>>SULLIVAN: Hello.
We're almost home.
Because we have a lot of housecleaning and
stuff and a little raffle and evaluations
and so on, we're going to end promptly at
11:00.
I want to give Debbie a 15-minute thing.
She really needs 15 minutes before we try
to completely get -- so we're just going to
talk for a second.
The social cultural domain.
I think it's for the reasons we talked about
at the beginning.
Both Debbie and I talked about how we use
social psych to teach methods for a lot of
reasons, one because of what's happening today.
You tack social psych or social cultural on
to the end and then you run out of time, sort
of like what we're doing.
I hate that because I love social psych and
it's so interesting.
So I do recommend, we both recommend trying
to use social psych examples when you're teaching
methodology because you could do all the methodology
using social psych, and also at least float
a lot of the social psych concepts.
Even if you run out of time, later on you
will have done it some justice.
And you can do ethics and research, my gosh,
so many examples of that in social psychology
and so on.
I was going to do this thing.
Some of you may have seen it before as an
activity just to model it, but we can't explain
it because it would take too long.
So I'm just going to walk you through it.
I also have a version, and I can send it to
you if you're interested, of a little thing
on the Milgram study.
Everyone knows the obedience study.
You don't necessarily need to do this.
You might if you were teaching an advance
placement class, that they have to know about
variations on the Milgram study.
But it's really good to deepen their understanding
of it anyway, to ask them so what if?
And you've probably have done this when you've
discussed it.
When you discuss the Milgram study, say what
if there was a woman authority figure?
What if a female authority figure?
Or what if it was a female who was being shot,
allegedly being shot and screaming in the
other room?
How would these variables play out?
I think it can be good to systematically do
that.
I have a little write-up of just asking the
kids in an almost survey form would this increase
samples of obedience, decrease, or have no
effect.
Just that little activity after you've dealt
with it is a good also kind of a formative
assessment that tells you they really get
the Milgram study because they can't really
answer those questions unless they get the
basics of the original version.
And then you could follow-up with ... there
are charts in almost every textbook about
some of the variations and how if you didn't
... do you remember where it took place, for
instance, the Milgram obedience study?
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: [Unclear]
>>SULLIVAN: 1963.
It was in Yale.
And Milgram was, dare I say, shocked by his
findings.
He did not expect such high levels of obedience.
You probably know that.
That was a little pun I make sometimes in
class.
Anyway, and one of the things like, well,
maybe Yale stacked the deck.
I mean, it's Yale.
You think, come on, they must know what they're
doing.
Who am I?
They're Yale.
So he replicated it in a storefront next to
a tattoo parlor or something in Bridgeport,
Connecticut, I think in a tough neighborhood.
Have you seen it?
I've seen pictures of the building they used.
It really was like Venice tattoo parlor and
then pizza joint in this place, and obedience
did decrease I think to 48 percent.
In the original study, it was 65, 66 percent.
And there were many other variations like
that.
So you can ask them about that without telling
them about them, say what would it do if you
had it somewhere else, if we changed gender
and so on.
The kids, it tells you that they understand
it.
It's also interesting and it's a kind of critical
thinking activity.
Most everyone who teaches psych does the Milgram
study and maybe shows the video.
You don't have enough time probably to show
a 48-minute of video.
I know I don't and I don't want to do that
anyway.
But a little activity like that can really
help.
The other social psych idea I wanted to share
is something actually originally I saw a write-up
of it from Randy Smith who spoke to us in
the keynote.
It was a long time ago because I met him a
long time ago when he was at Ouachita Baptist
College.
He doesn't claim originality on it, but my
only source is that I saw a version of it
that he did and now I give you my version.
How many of you have seen this before?
You have.
Do you use it?
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: Previous.
I thought it was interesting.
Well, really, my most memorable moments in
my Psych 101 class, we did something very
similar.
But I don't think a lot of people liked it,
but they didn't rape [sounds like] actually
as opposed to being killed.
That's not in here, is it?
>>SULLIVAN: No.
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: So I also debated
about whether to do that with my students
because it's one of those things.
>>SULLIVAN: Without reading it, I'll just
explain.
There's one little caveat too.
I was going to do it with you.
It's a story involving a ferry boat.
