Want to Test Your Intelligence Quotient (IQ)?

Here's a place to take a classic type of IQ test: IQ TEST

And if you don't feel so good about your results and want to try a different type of IQ test, try this one: Bible IQ Test

What's Your IQ?

CLICK HERE TO TAKE AN IQ TEST 
I make no promises about the accuracy of this IQ test, but try it out and let me know what you think.

Kim Peek - Most Famous Savant

Savant Syndrome - Animal Sculpting

Multiple Intelligences - Which Are You?

Feral Children

Genie

Kanzi's Language Acquisition

A Word Salad

Phonemes Experiment - What is He Saying?

Phonemes Experiment from keith on Vimeo.

False Memory - Did You See Bugs Bunny at Disney?

Test Your Memory

Test Your Short-Term Memory

Perception - Test Your Awareness

Iconic Memory Game

Iconic Memory Game

Reeces Pieces

Practice Statistics

You have my permission to tell your parents that you need to buy Reeces Pieces to practice your statistics. I challenge you each to get a bag and see what the proportion of orange pieces is.  :) 

Independent and Dependent Variables

Practice identifying independent and dependent variables here.

Examples of Faulty Statistics

Hurricanes Named After Women
Correlation Does Not Equal Causation

Normal Distribution

Positively and Negatively Skewed

Social Psychology Experiment

Deindividuation and the Riot Effect

Living in India, I have seen a crowd gather within moments around a person who has fallen off a bike or around our rickshaw after an accident. I have seen groups quickly fill the roads, gathering at street corners for demonstrations and motivational talks, while most of the population attempts to quickly get safely home. One of the scariest things in the world is a mob. A crowd of people who are caught up in strong emotions, feel invincible and anonymous, united around some common cause or goal - big or small, legitimate or illegitimate, it doesn't seem to matter. A rioting mob has power. Deindividuation is what happens when people lose themselves in the crowd. There is safety in anonymity and individuals cease to take responsibility for their own actions.

Deindividuation and the impact and power of a rioting crowd have always fascinated me, even more since coming to stay in a country where this effect seems to be even more potent. It doesn't surprise me that the following situation took place at a medical college in Calcutta.
Read this story of rioters taking justice into their own hands.

Sample Research Study #2

Parenting Styles and Political Views

Sample Research Study

Why Do Children Cover Their Eyes to Hide?

Class Discussion Followup - Mistreatment of Women

Check out this BBC story about botched sterilizations in India, to see one example of real mistreatment of women. Though I believe we should stand up for women's rights everywhere, it is stories like these that make me inclined to view the 'Like a Girl' video below as somewhat petty in comparison. When you look at things like widespread rape, death due to improper medical care, being forced into unwanted marriages, or having no recourse in the case of domestic violence, it seems rather a small thing that the phrase 'like a girl' is used in a slightly derogatory manner.

Again, I am not entirely against the point they are trying to make. I just think we have to be careful about how much we inflate an issue until we end up focusing on the wrong thing. 

Intersex and the Gospel

Read an article from the gospel coalition about the complicated issue of gender, especially in the case of intersexed persons. 

Please share your thoughts on this and the story of Caster Semenya in the comments or on the class forum. 

Caster Semenya

Read the story of Caster Semenya. 

Twins Separated at Birth

Twins - Chewing Gum

'Like a Girl'

On gender and stereotypes - what do you think about this recently popular commercial?

Hipsters and Conformity

Here's an article titled The Hipster Effect: When Anticonformists All Look the Same by Jonathan Touboul. I haven't read it through, but it is an interesting topic. It is fascinating to see that 'nonconformists' only resist conforming when there is a whole crowd with whom they can NOT conform. There are many people who think they are unique but far fewer who actually are.

Daughter of the Happy Face Killer

"I was also worried. I knew I wasn't capable of killing anybody, I knew I wasn't a sociopath. And yet, didn't I share my father's DNA? How does one become a serial killer? Could that evil be something that I was carrying around, and could I even pass it on to my children?"

