Louis Sergent, 16, who is in his first year at high school, does his homework. Both he and his father are determined… – NARA – 541288 by Russell Lee – U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons
10 Easy Activities Science Has Proven Will Make You Happier Grounded in research, these activities including practicing gratitude, controlling counter-factual thinking and others may be used to spark discussion or to introduce topics in stress, resilience, cognition, emotion, and positive psychology.
10 Fun Activities for Adjectives of Personality Originally designed for English teachers to help their students understand and describe nuances of character, this site offers 10 activities exploring adjectives helping students to describe the personality of themselves and others. Includes links to positive personality adjectives and negative personality adjectives. Good for an ice breaker or as a class exercise to introduce trait theory.
Activities Guide: Teaching Ethics in the Introduction to Psychology Course The Office of Teaching Resources in Psychology (OTRP) is pleased to announce this new resource for teachers by Ana Ruiz and Judith Warchal of Alvernia University (2013). This 23-page guide presents 17 activities related to ethics for each chapter in a typical Introduction to Psychology text as it integrates the APA Learning Goals and Outcomes for ethics into that course. For each chapter, the activity lists the student learning outcome, instructions for conducting the activity, materials needed, approximate time required, and a method of assessment. Activities most relevant to the personality class include APA Ethics code Jeopardy, Research Methods, Personality Testing, and Debating controversial topics.
Analytical Paper Marc W. Patry from Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada submitted this creative assignment in which students basically have to select and digest a study related to personality psychology and to connect it to the assigned reading, to current events, and to something about yourself. Details and grading guidelines are provided.
Art and Personality Does the art you enjoy match your personality? Research by Stian Reimers in conjunction with the BBC suggests that there is a relationship between the kind of art people prefer (e.g. Impressionism, Abstract, Japanese, Islamic, Northern Renaissance, and Cubism) and one’s personality (emotional intelligence, the five-factor model, and sensation-seeking). Click here to read more about the findings, art, personality, or to participate in this online.
Assessing Assumptions About Gender This exercise by Amy Taylor, won Honorable Mention for the 2009 Social Psychology Network Action Teaching Award. In this activity, students read a dialog between a man and a women and report their impressions of the characters. Half the class have the genders of the characters switched. According to Taylor, the objectives of this activity are to: (1) illustrate how subtle gender biases can influence social perceptions, (2) help students recognize their own implicit assumptions about gender, and (3) explore the implications these biases may have for gender equality.
Attachment Theory: Teaching Students About the Science of Romantic Attachment Nathan DeWall and David Myers describe a series of activities to help students think about attachment and why our romantic partners may get under our skin. Includes background reading, self-assessment, an out-of-class activity, and discussion topics.
Barnum Effect Feedback Take this test to remind yourself why good personality tests should provide specific feedback…and why horoscopes are so much fun! See also this explanation of the Barnum Effect.
The Bechdel Test For Media Bias According to the Feminist Frequency website by media critic Anita Sarkeesian, The Bechdel Test is a simple way to gauge the active presence of female characters in Hollywood films and just how well rounded and complete those roles are. It was created by Allison Bechdel in her comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For in 1985. The test is: (1) Does the film have at least two [named or otherwise central character] women in it, (2) who talk to each other, (3) about something besides a man? (runs 2 minutes, 3 seconds). You and your students can use this test to see how popular movies, especially those winning Oscars or other top awards, fares. Click here for a discussion of similar tests for other types of bias in the media.
Big Five, Happiness: Beyond the Purchase From the website We know that the effects of our spending choices often last beyond the place or moment of a purchase. Sometimes those effects are beneficial, leading to enjoyment, happy memories, or feelings of belongingness. At other times those effects may be financially or emotionally detrimental. We developed Beyond The Purchase to explore happiness and the quality of life, and the outcomes of different purchasing and money-management choices, as well as the motivations behind them. Psychologist Ryan Howell and colleagues created this site to help people make more informed choices. The site features personality tests, research findings, and a special section for incorporating their ideas into your classroom including a demonstration and slides on the Big Five personality traits and teaching central tendency using the Big Five. Follow the BtP in your classroom link.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) Worksheets Free downloadable cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) worksheets, formulations, and self-help resources including blank formulations, thought records, cognitive restructuring worksheets, diaries/data gathering sheets, mechanisms, information sheets, techniques/procedures, useful tools, forgiveness tools, and formulations for specific disorders, all in PDF format.