A person is sneaking out at night.
Their spouse works nights and sneaks out at
night, takes a ferry to a little island and
does something.
There are a couple of variations that's why
I say that.
And then they get back home because they don't
want their spouse to know that they're doing
this thing.
They always get back home.
But then one night, they don't have the money
for the ferry.
They can't get home.
I'm really simplifying this.
They take a dangerous road to an alternative
ferry, but everybody knows don't take that
road.
Like you've heard Mr. Groover said this 19
times.
"Do not walk outside of this campus or you
will be dead."
I've gone to CVS with like three people and
they said, "I was thinking of walking, but
Greg said do not do that.
Do not walk."
Anyway, so it was that kind of road.
Everyone was like, "Hey, if you walk to CVS,
you ain't coming back basically."
So the word was out.
Don't take this road.
But they're desperate.
They take the road anyway and the bank robber...
no, not a bank robber.
They're not a bank.
A highwayman jumps out and accosts you.
There's a struggle.
You die.
And this is where my version is maybe different
from Randy's or others because you could do
very different versions to this.
There are several characters in this story
- I'm sorry I'm doing this so fast - and you
can assign blame points.
Who is most responsible for this person's
death?
You can either assign blame points or do just
a ranking who is most responsible, who's least
responsible and so on.
But the trick is, of course, as I always like
... I do about three demos like this where
you give them something and ask their opinion
but there's actually more than one version
out there.
I like that.
I just like that revelation part because you'll
then ask.
People will say, "Simone, what did you think?"
You said, "Well, I think he was crazy to take
that road.
I don't know why he did that."
And then someone else was like, "What are
you talking about him?
I thought it was a woman" because there's
actually four versions.
In one version, a man is sneaking out at night
while his wife works to have an affair.
He's sleeping with other women.
He sneaks back before she knows it.
In another condition, it's a female who is
sneaking out at night sleeping around on her
husband, and then she tries to get back home.
And then this would be terrible in an actual
experiment to have these intervening variables
sort of, but for a demo I think it's fine.
In another version, a man is sneaking out
at night to volunteer at a local hospital.
The kids don't really question that, but don't
they think of it like that's all he's doing.
"Because my wife doesn't like me volunteering
at a local hospital."
Another one they find more plausible which
also gets a gender schema [sounds like] is
a female, her old-fashioned husband, old fashioned,
like really old fashioned.
He says, "I don't want you working at all."
And he works nights.
"I'm volunteering at this hospital.
I don't care what he thinks.
I'll just get home before he gets home."
In each of these cases, there are other characters
in the story.
Will people attribute blame differently?
You can easily flow dispositional and situational
attributions, the fundamental attribution
error, maybe self-serving bias too.
Part of it is so you can really get into all
that.
It's not only social psychology in the social
cultural domain.
Attribution theory is a part of personality
theory.
It's a part of explanations, part of the cognitive
explanations for different disorders.
It certainly fits into treatment, too, so
it's an important concept.
It also can spiral back to if you've done
the Genovese case or other bystander effects
stuff, the idea of blaming the victim, the
just world phenomenon which also can tie in
this case to the pluralistic ignorance that's
in the diffusion of responsibility idea, the
bystander effect.
There was a case some of you may not know
of in Massachusetts.
Kids don't know this anymore.
The Big Dance case, do you know Big Dance?
You do.
Jay is from New Hampshire so he would know.
>>JAY: No.
He got caught.
>>SULLIVAN: It kind of made into a movie.
The Accused, Jodie Foster.
She focused more, fine, for dramatic effect,
too, on the woman which also the court case
did because the woman ended up being put on
trial.
But a woman was gang-raped on a pool table
in a bar that I've actually seen.
It's not a bar anymore.
>>JAY: The bystanders were cheering the rape.
>>SULLIVAN: Yeah.
Just like the Genovese case, there are still
conflicting facts about the case and some
of them have become part of what everyone
says, but people have questioned that.
In Big Dance, too, there were questions about
so many actually ... it was more than one
person raped her and people either cheered
or at least did nothing.
One person left the bar - this was before
cell phones - left the bar after it was over
and went down the street to a pay phone and
called someone after it was over.