Read this story of the daughter of a serial killer. 

Heredity and Environment - Information on Genes

Check out THIS website for lots of information on genes, genetics, heredity, DNA, etc. Please choose at least three of the short tours to view during these two weeks we spend on Heredity and Environment. 

Dmitry Belyaev - Fox Experiments

For the Overachievers...

Here is a comprehensive website exploring the mind and brain, as well as genetics. You can choose a topic or a psychological disorder and learn all about what is happening in the brain related to that particular thing. 

Famous Social Psychology Experiments

A good overview of the major social psychology experiments that have played a significant role in the development of this field of study. 

Experimenter	Topic	Major Findings
LaPiere	Attitudes	Attitudes don’t always predict behavior: establishments that served a Chinese couple later reported they would refuse such a couple service.
Festinger and Carlsmith	Cognitive Dissonance	Changing one’s behavior can lead to a change in attitudes; people who describe a boring task as interesting for $1 in compensation later reported liking the task more than people who were paid $20.
Rosenthal and Jacobson	Self-fulfilling prophecy	One person’s attitudes can elicit a change in another person’s behavior; teachers’ positive expectations led to increases in students’ IQ scores.
Sherif	Superordinate Goals	Intergroup prejudice can be reduced through working toward superordinate goals; campers unfriendly, competing groups came to have more positive feelings about one another after working together to solve several camp-wide problems.
Darley and Latane	Bystander Effect	The more people that witness an emergency, the less likely any one person is to help; in one study, college students who thought they were the only person to overhear a peer have a seizure were more likely to help than students who thought others heard the seizure, too.
Asch	Conformity	People are loathe to contradict the opinions of a group; 70% of people reported at least one obviously incorrect answer.
Milgram	Obedience	People tend to obey authority figures; 60% of participants thought they delivered the maximum possible level of shock.
Zimbardo	Roles, deindividuation	Roles are powerful and can lead to deindividuation; college students role-playing prisoners and guards acted in surprisingly negative and hostile ways.

Taken from Barron's AP Psychology

Peripheral and Central Route to Persuasion

Mac vs. PC - Which type of persuasion is being used in this advertisement?

Bystander Effect & Bystander Intervention

The following three videos give examples of the bystander effect, a concept that refers to peoples' tendency NOT to help someone in need. Would you be any different? What factors contribute to whether a person decides to help or to stay uninvolved?

Nobody Cares


Staging a Girl's Abduction


Aiding the Fallen

Breaking Social Norms

The whole idea of the flash mob fad is to break social norms and capture peoples' reaction to it. Something like this could be an excellent and easy social experiment to do - if you have the courage to break social norms yourself!!

Social Experiment - Sample Student Project

Here is a social conformity study conducted by one of my previous AP Psychology students.

The Asch Experiment

Conformity - the Smoke Filled Room

Conformity - Elevator

How far will people go to conform with the norm?

Cambodian Genocide

What is the cause of mass evil? Why do people act in a way that they would have previously thought inconceivable?

Stanford Prison Experiment

Watch what happens when normal people are asked to take on the roles of guards and inmates in a prison.

Fake Celebrity

The guy in the picture is not a celebrity, but he manages to convince a lot of people he is. Watch the video to see how he does it. Think about what concepts in social psychology make his experiment successful. What other social experiments could you do with similar results?

Neural Firing

Helpful Websites for Neuroscience and Neuroanatomy

If you are having trouble understanding the brain and neurons, check out these websites to review:

1. Animated Tutorials: Neurobiology / Biopsychology
2. Brain Facts

Commentary on Technology

Memorizing Parts of the Brain, Part 1

For your own study and memorizing, check out this video. It is a creative and helpful way to remember some of the parts of the brain. If you don't have time to use it now, keep it in mind for when you are studying for class exams and for the AP exam.


This is for those who best memorize things in more creative ways. :) Especially those who are auditory learners.

Memorizing Parts of the Brain, Part 2

And another one...

