Units 17 and 18 - Social Psychology

If you're looking for review resources scroll down to the previous blog posts!

THE FOLLOWING LINKS FEATURE VERY IMPORTANT CONCEPTS IN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY. REVIEW Sherif's, ASCH'S, MILGRAM'S AND ZIMBARDO'S CLASSIC STUDIES AND READ UP ON THE "BYSTANDER EFFECT." 

The Robber's Cave - Sherif: In-group, out-group, Bias, Bonding, Competition and Cooperation  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QGNxRGgBwM

Social Thinking - Crash Course

Social Influene - Crash Course

The Bystander Effect... what would you do?

This happened last year in NYC it looks like a 31 year-old Guatemalan man named Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax was stabbed on the street in New York City and many pedestrians walked right past him as he died. You can read the story and see a surveillance video here.

Read more about the bystander effect here. 

The Bystander Effect/Diffusion of Responsibility video we saw in class is below or here. 

Asch's Conformity

Solomon Asch's conformity study showed how easily people will give an obviously wrong answer when other people are giving that same answer. Watch the video at the link below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRh5qy09nNw

Milgram's Obedience

Stanley Milgram's obedience study was recently partly replicated by ABC's Prime Time show. Watch how easily people follow orders even when they know the orders are wrong.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwqNP9HRy7Y

Zimbardo's Prison Roles

Philip Zimbardo's experiment about how roles affect behavior is known as the "Stanford Prison Experiment." Those playing inmates became passive while those playing guards became aggressive. Subjects' real identities seemed to pale in comparison to the roles they played so much that the experiment had to be stopped after a few days. Who knows what would have happened if the experiment had gone on for two full weeks.

https://youtu.be/RpDVFp3FM_4



Prejudice and Discrimination - Crash Course
https://youtu.be/7P0iP2Zm6a4 

Aggression v. Altruism - Crash Course

https://youtu.be/XoTx7Rt4dig

Unit 9 - Consciousness

Meditation - an altered state of consciousness?

How can meditation help you live a fuller and more balanced life? Andy Puddicombe discusses how it helps him live in the "present moment"... and he juggles a little too.

( http://www.ted.com/talks/andy_puddicombe_all_it_takes_is_10_mindful_minutes.html )

Prosopagnosia: What if you could see normally but could not recognize faces... even your own? 

Writer Oliver Sacks of "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" fame has this condition and discusses his latest book about prosopagnosia in this interview from a public radio program called "To the Best of Our Knowledge." You can hear the interview and read the transcript at the following link: 

http://ttbook.org/book/oliver-sacks-facial-blindness 

Videos on Consciousness

Discovering Psychology program 13 "The Mind Awake and Asleep" is at http://www.learner.org/discoveringpsychology/13/e13expand.html 

Discovering Psychology program 14 "The Mind Hidden and Divided" is at 
http://www.learner.org/discoveringpsychology/14/e14expand.html

Starting to meditate? 
Here are links to a couple of online meditation timers. 

http://www.onlinemeditationtimer.com/ 
http://www.yourmeditationtimer.com/timer

It can help you concentrate on your meditation if you don't have to worry about how much time has passed. 

Article: The Meaning of Dreams by Jonathan Winson
Read it HERE - Are dreams symbolic, just random or are they a crucial step in processing memories? 

Hypnosis!

What is hypnosis? A state of heightened suggestibility with real effects in the brain.  

Here is a blog post about what hypnosis ISN'T ... 8 Popular Myths About Hypnosis 


Mouse Party?

What would you see inside the brains of mice who were taking drugs? This interactive website gives you a glimpse inside the brains and synapses of mice on drugs including alcohol, cocaine, marijuana, heroin, meth, ecstasy, and LSD.

Identify how each drug affects the brain. What neurotransmitter(s) does it affect? Is it inhibitory or excitatory? Does it block re-uptake or work some other way? Which parts of the brain are most affected?

You can explore other effects of drugs of abuse here. 

Dream Journal  - You should be making entries into your dream journal every day. If you don't remember a dream from the night, you should write about what emotions or thoughts you had upon awakening. If you don't have anything to enter for a day, you should write about a dream you had some time in the past - even the distant past. 