Coming Out Exercise Barry A. Schreier of Purdue University developed this exercise to assist individuals with the experience of loss that is often associated with Coming Out. Loss can come in many ways from the loss of a job, the loss of friends and family members, the loss of autonomy, loss of affiliation with others, and so on. This exercise is used to access the vital emotional components of participants’ belief and attitude systems in the efforts of creating greater inclusivity in attitude and belief for people who are Gay, Lesbian, or Bisexual.
Conditioning at Mickey D’s “What do parents do, at a fast food restaurant, to encourage desirable behaviors and discourage undesirable behaviors? Are the principles of operant conditioning being used?” Check out Raymond Rogoway’s clever assignment for understanding and applying principles of conditioning.
Culture: Barnga This game teaches participants about inter-cultural awareness: In Barnga, participants experience the shock of realizing that despite many similarities, people of differing cultures perceive things differently or play by different rules. Players learn that they must understand and reconcile these differences if they want to function effectively in a cross-cultural group. Essentially, the game induces feelings of culture shock in the limited (and safe) environment of a classroom. Opens in PDF. Also available here.
Cultural Identity: The Cultural Circles Exercise Phani Radhakrishnan, University of Toronto, designed the Cultural Circles Exercise to help students in her Diversity in the Workplace class become more aware of cultural identity. Students discuss their own heritage and cultural background one-on-one with others in the class and identify sources of pride in their own culture.
Debriefed Stories: How to Conduct a Debriefing Discussion According to trainer and games guru Sivasailam Thiagi Thiagarajan People don’t learn from experience. They learn from reflecting on their experience. In this interactive story, he presents six questions for debriefing which facilitators can use to help participants reflect and learn from their experience. Very useful for teachers, trainers, facilitators, group leaders, and others who like to use experiential learning in their work. From the Thiagi Gameletter, October 2014.
Defense Mechanisms Randall E. Osborne, Indiana University East, first presented these two interactive exercises for the personality psychology course at the 9th Annual Conference on Undergraduate Teaching of Psychology: Ideas and Innovations, in 1995. In the second exercise, What’s my Defense Mechanism?, students must guess the defense mechanism depicted in a brief skit presented by their classmates. (In the first exercise, the Personality Collage, students and someone who knows them well each create a collage of the student’s personality. Students compare and contrast the two collages by answering various questions and come to understand the differences between self-view and other’s view of themselves.) Opens in PDF format.
Defense Mechanisms John Suler, Rider University, maintains the excellent Teaching Clinical Psychology website. For learning about defense mechanisms, he offers a handout [which] I give to students that we use to discuss some of the typical defense mechanisms. After the discussion, I break the students down into small groups so that can develop role plays that demonstrate these defenses. Instructions for these role plays are described at the end of the handout.
Extroversion and Introversion: The Eysenck Lemon Juice Experiment The BBC website provides instructions and a simple way to replicate this classic experiment.
Emotions: Spot the Fake Smile Can you tell which smiles are genuine and which are fake? Take this 10-minute test, based on the research of Paul Ekman, in which you watch brief video clips of 20 people smiling.
Erikson’s 8 Stages of Development Visit this page to see classroom activities submitted by high school and college teachers. Submit your own activities for inclusion here — or elsewhere on Personality Pedagogy — to miserandino@arcadia.edu.
Erikson’s Stages of Development Ages in Stages: An Exploration of the Life Cycle based on Erik Erikson’s Eight Stages of Human Development. Margaret Krebs-Carter designed this activity for High School English or Developmental Psychology classes and gives this description: How does age make a difference in the way we act/think/feel? Erik Erikson, the well-known teacher and psychiatrist who popularized the term “identity crisis” claims that we are greatly affected by the developmental changes that we undergo as we mature. This curriculum unit pursues the question of age differences by focusing on Erik Erikson’s theory of human development—the eight stages. Included in this unit are: 1) brief explanations of the eight stages; 2) recommended readings—short stories, plays, and novels—that illustrate the emotional crises that occur during these eight stages; 3) activities to introduce the new concepts; 4) suggestions of theoretical material for students to read; 5) a description of how to structure the classroom in order to teach a class in which group participation is encouraged.
