if it's simply survey data taken from family and friends about your phenomenon).