The point of the dream journal assignment is to get you to pay attention to your dreams and to start to think about various theories of dream interpretation to see if you think they apply. 

Unit 4 - Sensation Animations about vision - the retina and visual pathways

Fantastic animations about the eye, visual processing in the retina and the pathways that visual information travels in the brain.

This beautiful and painted animation is a great overview. 

Pay close attention to the "center-surround" aspects of retinal processing in this Web Animation below. The narrator's voice is a bit boring, but it's a great video that explains the whole "center-surround" opponent process thing. 

This animation shows how the photoreceptors, bipolar and ganglion cells of the retina are organized in "center-surround" arrangements that allow "bottom up" processing of visual information to begin in the retina. 

http://www.sumanasinc.com/webcontent/animations/content/receptivefields.html

If a picture is worth a thousand words, an animation is worth way more. This animation really shows the visual pathway very well. Pay attention to how visual information is split in the Optic Chiasm and how it routs through the LGN of the thalamus as well as other areas specifically related to eye movement and the "biological clock" which controls circadian rhythms.

This excellent animation really explains how the visual information from the left and right visual fields makes its way to the right and left occipital lobes via the LGN of the thalamus. 

http://www.sumanasinc.com/webcontent/animations/content/visualpathways.html

Check out this amazingly comprehensive video that covers the visual system in about 10 minutes. It's on YouTube, so it may be hard to watch at school. Link: http://youtu.be/AuLR0kzfwBU

What do you see in the circle?

This site sells glasses that are supposed to correct for some color blindness. I don't know how well they work, but they do have a really nice color blindness test. http://enchroma.com/test/instructions/ 

Do you have "SuperVision? Are you a tetrachromat - a person with 4 

types of cones rather than 3? This website has a test for you. 

And Hank's Crash Course Psychology is always good... 

https://youtu.be/unWnZvXJH2o

The Zimbardo "Discovering Psychology" video on Sensation and Perception can be found at this link. 

http://www.learner.org/resources/series138.html?pop=yes&pid=1504

Blog Post 1- Part 1 of the Summer Assignment - Due July 20

Welcome to AP Psychology at North-Grand!

Be sure to sign up for our Remind 101 text alerts using the code I gave you the last week of school.

Ten Most Revealing Psychology Experiments!

Read all these instructions carefully before beginning!

Go to this link about the Ten Most Revealing Psychology Experiments and read through the summaries of all ten of them. 

***** If the above link is broken (or even if it's not) you can use this as an alternative set of experiments to get you started : 10 Famous Psychology Experiments that Could Never Happen Today  This link is really about the ethics of doing these experiments on humans and animals, but you can use it as a starting point, then use Google to find other sources about the experiments themselves. 

Select one of the experiments that you think is interesting. Click on the link in the summary to start your research about that experiment. Read through the information and seek out other information online. There may be good YouTube videos or other sources you should investigate. You can also look up some of the experiments or the experimenters in your textbook. 

In your comment to THIS BLOG POST please do the following to complete the assignment:

1. Summarize the experiment. Include who did it, when they did it,where they did it, and what they did.

2. Explain the importance of the experiment to our understanding of human behavior. Make a claim about why you think the experiment is considered to have provided a valuable insight into the way people think and/or act?

3. Give one example of how the experiment can be applied to everyday life. You can use yourself or someone you know in the example, or make up an example that you think the experiment might apply to in normal life.

4. At the end of your post include all sources (full URLs, please) and sign the post with your first name and just the initial letter of your last name (for example: Phillip D.)

5. To send your comment please click the "Name/URL" option and put your first name and last initial in the "Name" box. Don't fill in the URL box.  

I strongly suggest that you write your comment in Word or other program first so you can check your spelling etc. and then just paste it into the comments at the end of this post. This will also allow you to save your work in case the blog does something strange. 

Your post should be 3 to 5 paragraphs long and should demonstrate some original thinking on your part. Do not cut-and-paste or copy any text directly.

Your comment will not show up on the blog until close to the due-date, as I want everyone to approach the project without being biased by seeing the posted work of others in the class. If you aren't sure if your comment went through you may e-mail me and I'll let you know. Please don't keep re-sending it over and over. If your comment is too long, it may not let you post it and show an error message. If this happens, try breaking your comment up into 2 or 3 parts and label them appropriately. 