Erikson’s Stages of Development: The Soundtrack of Your Life Describes an activity where students identify eight major events in their lives (e.g., deaths, first car, entering high school, etc.) and find songs (music and lyrics) to correspond to these events, designing an imaginary soundtrack of their lives. Students write about the experience, submit their compilations, and/or present a song to the class with an explanation of its import. Originally designed to be a writing assignment, with some additional guidance this activity can be used to illustrate narrative psychology, the self, Erikson’s stages, and other theories of personality psychology.
Necker’s cube by Me (Stevo-88) – Own work – my representation of a well known optical illusion. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons
Extroversion and Introversion: The Necker Cube Experiment This brief on-line experiment, devised by the Open University in conjunction with the BBC was developed by Dr Peter Naish. Their hypothesis is that because of their varying response to stimulation, extroverts and introverts will perceive a Necker cube differently.
The Facebook Experiment: Reaction From Psychologists According to former psychology professor Michael Britt in his podcast The Psych Files: You’ve probably heard about the controversy over the Facebook manipulation of user’s News Feeds and the (possible) effect this had on user’s emotions. In the latest episode of The Psych Files I summarize the study and my conclusions about it. Also included on the website is a (large) concept map that also summarizes the study, links to references and Facebook’s official response. Also included in the map and the episode: suggestions for students regarding how a proper informed consent form might have been written and presented to students. Episode 22, July 1, 2014. Runs 33 minutes and 16 seconds.
Five Factor Model James W. Pennebaker maintains this page of a dozen or so online research projects. Most of them involve taking a brief survey or by completing short exercises. Feedback and insight into one’s personality is provided. Topics include TAT, Big Five questionnaire, perceptual style, spirituality, depression and more.
Five Factor Model: Research Tool Demonstrates How Your Facebook Likes Reveal Your Personality Eric Ravenscraft, writing for LifeHacker, discusses a tool developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge to analyze your Facebook like to reveal what people can learn about you. Click here to try it out for yourself.
Five Factor model and e-perceptions The You Just Get Me website asks visitors Do you get people, even if you just met them? Do the people in your life truly get you? Using the Five-Factor model, respondents answer 43 questions about their personality and try to guess the personality of other visitors. Based on the research of Vazire & Gosling (2004).
Freud, Sigmund: That’s My Theory! Sigmund Freud and two other personality psychologists are guests on this online game show developed by PBS. Can you discover the who the real Sigmund Freud is though the answers he gives? Can you guess who the other two guests are?
Freud, Sigmund: Wrestling with Sigmund Freud ‘Ya gotta see it to believe it.
Freud: Online Activities: Dream analysis, Word Association, Ink Blot Generator The National Museum of Science and Industry, in the UK, sponsors this amazing website on Making the Modern World, which includes learning modules on all sorts of topics. One in particular, on Measuring the Unmeasurable, aims to take the user through various aspects of psychiatry and the study of mental illness. It looks at the treatment, diagnosis and methods used in psychiatry as well as the investigation of mental illness from a historical and socio-cultural perspective. This module includes 4 pages on Sigmund Freud: Freud and Psychoanalysis, Freud’s concept of the Personality, Freud’s theory of psychosexual development, and Freudian Techniques of psychoanalysis. The module on Psychoanalysis includes online activities on dream analysis, the Word Association Test, and Ink Blot Generator.
Freudian Dream Analysis Worksheet by Chris VerWys, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute See also the Dream Analysis Survey Results.