It's really hard to imagine that you could
be in a bar and see someone being raped on
a pool table and explain it away to yourself,
the pluralistic ignorance idea.
Well, no one is doing anything.
It must be okay.
When we talk to kids, we're like how could
you tell yourself that?
But then you get a cognitive dissonance too.
The longer you don't do anything, the more
likely you are not to do anything because
you think I haven't done anything, so I guess
I shouldn't do anything.
If I do something, then I have to acknowledge
that I should have done something.
So it is a nasty trap.
>>JAY: [Unclear]
>>SULLIVAN: And that became a part in the
court case as women sadly in this room would
know even better than I would what was she
wearing, what were you doing there.
Other things quickly, she lived nearby.
She had children.
It was at night obviously.
She went down.
My understanding of the story, she needed
cigarettes.
This is in the days, I remember this, when
they'd have vending machines for cigarettes
in the bar.
She went down for cigarettes in the bar and
left her kids, asked her neighbor could you
just listen for the kids.
That came up late like, "What the hell are
you doing?
You left your kids.
You go down when you're dressed in this so
obviously you deserved to be raped on a pool
table."
Obviously, this is horrifying.
But if you've already done those when you
were in case studies, for instance, like I
usually with Genovese and Big Dance, to introduced
case studies in methodology, and you can float
all those terms.
Then when you do this in social psychology
you can spiral back to all the things you
did when you did Big Dance and Genovese case.
So I gave you all the versions of it.
One thing you might want to make, if you want
to do it, there are four versions of the story
in there.
But I wrote, for your benefit, version 1,
version 2, version 3, version 4.
Take that up because they all look the same
otherwise.
I usually just mix them up so that the sections
of the room will all have one because sometimes
kids start to hear things and catch on.
They look at the kid next to him like, what
the heck?
And they look at me like, no, it's the same
story.
What do we talk about?
So it can delay the drama some.
If you kind of go in clusters in the class
instead of each person is different, that's
just a little thing that I do.
You play with it on your own.
Okay, thank you.
>>PARK: While you were talking, which I love
all his creative ideas, I'm thinking, you
know, that seedy bar example, just change
it to a university campus and a fraternity
party.
Wouldn't that be an interesting scenario to
compare how they think about what's going
on upstairs and they're all partying and who
cares.
Do they do anything about it?
You know the number of rapes on campuses are
ridiculous.
I don't even want to give you the statistics.
So that's another scenario you could put in
there for discussion.
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: Or sorority house.
>>PARK: Or sorority house rather than the
fraternity house.
Isn't that interesting?
So lots of great ideas for what I believe
and I can definitely see that most of us in
this room believe: active learning.
We want active learning in our classrooms.
Okay?
So for the last 12 minutes, maybe not any
active learning, we're all tired, I'm sure.
But I did want to give you a couple of suggestions
on how you can talk about some new research
in your classroom and also a great area to
study at the end of the school year no matter
what class you have because certainly after
AP exams, you want things to do that the kids
are going to be interested in, and they need
something for two or three weeks depending
on your class schedule in your school year.
For your regular psych classes, it's the same
thing.
Something that they can relate to, something
that's new, something that's personal, and
something that also is important is to help
them understand what is the real science behind
all this research on happiness which some
people tend to lump into this category of
positive psychology when, in fact, it's not
just positive psychology.
There's a lot more than that.
It's been around for a lot longer than just
the short time period that we've seen it after
Seligman became president of the APA.
I mean, it's been around for a long time in
history all over the world, so this is multi-cultural.
You can use this in your history classes,
as well as your psychology classes and your
sociology classes.
I call it teaching the science of happiness.
Please don't think I'm trying to sell you
anything, because I'm not.
But this is a really great website.
It's funny that you mentioned Bridgeport because
the man who came up with this idea teaches
at the University of Bridgeport.
He is a professor of martial arts and eastern
religion, and he is an expert in Asian philosophy.
He is a philosopher.
I don't even know how I met him.
I can't remember.
Somehow I met him and we started talking about
how we could develop ideas for teaching about
the science and the history of happiness.
He had this original idea, and I said I'll
help you because I didn't know how to say
no.
Pursuit-of-happiness.org is a nonprofit organization.