If you have any questions please e-mail me. I usually reply to e-mails within a day or two. Before sending me an e-mail, please read my "How to email a teacher" post from my biology blog ... really. http://cantorsbiologyblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/how-to-send-e-mail-to-teacher-really.html

Keep working on the rest of your summer assignment from the Bernstein Textbook and the Phineas Gage book. 

Social Psychology Videos

If you're looking for review resources scroll down to the previous blog posts from March 24 and April 22.

THE FOLLOWING LINKS FEATURE VERY IMPORTANT CONCEPTS IN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY. REVIEW ASCH'S, MILGRAM'S AND ZIMBARDO'S CLASSIC STUDIES AND READ UP ON THE "BYSTANDER EFFECT." 

The Bystander Effect... what would you do?

This happened last year in NYC it looks like a 31 year-old Guatemalan man named Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax was stabbed on the street in New York City and many pedestrians walked right past him as he died. You can read the story and see a surveillance video here.

Read more about the bystander effect here. 

The Bystander Effect/Diffusion of Responsibility video we saw in class is below or here. 

Asch's Conformity

Solomon Asch's conformity study showed how easily people will give an obviously wrong answer when other people are giving that same answer. Watch the video at the link below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRh5qy09nNw

Milgram's Obedience

Stanley Milgram's obedience study was recently partly replicated by ABC's Prime Time show. Watch how easily people follow orders even when they know the orders are wrong.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwqNP9HRy7Y

Zimbardo's Prison Roles

Philip Zimbardo's experiment about how roles affect behavior is known as the "Stanford Prison Experiment." Those playing inmates became passive while those playing guards became aggressive. Subjects' real identities seemed to pale in comparison to the roles they played so much that the experiment had to be stopped after a few days. Who knows what would have happened if the experiment had gone on for two full weeks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmwSC5fS40w

Animations about vision - the retina and visual pathways

Fantastic animations about the eye, visual processing in the retina and the pathways that visual information travels in the brain.

Pay close attention to the "center-surround" aspects of retinal processing it this first video.

This animation shows how the photoreceptors, bipolar and ganglion cells of the retina are organized in "center-surround" arrangements that allow "bottom up" processing of visual information to begin in the retina. 

http://www.sumanasinc.com/webcontent/animations/content/receptivefields.html

If a picture is worth a thousand words, an animation is worth way more. This animation really shows the visual pathway very well. Pay attention to how visual information is split in the Optic Chiasm and how it routs through the LGN of the thalamus as well as other areas specifically related to eye movement and the "biological clock" which controls circadian rhythms.

This excellent animation really explains how the visual information from the left and right visual fields makes its way to the right and left occipital lobes via the LGN of the thalamus. 

http://www.sumanasinc.com/webcontent/animations/content/visualpathways.html

Check out this amazingly comprehensive video that covers the visual system in about 10 minutes. It's on YouTube, so it may be hard to watch at school. Link: http://youtu.be/AuLR0kzfwBU

The Zimbardo "Discovering Psychology" video on Sensation and Perception can be found at this link. 

http://www.learner.org/resources/series138.html?pop=yes&pid=1504

Discovering Psychology Videos - Biological Bases of Behavior

While these videos are slightly dated, they are still a great overview of the biological basis of behavior.

These are the third and fourth videos in the Discovering Psychology series. Short descriptions and links to the videos can be found below. They are from the series website.

Would you let this man handle your brain? 

3. The Behaving Brain  
This program discusses the structure and composition of the brain: how neurons function, how information is collected and transmitted, and how chemical reactions determine every thought, feeling, and action. With Dr. John Gabrieli of Stanford University and Dr. Mieke Verfaellie of Veterans Medical Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts. Updated. View it here. 

4. The Responsive Brain 
How the brain controls behavior and, conversely, how behavior and environment influence the brain's structure and functioning are the focus of this program. With Dr. Michael Meaney of McGill University and Dr. Russell Fernald of Stanford University. Updated. View it here. 

Part 1 of the Summer Assignment - Due July 20

Welcome to AP Psychology at North-Grand!