Gender Stereotypes: According to Jim. These days, I find that my students are a little reticent to talk about gender stereotypes, especially since my classes are often very much skewed in one direction. To help the discussion along, I like to show the episode Jim Almighty from the ABC television show According to Jim, staring Jim Belushi. In this episode Jim thinks that he can design women better than the creator did. In the course of the show, many gender stereotypes are depicted and reinforced (and some are even abandoned). I instruct my students to keep track and write down all of the stereotypes for men and for women that are mentioned in the show. I put them on the blackboard and classify them into physical, sexual, personality, social, and emotional and discuss if they are accurate, inaccurate, or an exaggeration of a true difference. I may even have the class vote on what they think the distributions look like (e.g. normal curves with a lot of overlap, a little overlap or something in between). This is a good way to set up a discussion of gender similarities and differences in personality using Hyde’s work on meta-analysis. Note that the episode, while a family situation comedy which originally aired during prime time, does make scatological and sexual references and features the actor Lee Majors playing The Almighty (stereotyped as a Texan). I offer students who think they may be offended by the set-up an alternative activity, although nobody has taken this option. In discussions with the class, even religious students find the depiction of The Almighty funny and not at all offensive, but you should review this episode before showing your class in case your students are different from mine. This episode originally aired in January of 2008, season 7 episode 1, (S07E01) and is available on You Tube here (21:19). Note: If the video has been removed from You Tube, try searching for it. If you are still unable to find it, it is available for streaming from Amazon.com for $1.99 if you have an Amazon Prime Account.
Genetically Engineer Your Own Child This somewhat creepy, satirical website allows visitors to create a genetically engineered child by selecting various characteristics such as gender, eye color, and sexual orientation. Once you find out the genetic code of your offspring, you can choose to have certain characteristics and disorders altered, if you are willing to spend the money. In the process, the visitor is forced to think about the value society places on certain attributes (e.g. IQ, musical ability, sexual orientation, AIDS, ADHD and others) and the ethicality of genetic engineering. The site was created as a piece of performance art and is not a real institution despite its authentic look and feel.
Genetics: Do Your Hands Have Family Traits? Check out these two projects from Science Buddies: In these hands-on genetics projects and activities, students investigate a family pedigree to see if they can determine whether traits are dominant or recessive. Do you and some (or all) of your family members share certain physical traits? Is a widow’s peak passed down from generation to generation? Find out!
Genetics: Six Creative Ways to Teach Genetics A selection of creative ways to help students of all ages and abilities understand genes and genetic disorders. From The Guardian, September 7, 2015.
Genetics: Your Family Health History: A DNA Day Activity This PDF describes how to create a family tree or pedigree documenting medical conditions which may run in families, but you can easily adapt the activity to focus on personality traits.
Genetics and Gender Differences in Ideal Mate Selection. Scott Bates, Utah State University, does the following exercise to introduce the topic of Genetics to his students: On the second day of class, I collect data via a survey (these data provide good lecture material throughout the course). One of the questions that I ask is this: List the top three characteristics of an IDEAL MATE (a person with whom you would like to spend the rest of your life). Use adjectives. If you’ve already married (or found) your ideal mate, then list the three most important characteristics that attracted you to him/her. I then have a TA code the responses into categories (e.g., physical appearance, social status, etc). Then, when I get to the topic of genes/environment, or evolution, I introduce human mate-selection and present material on evolutionary/genetic influences. The compelling part is that I present students’ data, by category, by sex. Males have always listed physical characteristics (e.g., pretty, hot, nice looking) more often than women. Women have always listed loyalty (e.g., faithful, trustworthy) and social status (e.g., ambitious, good job prospects) more often than men. (from the PSYTEACH discussion list, January 22, 2009).
Happiness The October issue of the Thiagi Gameletter (Seriously fun activities for trainers, facilitators, performance consultants, and managers, see their homepage here) describes an activity (which they call a jolt) to demonstrate how our current emotions are influenced by our thoughts about the past.
Here’s a Quick Way to Figure Out What You Should Do With Your Life, Based on Your Personality Check out this colorful flow chart, based on the work of John Holland, which asks a series of questions to help you find your ideal career. From The Muse, July 13, 2015.
Hetereosexist Bias Lesson Plan and Questionnaire The Advocates for Youth website provides this lesson plan To give straight people an opportunity to experience the types of questions that are often asked of gay, lesbian, and/or bisexual people. Students answer a questionnaire and discuss the experience in small groups. Takes about 40 minutes. Includes questions for discussion.