He came up with this and got help from a psychiatrist
from Yale and another woman who is actually
phenomenal who knows how to do curriculum
development.
In fact, she was the one that worked on that
website I told you about on race.
She worked on that website.
They developed this website, and now on the
website are all kinds of resources and activities
that teachers can use to teach about the history
and the science of happiness going back to
the ancient Greeks and really comparing what
they knew about it then to what our psychologists
are learning about it today.
So it's just full of great resources.
Health classes can definitely incorporate
this curriculum.
We study about stress and exercise and a lot
of issues.
What are the correlates of happiness?
If you really break it down, what do we really
know about the science of happiness?
What are the correlates that we have found
that do relate to happiness all over the world,
in cultures all over the world just like the
Blue Zone study?
You know, how can you identify these things
that are in common and across time from the
Greek, ancient times to today, the 21st century.
So on this website there's all kinds of information.
This is just an example of a couple of the
pages that deal with exercises.
It's one of the very important correlates
to the science of happiness.
There are ideas on the website on how you
can incorporate this into your curriculum.
For example, I did this part.
It talks about like if you're teaching high
school and you have an elective, how can you
incorporate this into your high school class?
If you have 18 weeks, 9 weeks, whatever, 2
weeks, what can you do?
Can you use it to study motivation?
There's a lot of great resources on here which
I'll really quickly show you that relate to
the studies on motivation, and happiness,
and optimism and all that we teach in our
curriculum in both the high school intro and
AP classes.
There are pages on all these famous psychologists.
Abraham Maslow, of course, is one of them.
There are readings.
There are links to other sites that relates
to Maslow and his studies on motivation and
this whole hierarchy of needs.
There's information about an activity that
you can do in class.
So, for example, happiness through purpose
which is a very important concept related
to happiness.
Do you have a purpose in life?
Remember again the video: Why Do you Wake
up in the Morning?
Isn't that a purpose for the blue zones?
So students can explore different ways of
increasing happiness through having a sense
of purpose, and here's an example of a real
simple activity that you can do.
There are a lot of topics that are listed
on the website.
They can look at the related readings, the
activities.
They can report on it; they can blog on it.
If you have a Wiki, they can do stuff on your
Wiki.
They can talk in small groups.
They can present their findings.
There are lot of different very simple activities
that actually can be started in class.
They can work on them on their own, and then
maybe one day in class they can present.
So it's not like you have to spend days and
weeks on this.
You decide how long you want to take to do
a single exercise or two, or if you want to
spend a week on it.
Certainly, with humanistic theory and motivation,
if you still teach that, there's information
on there that you can incorporate into your
psych class.
This is the page on the history of happiness
and all these pages have been updated, so
when you go to the website, it looks really
different.
It's really cool.
I'll show you.
But you can see the various pictures of the
people there.
If you click on their photos, it brings up
their link and it talks about their studies
from their time period and what they learned.
These are mostly philosophers as well as scientists
and psychologists.
You might recognize a few of their faces.
I found this video that we have linked, I
believe, to the website now.
But it's the interview with the expert.
That's something that we thought would be
a great idea for teachers to use.
Instead of just reading about the people,
they find the videos where they listen to
the expert talk.
I never saw this video that Frankl did.
I love Frankl.
The book that he wrote, Dr. Frankl, Man's
Search for Meaning was the book that I remember
reading and was most significant in my life
in college.
I did do a presentation on logotherapy, but
it wasn't the logotherapy part that really
impressed me so much.
But when I think about how I can use that
in my classroom and discuss it with the students
in a lot of different areas of my psychology
class, I thought that was a great thing to
put in there and, of course, it relates to
sense of purpose.
There are activities and ideas on optimism.
I tried to put on there things like essential
questions, pre-reading assignments.
I already put this on the Wiki, so you'll
have this whole PowerPoint, discussion topics
that you can use with your students specific
to some of these concepts and activities.
So there are a number of different things
that you can do with your kids.
There are links, for example, to other websites
like Authentic Happiness.
If you've never been to that website, it's
phenomenal.
It's from the University of Pennsylvania.
And, of course, it was the website developed
by Mr. Seligman.
It's a fantastic website with all these questionnaires
that you can upload and have your students
look at and become a part of.