Ten Most Revealing Psychology Experiments!

Read all these instructions carefully before beginning!

Go to this link about the Ten Most Revealing Psychology Experiments and read through the summaries of all ten of them. 

Select one of the experiments that you think is interesting. Click on the link in the summary to start your research about that experiment. (the link to #3 is broken, but you can use this link to get started.) Read through the information and seek out other information online. There may be good YouTube videos or other sources you should investigate. You can also look up some of the experiments or the experimenters in your textbook. 

In your comment to THIS BLOG POST please do the following to complete the assignment:

1. Summarize the experiment. Include who did it, when they did it, where they did it, and what they did.
2. Explain the importance of the experiment to our understanding of human behavior. Why do you think the experiment is considered a valuable insight into the way people think and/or act?
3. Give one example of how the experiment can be applied to everyday life. You can use yourself or someone you know in the example, or make up an example that you think the experiment might apply to in normal life.
4. At the end of your post include all sources (full URLs, please) and sign the post with your first name and just the initial letter of your last name (for example: Phillip D.)
5. To send your comment please click the "Name/URL" option and put your first name and last initial in the "Name" box. Don't fill in the URL box.  

I suggest that you write your comment in Word or other program first so you can check your spelling etc. and then just paste it into the comments at the end of this post. 

Your post should be 3 to 5 paragraphs long and should demonstrate some original thinking on your part. Do not cut-and-paste or copy any text directly.

Your comment will not show up on the blog until close to the due-date, as I want everyone to approach the project without being biased by seeing the posted work of others in the class. If you aren't sure if your comment went through you may e-mail me and I'll let you know. Please don't keep re-sending it over and over. 

If you have any questions please e-mail me. I usually reply to e-mails within a day or two. Before sending me an e-mail, please read my "How to email a teacher" post from my biology blog ... really. http://cantorsbiologyblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/how-to-send-e-mail-to-teacher-really.html

Keep working on the rest of your summer assignment from the Bernstein Textbook and the Phineas Gage book. 

Social Psychology Videos

If you're looking for review resources scroll down to the previous blog post.

The following links feature very important concepts in social psychology. Review Asch's, Milgram's and Zimbardo's classic studies and read up on the "bystander effect." 

The Bystander Effect... what would you do?


This happened last year in NYC it looks like a 31 year-old Guatemalan man named Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax was stabbed on the street in New York City and many pedestrians walked right past him as he died. You can read the story and see a surveillance video here.


Read more about the bystander effect here. 

Asch's Conformity

Solomon Asch's conformity study showed how easily people will give an obviously wrong answer when other people are giving that same answer. Watch the video at the link below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRh5qy09nNw

Milgram's Obedience

Stanley Milgram's obedience study was recently partly replicated by ABC's Prime Time show. Watch how easily people follow orders even when they know the orders are wrong.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwqNP9HRy7Y

Zimbardo's Prison Roles

Philip Zimbardo's experiment about how roles affect behavior is known as the "Stanford Prison Experiment." Those playing inmates became passive while those playing guards became aggressive. Subjects' real identities seemed to pale in comparison to the roles they played so much that the experiment had to be stopped after a few days. Who knows what would have happened if the experiment had gone on for two full weeks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmwSC5fS40w

REVEIW REVIEW REVIEW... Review Resources

Here are some great psych review resources for you. 

Video clips of mini-lectures along with quizzes about just about every chapter we cover in our course. 
http://education-portal.com/academy/course/ap-psychology.html 

Dr. Philip (looks a bit like Satan) Zimbardo's "Discovering Psychology" TV series. Click on the  VoD to see the videos. 

http://www.learner.org/resources/series138.html#program_descriptions 

Mr. Schallhorn, an AP Psych teacher in California, put together a great set of YouTube videos you can use to review for AP Psych. His YouTube channel is at the following address. 

http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOG05VwbujNwGUX5UA0zcXQ?ob=0&feature=results_main 

Do you TWEET?