Heterosexual Privilege The Student Counseling Center at Texas Tech University features a number of activities, handouts and other resources on their website. In this activity, students answer 32 questions that illustrate heterosexual privilege in ways straight people do not have to think about. For example, questions range from I can, if I wish, legally marry my life partner to My sexual orientation is represented in the media and I don’t feel excluded.
Homosexuality: A Values Clarification Exercise John Suler, Rider University, maintains the excellent Teaching Clinical Psychology website. To make students aware of their preconceptions and subtle attitudes towards homosexuality, he puts 10 statements on the board and students discuss the statements in a group. He then tallies the group votes and leads the class in a discussion of their own preconceptions, along with theory and research evidence.
The Grinch (That Stole Christmas) by Source (WP:NFCC#4). Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia
How the Grinch Stole Psychology Class After watching the 25 minute video of the classic Christmas story by Dr. Seuss, students analyze the Grinch’s personality and change of heart using theories and terms from personality including Freud, Adler, Horney, Maslow, and Rogers. A great end-of-the-semester review.
Ice Breakers and Team Builders Find tons of activities for groups for icebreaking, team building, name games, trust-building, self-awareness, multicultural awareness, and fun.
Idiogrid: Developing and managing self-report data James W. Grice of Oklahoma State University developed software for his idiographic research which he is currently offering for free to instructors and researchers. From the website: Idiogrid is software for administering, managing, and analyzing different types of self-report data [e.g. attitude scales, personality questionnaires, trait profiles, values test]. It was originally designed around George Kelly’s repertory grid technique but has been developed to include person-centered and questionnaire methodologies employed by researchers from a wide variety of domains (e.g., personality psychologists, self-concept researchers, clinical psychologists, market researchers, and sociologists). The site provides extensive support and resources for using the software for clinical, organizational and classroom demonstrations and assignments.
Intelligence Fellows of the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute developed these 12 lesson plans on Human Intelligence: Theories and Developmental Origins.
I Scream, You Scream In this exercise students learn about the importance of validity and reliability by deconstructing the Ice Cream Personality Test. Miserandino, M. (2006). I Scream, You Scream: Teaching Validity and Reliability Via the Ice Cream Personality Test. Teaching Psychology. 33(4), 265-68. Opens in PDF.
Jung: The Shadow Exercise As part of the Teaching Clinical Psychology webpage, John Suler, Rider University, includes this exercise on the shadow. Students reflect on a person they don’t like very much and consider if the traits they dislike in another reflects traits they don’t like in themselves.
Life Story When discussing intake interviews and psychotherapy, John Suler, Rider University, point[s] out that clients engage in a process of exploring their life story, usually at first by describing the most important “facts” about themselves. In this exercise, described on his Teaching Clinical Psychology website, students write down four important facts about themselves and one lie. Others in the class read each list and the class discusses patterns which they see.
Mask-Making Activity The Archdiocese of St.Louis sponsors special programs to reach out to teens. On their REAP website they describe a mask-making activity designed to help teens: recognize the masks he/she might wear, recognize the masks that others put upon him/her [and] view other students with more compassion in regards to the masks they wear.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, including newer 7- and 8- stage models. Also includes links to PDF and MSWORD illustrations of the hierarchies.
- Hierarchy of Needs Original 5 stage model in PDF format.
- Hierarchy of Needs Modified 7-stage model from the 1970s in PDF format.
- Hierarchy of Needs Modified 8-stage model from the 1990s in PDF format.
- Self-test Quick self-test based on the 5-stage model of the hierarchy of needs in PDF format.
- Self-test Quick self-test based on the modified 8-stage model of the hierarchy of needs in PDF format.
Maslow, Abraham: That’s My Theory! Sigmund Freud and two other personality psychologists — Skinner and Maslow — are guests on this online game show developed by PBS. Learn about all three theorists through the answers they give.
Mind Habits According to the website: ‘MindHabits is based on scientifically tested and demonstrated tools that help reduce stress and boost confidence of players using principles from the new science of social intelligence. Research demonstrated benefits from playing just five minutes each day. Give it a try for free and see if it works for you!’ Trial version is free.
Multicultural Activities Group activities to make people aware of the impact of the culture on themselves and others.
