Week 7: Assignment: Prosocial Behavior

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Week 7 Exercise: Prosocial Behavior

Much of what we tend to focus on when we study social psychology are topics that often have a negative connotation such as conformity, prejudice, aggression or obedience. A huge component of the study of social psychology; however, focuses on prosocial behavior – behaviors that focus on compassion and helping others. For this activity, you will focus on this more uplifting aspect of social psychology. Topics that fall under the area of prosocial behavior include altruism, helping, bystander intervention, empathy, and compassion, among others.

For this exercise, pick one day and seek to structure your thoughts and behaviors entirely around helping others. With each interaction or action you take, pause to think and ask yourself “is there a way I might help another here?” Hold a door for someone, offer your seat, share a smile, give a sincere compliment, show empathy to another, attempt to be more patient or understanding, etc. Your efforts should be in social settings that involve interactions with others (rather than something such as donating to a charity for instance). The goal is to be as thoughtfully prosocial in your interactions throughout the day as possible.

· At the beginning of the day, jot down your general mood, feelings, attitude, etc.

· Then throughout the day, whenever possible, carry a small notebook with you or make notes in an app on your phone to jot down meaningful encounters or experiences as you attempt to engage in prosocial behaviors.

· At the end of the day, again reflect and take notes on how you feel, your general mood, feelings and attitudes, etc.

PLEASE NOTE: If you are unable to engage in prosocial behavior outside of your home due to COVID-19 restrictions/precautions, you are encouraged to engage in such behaviors with your family/people with whom you are sheltering. You may also engage in prosocial behavior with others virtually or through other means (e.g., through video calls, emails, etc…). This assignment will be more meaningful if you are able to engage in-person with acquaintances or strangers, but you can still find ways to make a significant difference to others even if quarantined or sheltering in place.

In a 5-7 slide PowerPoint presentation, not counting title or reference slides:

· Summarize your experience. Describe the prosocial behaviors you engaged in, others’ reactions to these behaviors, and your assessment of any changes in mood, attitude, good fortune, or anything else of note you experienced.

· Review what you have learned about human behavior in social settings this week in your readings. Connect what you learned or experienced through your day of conscious, prosocial behavior with the terms, concepts, and theories from your research. Integrate at least two academic sources (your assigned readings/resources can comprise one of these sources), citing any references used in APA format.

· Describe any new insights you gained through this experience about your interactions with others on a daily basis, including any behaviors you wish to change or to continue.

· Use the features of PowerPoint to your advantage to communicate your ideas – include pictures, audio recorded narration, speaker’s notes, video, links, etc. as appropriate to enhance your ideas.

· Include an APA formatted title slide and reference slide. APA components such as an abstract, headings, etc. are not required since this is a PowerPoint presentation.

Submit your presentation as an attachment in the Week 7 Assignment Prosocial Behavior link in the Assignments area of the classroom no later than 11:55 pm EST Sunday of Week 7.

Due Date

Feb 21, 2021 11:59 PM

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Rubric Name: PSYC101 Week 7 Assign. Rubric: Prosocial Behavior

This table lists criteria and criteria group name in the first column. The first row lists level names and includes scores if the rubric uses a numeric scoring method.Criteria

Exemplary

Accomplished

Developing

Beginning

Did not attempt

Criterion Score

Description of Behaviors and Impact

33 points

Student provides a detailed, insightful description of prosocial behavior, reactions and impact on others.

28.05 points

Student provides a complete description of prosocial behavior, reactions and impact on others.

24.75 points

Student provides a marginal description of prosocial behavior, reactions and impact on others.

21.45 points

Student attempts to provide a description of prosocial behavior, reactions and impact on others but description does not demonstrate an understanding of the concepts.

0 points

Student does not describe prosocial behavior, reactions or impact on others.

/ 33

Connection to Theory

33 points

Student provides an accurate, thorough description of the connections between experiences and relevant psychological theory using many examples from the literature.

28.05 points

Student provides a mostly accurate description of the connections between experiences and relevant psychological theory using at least two examples from the literature.

24.75 points

Student provides a marginal description of the connections between experiences and relevant psychological theory using at least one example from the literature.

21.45 points

Student attempts to provide a description of the connections between experiences and relevant psychological theory but does not use examples from the literature for support.

0 points

Student does not provide a description of the connections between experiences and relevant psychological theory.

/ 33

Behavioral Insights

14 points

Student provides an insightful discussion of how the information gleaned will impact future behaviors.

11.9 points

Student provides a discussion of how the information gleaned will impact future behaviors.

10.5 points

Student provides a marginal discussion of how the information gleaned will impact future behaviors.