Search for the #appsychreview hashtag to see what sorts of questions other students are asking... and see answers from real AP Psych teachers from around the nation. You can also post your own questions to twitter and get answers. Please don't post questions that you should just look up in your book or on Wikipedia... don't ask "who is Piaget?" but do ask "how do I remember Piaget's stages of cognitive development?"

https://twitter.com/search/realtime?q=%23appsychreview

You also have your AP Review Books, your PsykTrek CDs and the thousands of flashcards and pages of notes you've created this year.

As you find other resources, please e-mail them to me at ptdworkin-cantor at cps.edu or post them in the comments section of this post.

Do you like electronic flash-cards? Do you use Apps? You might like http://www.studyblue.com/ which has tons of electronic flash-cards and even a smartphone app. Just type "psychology" into the search box (I want to learn "this") and go for it. You can sign on to get a free account using your facebook account or any e-mail account.

You can find other psych based apps at http://www.thepsychfiles.com/2010/04/episode-121-top-10-psychology-apps-for-the-ipad-iphone-ipod/ There are also links to Android apps there. Some are free, some cost money. Check the reviews carefully before spending your cash. I have not tried them out yet, so if you find one you think is great, please share about it in the comments section of this post.

Remember, the best way to study is to actually quiz yourself (or have someone quiz you) to see what you remember... then try to re-learn what you didn't remember. Use mnemonic devices... create meaning - SEMANTIC CONNECTIONS!... draw pictures, come up with examples! Just reading over your stuff, or just watching a video isn't enough. 

Social Psychology Videos you MUST watch...

The following links feature very important concepts in social psychology. Review Asch's, Milgram's and Zimbardo's classic studies and read up on the "bystander effect." 

The Bystander Effect... what would you do?


This just happened, so all the facts aren't in yet but it looks like a 31 year-old Guatemalan man named Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax was stabbed on the street in New York City and many pedestrians walked right past him as he died. You can read the story and see a surveillance video here.


Read more about the bystander effect here. 

Asch's Conformity

Solomon Asch's conformity study showed how easily people will give an obviously wrong answer when other people are giving that same answer. Watch the video at the link below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRh5qy09nNw

Milgram's Obedience

Stanley Milgram's obedience study was recently partly replicated by ABC's Prime Time show. Watch how easily people follow orders even when they know the orders are wrong.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwqNP9HRy7Y

Zimbardo's Prison Roles

Philip Zimbardo's experiment about how roles affect behavior is known as the "Stanford Prison Experiment." Those playing inmates became passive while those playing guards became aggressive. Subjects' real identities seemed to pale in comparison to the roles they played so much that the experiment had to be stopped after a few days. Who knows what would have happened if the experiment had gone on for two full weeks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmwSC5fS40w

Unit 9 Consciousness

What if you could see normally but could not recognize faces... even your own? 

Writer Oliver Sacks of "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" fame has this condition and discusses his latest book about prosopagnosia in this interview from a public radio program called "To the Best of Our Knowledge." You can hear the interview and read the transcript at the following link: 

http://ttbook.org/book/oliver-sacks-facial-blindness 

Videos on Consciousness

Discovering Psychology program 13 "The Mind Awake and Asleep" is at http://www.learner.org/discoveringpsychology/13/e13expand.html 


Discovering Psychology program 14 "The Mind Hidden and Divided" is at 
http://www.learner.org/discoveringpsychology/14/e14expand.html


Starting to meditate? 
Here is a link to an online meditation timer. http://www.yourmeditationtimer.com/  It can help you concentrate in your meditation if you don't have to worry about how much time has passed. 


Mouse Party?

What would you see inside the brains of mice who were taking drugs? This interactive website gives you a glimpse inside the brains and synapses of mice on drugs including alcohol, cocaine, marijuana, heroin, meth, ecstasy, and LSD.

Identify how each drug affects the brain. What neurotransmitter(s) does it affect? Is it inhibitory or excitatory? Does it block re-uptake or work some other way? Which parts of the brain are most affected?

You can explore other effects of drugs of abuse here. 


Dream Journal  - You should be making entries into your dream journal every day. If you don't remember a dream from the night, you should write about what emotions or thoughts you had upon awakening. If you don't have anything to enter for a day, you should write about a dream you had some time in the past - even the distant past. 


The point of the dream journal assignment is to get you to pay attention to your dreams and to start to think about various theories of dream interpretation to see if you think they apply.