Participate in Online Research The Social Psychology Network, maintained by Scott Plous, Wesleyan University, lists over 150 web-based experiments, surveys, and other social psychological studies. Click on the section labels Personality and Individual differences to find links to studies on various topics such as the Five Factor Model, birth season, motivation, anxiety and more.
Perceptual Style James W. Pennebaker maintains this page of a dozen or so online research projects. Most of them involve taking a brief survey or by completing short exercises. Feedback and insight into one’s personality is provided. Topics include TAT, Big Five questionnaire, perceptual style, spirituality, depression and more.
Licensed under the Creative Commons
Personality Collage Randall E. Osborne, Indiana University East, first presented these two interactive exercises for the personality psychology course at the 9th Annual Conference on Undergraduate Teaching of Psychology: Ideas and Innovations, in 1995. In the Personality Collage students and someone who knows them well each create a collage of the student’s personality. Students compare and contrast the two collages by answering various questions and come to understand the differences between self-view and other’s view of themselves. (In the second exercise students must guess the defense mechanism depicted in a brief skit presented by their classmates.) Opens in PDF format.
Positive Psychology: 7-day unit plan for high school psychology Amy C. Fineburg, Homewood High School, Birmingham, Alabama, created this document for Teaching of Psychology in the Secondary Schools. Includes critical thinking activities (daily mood, satisfaction with life scale, creating flow experiences, measuring optimism, the hope scale and much more) interspersed with lesson plans for the high school psychology course.
Positive Psychology: Five -Ful Envelopes In this activity, by Barbara Frederickson, participants explore the positive emotions of hopeful, joyful, peaceful, playful, and thankful, and brainstorm ways of increasing the frequency and intensity of these positive emotions in their lives. From the January 2010 issue of the Thiagi Gameletter (Seriously fun activities for trainers, facilitators, performance consultants, and managers, see their website here).
Positive Reinforcement: A Self-Instructional Exercise Athabasca University devised this on-line exercise to teach students the concept of positive reinforcement and also to provide an idea of the kind of self-instructional exercises used in many Athabasca University course packages
The Religious Experience: East, West, Everywhere John Suler, Rider University, maintains the excellent Teaching Clinical Psychology website. He suggests the following exercise: Many psychologists, philosophers, and theologians talk about how some people have an intense, sudden, usually unexpected experience of a “higher reality” or “higher power” beyond what we normally experience. Some say it is the experience of “God.” Here are how William James (one of the greatest American psychologists) and D.T. Suzuki (one of the greatest Japanese Zen philosophers) described religious experiences in their cultures. Are there any similarities between east and west?
The Self: The Soundtrack of Your Life Describes an activity where students identify eight major events in their lives (e.g., deaths, first car, entering high school, etc.) and find songs (music and lyrics) to correspond to these events, designing an imaginary soundtrack of their lives. Students write about the experience, submit their compilations, and/or present a song to the class with an explanation of its import. Originally designed to be a writing assignment, with some additional guidance this activity can be used to illustrate narrative psychology, the self, Erikson’s stages, and other theories of personality psychology.
Self-Esteem Games Mark Baldwin and his colleagues at McGill University have developed games to help people increase their self-esteem based on psychological research. Visit this site to play one of three self-esteem games, to participate in their online research or to learn more about what they do.
Sex and the Brain From the BBC sponsored website: Find out more about “brain sex” differences by taking the Sex ID test, a series of visual challenges and questions used by psychologists in the BBC One television series Secrets of the Sexes. Get a brain sex profile and find out if you think like a man or a woman, see if you can gaze into someone’s eyes and know what they’re thinking, find out why scientists are interested in the length of your fingers, see how your results relate to theories about brain sex.
Sexual Orientation: The Complexity of Sexual Orientation The Understanding Prejudice website has a special section on college classroom activities. In this activity, students fill out a Sexual Orientation Identification sheet (on the website) which describes the behaviors and attractions of various hypothetical people. Students must decide if the person described is lesbian, gay, bisexual, or straight. The items are designed to provoke differences of opinion to spark a discussion as to what defines sexual orientation: behavior, desire, self-identification, or some combination of all three. Includes discussion questions.
