Tag Archives: Social Psychology

Week 13 Student Blogging Spotlight: Topic – Social Psychology

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The main foci of the social psychology week were stereotypes and discrimination, obedience (no General Psychology course is complete without Stanley Milgrim!), and conformity. Students had the choice of examining their own implicit biases toward other groups via the Implicit Association Test or to break down the types of persuasion used in a set of commercials (see here for full prompts). Only one student chose the latter option by breaking down two Taco Bell commercials. The remainder opted to try the IAT and reflect on their results. Check out their posts and leave your thoughts in the comments section.

Link 1, Link 2, Link 3, Link 4, Link 5, Link 6, Link 7

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Week 13 Blog Prompts: Topic – Social Psychology

Option 1:

As mentioned in class, the Implicit Association Test (which can be accessed through this link) is a tool to identify biases which may be outside your conscious awareness. The results of this test cannot determine whether or not you are racist, sexist, homophobic, etc., but they are useful to help you understand yourself and how you interact with others. For this post, you must take two separate IAT tests from the link above. You do not need to share your results if you don’t want to, but you need to talk about the experience of taking the test and getting the results, comment on whether or not the results were surprising, and discuss how this test can be useful for college students or your future career.

Option 2:

Your textbook gives a good overview of the power of persuasion, but how well do you recognize these effects in your own lives? In advertising, both the central route and the peripheral route are used to persuade an individual. Many commercials use these routes to persuade an individual to buy their product or to buy into their idea. Select one type of product (e.g., cars, cereal, video games) and find a commercial that displays the central route and another that displays the peripheral route of persuasion. Discuss how each route is used, argue which route of persuasion you believe worked best, point out any other persuasion techniques that you noticed, and explain how the commercials could have better displayed the route of persuasion it used. Please put the link to the commercials in your discussion.

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Week 13 Blog Prompts

Here are the options for 11/17-11/24:

Option 1:

As mentioned in class, the Implicit Association Test (which can be accessed through this link) is a tool to identify biases which may be outside your conscious awareness. The results of this test cannot determine whether or not you are racist, sexist, homophobic, etc., but they are useful to help you understand yourself and how you interact with others. For this post, you must take two separate IAT tests from the link above. You do not need to share your results if you don’t want to, but you need to talk about the experience of taking the test and getting the results, comment on whether or not the results were surprising, and discuss how this test can be useful for college students or your future career.

Option 2:

Now that we have learned about the power of persuasion, it’s time to examine these effects in our own lives. In advertising, both the central route and the peripheral route are used to persuade an individual. Many commercials use these routes to persuade an individual to buy their product or to buy into their idea. Select a product (e.g., cars, cereal, video games) and find a commercial that displays the central route and another that displays the peripheral route of persuasion. Discuss how each route is used, argue which route of persuasion you believe worked best, point out any other persuasion techniques that you noticed, and explain how the commercials could have better displayed the route of persuasion it used. Please put the link to the commercials in your discussion.

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