Creative Psych Use for Changing the World
The goal is to offer you practice in not just LEARNING scientific psychology, but actually APPLYING said science in making the world a better place (unfortunately, many people learn a lot of great science in college but don’t apply much/any of it).
Your task is to pick a topic/concept (e.g., divided attention, conditioning, from the course and design a real-life project you could possibly implement. Explain
- WHAT this psychological science idea is (define, explain, provide relevant examples- about 200-300 words), and
- HOW you will use this idea to change the world, improve the quality of life for people, or even push the frontiers of scientific inquiry/application (about 700-800 words).
While you could design a groundbreaking experiment or research study this can actually be a lot broader than that. You can start with problems you see in life around you and then try to describe which psychological concepts you know could be used to design an intervention around it. So for example you can take the information on divided attention and design a plan to reduce accidents from driving. Or you could take the mindfulness and design something to reduce stress, or something like that. Or you can look at the material in the learning chapter and use conditioning to increase health behaviors, decrease racism, and sexism. USE your psych. Think BIG.
This is a SMALL 1000-words paper, so don’t let the word “paper” mislead you. Do not worry about strict or critical evaluation of your writing. It will be worth 59 points.