A Good Review of the Parts of the Brain

2014 Nobel Prize Winners

Noticed this article today and thought it was good timing, since we are studying the various parts and functions of the brain these days. Read the article to see what the winners discovered about the brain. Side note: remember Hippocampus = memory.

BBC - Nobel Prize Winners

The Brain's Plasticity

Psychology and the Brain - Albert Einstein

This is an interesting story of what happened to Albert's brain after his death, and what conclusions were drawn from the study of it.

Einstein's Brain

Love and the Brain

Since we are currently studying the structure and functions of the brain, I thought it would be appropriate to share this article about what's happening in your brain when you are in love. The effect of being in love on your brain is similar to that of cocaine. No wonder love is such a powerful emotion!

Article on Love and the Brain

MRI - Reading Your Mind?

Why Short Men Make Better Husbands

"If we did not think babies were hopelessly cute, after all, we would kill them for being so exhausting. And so panda bears and chipmunks, and short men too, have smuggled their way into our affections through the same cognitive door that was meant to open only for the infants." 

Article on Why Short Men Make Better Husbands

Assisted Suicide

Humor and Age

Does this video refer to a longitudinal or a cross-sectional study?

Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development

Harlow's Monkeys Video #2 and #3

Harry Harlow's Monkeys Video #1

Imprinting...

Baby Laughing

Moro Reflex

A Simple Summary of the Perspectives of Psychology

Check out this link for a simple summary of the top five psychological perspectives.

Simply Psychology: Overview of Five Psychology Perspectives

Socio-Cultural Differences

No Arms, No Legs, No Worries

Possibly the most optimistic man in the world.

Psychology & the News: A Celebrity Death, the Anniversary of a Tragedy and a Murder Trial

What do the death of Robin Williams, the anniversary of 9/11, and the trial of Oscar Pistorius have in common? Other than all being evidence that we live in a fallen world, not much. Except that they are each fascinating from a psychological perspective. I have listed some reflection questions under each topic, to get your mind going. Are there other good psych-related questions you can think of to ask? 

1) The death of Robin Williams. What unique stressors do celebrities experience that may put them at greater risk of depression and suicide? How does the media's reporting of a suicide, especially of a prominent figure like Williams, impact those who may be contemplating suicide? What specific factors contributed to making Williams' death be presented and viewed as such a national tragedy? What is it about celebrities that makes them celebrities? Why do we have a culture of celebrity worship? 

Reactions to Robin Williams' death. 
Matt Walsh on suicide.  (This is quite a controversial article on suicide, but I think it is important for us to consider these very real and sobering issues from many different angles. I also know it can be a sensitive topic for people, so please let me know if you want to talk more with me about it.)

2) The anniversary of 9/11. Why do so many people remember exactly where they were, what they were doing and who they were with on that day 13 years ago? Why do we have such a keen memory of that day when we probably have no idea what we were doing the day before or the day after? Why might a tragedy in America be perceived differently than a tragedy of equal proportion elsewhere in the world, both by Americans and by those from other countries who experience the tragedy? What psychological factors, in addition to spiritual factors, cause some children to grow up and become terrorists and others to become firemen? 

9/11 Memorial

And just because...Obama volunteers for 'KaBOOM!' on 9/11.

3) The verdict in the trial of Oscar Pistorius. You may not be as familiar with this story of the South African athlete who shot and killed his girlfriend in their home, but I encourage you to read about it. How do you think having a jury vs. not having a jury may influence the verdict (SA doesn't have trials by jury)? What extraneous variables besides the evidence may have influenced the judge's decision, considering Pistorius' fame? How do you think Pistorius' physical disability impacts the public's view of him, positively or negatively? Is the population of South Africa more likely to consider him innocent or guilty based on his athletic achievements? In what way may the testimony of eye-witnesses have been impacted by psychological factors, i.e. stress, influence of popular opinion, memory, nature of a high profile case? 

Why there are no trials by jury in South Africa. 
Recent verdict on Oscar Pistorius case. 

