In the thread about Psychology being a science, Kris Lewis made a point about her history and theory class not believing that psychology was a science because "people are to complex". I think this gets at one of the major problems I see students struggling with to accept that psychology is a science: that human behavior can be predicted. That there is some determinism involved. If we don't believe that we can predict what people will do, we are falling short of some understandings of what science is. And so, I've been thinking about the following as a demonstration: As the statement about human behavior being too complex to explain and predict is made, take a sheet of paper and write down 100% (or 99% if you want to be a little conservative). Don't show it to the students and simply fold the piece of paper and set it aside. Next, ask them to take out a sheet of paper (and ask them to write their name at the top). Ask for a count of how many did not take out a sheet of paper. Then take your sheet of paper and explain that you made a prediction that a certain percentage would comply with your request as a teacher based on things learned about roles (teacher/student) and compliance (or obedience to authority if you told them rather than asked) within psychology. My guess is that all of the students will comply with your request. Congratulations, you just showed that human behavior can be predicted. Okay, I admit it is a rather simplistic example and is in part the result of me having just covered the chapter on social psychology in Intro. I haven't ever done this, but it has been going through my mind lately. In some ways it is a simplified version of the quack like a duck demonstration used for a slightly different purpose. The key is to make the prediction first and show that their behavior can be predicted. If nothing else, it might get some interesting discussion going and perhaps make a couple of them think. My feeling is that someone must have tried this before, but I can't think of anyplace where I've heard it done this way (making the prediction first) or for this reason (proving that behavior can be predicted). Any comments or suggestions on this? Has anyone tried something like this? How did it work? - Marc G. Marc Turner, MEd Department of Psychology Southwest Texas State University San Marcos, TX 78666 phone: (512)245-2526 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED] or ...