Sexual Trichotomy Model An explanation of the trichotomy of sexual identity, sexual behavior, and sexual orientation. Students discuss how this trichtomy might apply to 6 hypothetical people and in the process discover how sexuality is fluid and how a person’s identity, orientation and behavior can change throughout life.
Skinner, B.F.: That’s My Theory! Sigmund Freud and two other personality psychologists — Skinner and Maslow — are guests on this online game show developed by PBS. Learn about all three theorists through the answers they give.
Teaching Students About How Simple, Positive Activities Can Increase Well-Being Nathan DeWall and David G. Myers offer their advice and guidance about teaching an area of research recently highlighted inCurrent Directions of Psychological Science. In this column for the May/June 2013 APS Observer they discuss numerous classroom activities to illustrate the effect—how simple activities can increase well-being—and spark discussion.
Teaching Students About the Sunny Side of Stress Nathan DeWall and David G. Myers offer their advice and guidance about teaching an area of research recently highlighted in Current Directions of Psychological Science. In this column for the May/June 2013 APS Observer they discuss how people can use arousal reappraisal to lessen the experience of stress in both mind and body.
Thematic Apperception Test James W. Pennebaker maintains this page of a dozen or so online research projects. Most of them involve taking a brief survey or by completing short exercises. Feedback and insight into one’s personality is provided. Topics include TAT, Big Five questionnaire, perceptual style, spirituality, depression and more.
Theorists Table See how the work of 32 major personality theorists — from Adler to Zuckerman with Freud, Maslow, McAdams, and Skinner in between — relates to the Five Factor Model. Includes references and links.
The Trait Paper Assignment: Fostering Critical Thinking in Personality Psychology. (Also available here). Hittner, J. B. (1999). Fostering critical thinking in personalty psychology. Journal of Instructional Psychology, 26, 92-97. From the abstract: A personality trait-based term paper assignment that is appropriate for use in personality psychology courses and that is designed to foster critical thinking skills is introduced. The extent to which the trait questions correspond to generic critical thinking questions is considered, the specific thinking skills induced by each trait question are discussed, and potential limitations of the assignment are noted. Preliminary data are also presented which suggest that the trait-based term paper assignment stimulates critical thinking and enhances knowledge about personality traits. It is hoped that the ideas presented and issues discussed in the present article will encourage academic psychologists from all subdisciplines to develop writing assignments that foster critical thinking skills. This assignment is not rooted in a particular model of traits and so is adaptable to any model.
Validity and Reliability Mark Mitchell and Janina Jolley for the Research Design Explained website provide these materials for students to administer a pencil-and-paper version of the Ice Cream Personality Test to a friend. Based on Miserandino, M. (2006). I scream, you scream: Teaching validity and reliability via the ice cream personality test. Teaching of Psychology, 33, 265-268.
Want to Be Happier Right Now? The Think Positive! Experiment Reflecting on the 3 best events over the course of a week, as opposed to the three worst, colors our overall judgement of how the week was.
What’s In A Name? First Day of Class Ice Breaker What’s in a name? John Suler, Rider University, suggests this ice breaker in his Teaching Clinical Psychology website. Students state their name, and explain how they got their name. This is an especially powerful exercise for small classes or for classes where students work closely with each other over the course of a semester.
Who Am I? – Famous Psychologists Quiz Test your knowledge of important figures in psychology with this quiz. The expert level has 13 questions, which increase in difficultly. Ten of the questions are about personality psychologists including: Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Karen Horney and Erik Erickson.
Why? A Happiness Activity The September (2008) issue of the Thiagi Gameletter (Seriously fun activities for trainers, facilitators, performance consultants, and managers, see http://www.thiagi.com/) describes a series of Happiness Activities as part of their Tool Kit to demonstrate how most of our current goals when reduced to their most fundamental form — by repeatedly asking the question Why? have happiness at its core.
Why Self-Control and Grit Matter —- And Why It Pays to Know the Difference C. Nathan DeWall, writing for the Teaching Current Directions in Psychological Science column in the APS Observer, presents this five-minute activity on the Duckworth and Gross (2014) study of Self-Control and Grit.
Licensed under the Creative Commons