9.1 points

Student attempts to provide a discussion of how the information gleaned will impact future behaviors, but discussion does not demonstrate an understanding of the concepts.

0 points

Student does not provide a discussion of how the information gleaned will impact future behaviors.

/ 14

Formatting/Writing

20 points

Work is presented in a logical and coherent way. Writing is clear, articulate, and error free. Citations are composed in proper format with few or no errors. Powerpoint is engaging and visually effective.

17 points

Work is grammatically sound with a few minor errors. Citations are composed in the proper format with some errors. Powerpoint is used effectively.

15 points

Work contains frequent grammatical errors. Citations are inaccurate or improperly formatted. Presentation is somewhat hard to follow and/or does not make effective use of common features (images, bullet points, speaker’s notes, etc.).

13 points

Writing errors are so prevalent as to interfere with understanding of the content. Presentation is confusing, hard to read, and difficult to follow.

0 points

Work does not demonstrate appropriate undergraduate level writing. Presentation is not included.

/ 20

Rubric Total ScoreTotal

/ 100

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Final Research Paper – due May 11, 2021 by 11:59 PM.

For this assignment, you will complete a research paper on The Stroop Effect and selective attention. The Stroop Effect is a phenomenon that occurs with the Stroop Task, a test that looks at what happens when we are asked to perform an ordinary task (such as reading or identifying  a list of colors) when there is some sort of visual interference.

You are acting like you are the researcher who conducted this study! However, you do not have to actually collect the data – that will be provided for you. In order to understand how the study works and how data was collected, you will need to participate in an online experiment on the Stroop Effect located within the “psychology learning tools”.  You should have already completed this part for the discussion in Week 4.  And in Week 4 you were to identify your hypothesis.  If you have decided to change your hypothesis, you may do so but get professor permission first.

Once you have completed the experiment you will need to analyze data that is contained in Week 4 Discussion Question and write a lab report (7- 10 pages – this page count does not include the title page or references) in APA style consisting of the following sections:

• Title Page
• Abstract
• Introduction
• Method
• Results
• Discussion
• References

(More information on each section is located below)

Just like the mini lab report, you will participate in the online experiment so you know what the experiment is like.

Here is the data file: DATA

Remember that you were given additional details in the Hypothesis discussion.

You will write the report as if you were the researcher conducting the experiment. You have some options in your research question for this project. The data you are given includes the gender and age of the participants as well as two columns of results data (reading the words and saying the colors). You can choose one independent variable, either gender or age.  You should try to use as much of your data as possible. Do not discard data unless there is a really good reason to do so.

Careful attention must be paid to APA Style as it represents a significant portion of your grade for the paper and is an intended learning outcome for the course. At the end of the term, you will submit your completed paper to your assignment folder.

Here is the grading rubric for the paper: Rubric

Main components on your research paper – See Chapter 11 Presenting Your Research for additional information.

1. Title page – Make sure that the main points of a title page are included.
2. Abstract – This is a well written summary of your paper. A reader should be able to get a clear picture of your paper based on the abstract. Include everything from a quick introduction of the topic to a sentence that implies that you will discuss results and implications.
3. Introduction – This is so much more than a summary of your paper and should not be treated that way. For this paper, your introduction should be 2-3 pages of double spaced writing. Start by introducing your topic in general. Then you should discuss research from relevant published studies. Most, if not all, of your 8 references from peer reviewed sources will be cited in this section. Discussing these studies are important as they help provide a rationale for your study. Give that rationale next. Finish by clearly stating your hypothesis.
   1. Here is an article to get you started. Remember that this website isn’t the source for this article. You need to locate and cite the original source!
4. Methods – Split this section into participants, materials and procedures subsections. You know the gender and age of all of your participants. You are welcome to include other demographic or recruiting information as it helps you with your study. Try the study here so you can adequately write about the procedures. Click on Run Experiment to get started.
5. Results – Use the data I provided to calculate your results. Remember that your hypothesis drives your statistics. Think about what statistics you need to include to test your hypothesis. Write out all of your numbers even if you are including them in a table. Don’t forget to include a chart or table!
6. Discussion – This is the best section because it is finally time to talk about what YOU think. After restating your results, talk about what they mean. What are the implications of your findings? Why are they important? For instance, why should we care that one gender is better at this than the other or that there aren’t gender differences for this study? After that, talk about the limitations to your study and give specific ideas for future research.
7. References – Don’t forget that your references (and all of your paper) need to be in APA format. You need at least 8 references from peer reviewed sources (e.g., journals).

Stroop Effect Explanation