The discussion this week is meant to encourage you to start viewing the world through the lens of psychology. As you can see, no matter what the event, there are countless ways that psychology can help us think about and interpret our world in a deeper and more comprehensive way. I will give you some of my thoughts on these news stories on Monday, and we will continue to explore the answers to these questions and many more over the next months. 

For an assessment of a more lighthearted event, check out the previous post on the Ice Bucket Challenge

More Interesting Psych Experiments

For those who are interested, a few more fascinating (and sometimes cruel & horrible) experiments from the history of psychology. Some get a bit graphic, so feel free to skip this.

10 Experiments That Went Horribly Wrong
10 Most Revealing Experiments

Crash Course - History of Psychology

Why is the Ice Bucket Challenge So Successful?

What is the psychology behind the ice bucket challenge and why is it so successful?

This article proposes some of the reasons why numerous people, from celebrities to entire schools, have been willing to pour ice water over their heads in the name of charity, and then post videos of the experience for all to see. The idea of the 'latest fad' has taken on new significance with the growth of the internet and social media, leading to the subsequent phenomenon of viral videos, blog posts and trends. The sensationalizing of ice water this summer is a perfect example of what happens when a previously meaningless activity becomes the obsession of an entire nation.

While it could be argued that the psychological concepts of conformity, social norms, and self concept are at play in a person's decision to douse themselves, it is much harder to build a case for altruism. On the other hand, what is it that causes some people to defiantly resist the norm and choose the route of non-conformity? Are those who propound their views of the challenge as being unethical and irresponsible because of wasted drinking water merely choosing a different group with which to conform? Are the motivations behind each response more similar than we may imagine? 

Did you accept the ice bucket challenge? Why or why not? 

AP Psychology - FAQs for the New School Year

For those who have an interest in the upcoming class, here are some of the most common questions being asked this week: 

Who can take the class? The class is primarily intended for homeschooled high school students who want to take an AP class and get a jump start on college. However, the class is also open to adults who want to take the class for their own personal enjoyment or knowledge. (Adults are sometimes the most motivated and enthusiastic participants!)

Is there still room for new students in the class? Yes, there are still a couple of slots open for the 2014-2015 school year.

When does the new class begin? Monday, September 8th, 2014 at 10am EST.

How can I get more information? Contact me at psych.plus1@gmail.com

How do I sign up for the class? Complete the registration form and pay the registration fee.

What textbook do I need to purchase? David Myer's Psychology 9th edition.

Do you conduct the class using Skype? No, I use a Blackboard Collaborate classroom. It has proved to be a reliable and effective forum for teaching, and is designed for the educational setting - unlike Skype.

If you have had any contact with me, then you have most likely received this information in one form or another. But something I've learned from teaching is that repetition is never a bad thing.

Did I forget anything? 

AP Psychology Online Course

There is just one week left to register for the 2014-2015 school year! Interested students should complete the registration form as soon as possible. Registered students will receive all pertinent information by email, including the syllabus and access to the online classroom. I look forward to another year of learning and growing together as we explore the creativity of God as it is displayed in the scientific study of human behavior and the mind. See you soon! 

AP Scores - Congratulations!

The results are in! I am happy to say that every student from my class who took the AP exam in May passed with a 4 or 5! So proud of how hard they worked over the school year and honored to have been their teacher. 

Today is the Last Day for Early Registration for AP Psych 2014-2015!

It seems the summer has just begun, but planning and preparation is already underway for the next school year. If you are interested in an Advanced Placement Psychology course taught from a Christian perspective, registration is now open for the class beginning in September, 2014. This online AP Psychology class is intended for home-schooled high school students. There is a $50 discount for those who register and pay by July 1st!! If you have questions, please Contact us. Go to the registration tab to complete the registration form.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Clip

Natural Hallucinations

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp

Myers Briggs Personality Test

What is your profile?

Operant Conditioning and Video Games

Mirror Neurons at work....