So it's like awesome for getting all these
questionnaires and engagement activities for
your kids.
So that's something I suggest that you take
a look at.
And, again, other practical assignments that
the kids can actually do like maybe little
experiments and activities that they can report
on in journals if you don't have time to discuss
them in class.
So, there's a lot of ideas on here that, again,
you can look at and you can do whatever you
want with.
But I do highly suggest that you check out
these individual psychologist experts' websites.
Diener on happiness talks about subjective
well-being, which is a very important correlation
to happiness all over the world.
There are links to Diener on the website,
which is called the Pursuit-of-Happiness as
you can see.
There are other links on here that relate
back to happiness.
In fact, on the Wiki that I've been telling
you about, I've had this page on there forever.
But on the Wiki, I have a page that relates
to like what I gave my students to do using
the websites when we first developed it.
It's just a real simple activity page.
So do this, do that, read a couple of ideas,
go to this center, look at this.
This is the unit plan, by the way, that Amy
wrote most of for positive psychology for
TOPPS.
The whole unit plan is accessible on the TOPPS
website.
But there are also links to parts of it on
the UPenn website, so you can actually see
some of the outlines of how to use this in
your classroom if you want to teach positive
psychology.
Amy Fineburg was pretty much the main author
of that particular unit plan for TOPPS.
These are the kind of things that I think
our students would benefit from doing in our
classroom.
We can relate it to them in so many different
ways if there's interest.
You know how they are.
They're egotistic.
They want to talk about themselves.
They want to learn about themselves.
They want to share their ideas.
I also believe that understanding more about
happiness helps them to understand themselves
better.
I do think that if you want to get some ideas
on how professors teach about this, we have
permission to put Haidt's syllabus on here
that he teaches a course called Flourishing.
So you can look at his syllabus and another
syllabus on here from another school, Louisiana,
another course that teaches the correlation
between ancient and modern ideas, which I
find fascinating.
I love philosophy, and I think psychology
has so much philosophy in it.
Of course, we all know the history of how
it really is related so to bring these two
related in your classroom, if it's at all
possible, I think is really, really cool.
The BBC has websites that you can go to with
great resources on the science of happiness.
Daniel Gilbert, of course an expert in the
field, was the keynote speaker at the APA
Convention and his article on the Monitor
is here.
That's the APA magazine, the Monitor, so you
can read what he has to say on happiness.
The APA, of course, Internet resources.
Join TOPPS.
What can I say?
Join TOPPS because you would get all these
references if you join TOPPS.
Again, it will be worth your while and your
time to go through these references and spend
a week or two just realizing how much is here
for you to use in your classroom next year.
During the course of this summer, I really
think it will be useful to you to do that.
There are articles in the Monitor on bio-psych
that relates to happiness, how they are looking
at the FMRI and how they're learning about
what the philosophers talk about and how there
is a link to the brain with the way they discuss
things that people were thinking and philosophizing.
And human morality, like you were just giving
a great example of the moral dilemma exercise.
I mean, this all relates to so many different
things in psychology.
It's amazing.
I'm just going to tell you to look at this
if you have time.
It's on the Wiki already, along with the other
things.
There's lesson plan templates I was going
to show you, how it relates to the standards
which I was going to show you.
And if you're interested ... oh, this cute
little bunny.
What do you think, should we get started or
not?
Are you motivated?
Really, are you motivated to go back and start
thinking about your classrooms?
Because I am, I learned a lot here myself.
I'm motivated [laughs].
There's a professional development.
You can go free.
This is a two-week course.
I didn't want to show you that, I'm sorry.
But there's a professional development opportunity
for you to participate on the website.
You can take one-hour seminars.
There's one coming up in August.
It's free.
All you have to do is to have a phone and
a computer in front of you.
There are seminars that are coming up.
We try to do one every couple of months.
So this is Mark from University of Bridgeport.
This is Paul from Yale, and that's Allison,
and that's me.
Mark and Paul do most of the seminars.
I usually chime in on things, too, as well
as like how you can use this on your classroom.
But this is called the Happiness 101 Webinar.
So if you go to the website and you look up
Happiness 101 Webinar, you can see how just
to sign-up for it.
It's free.
It's a cool hour of discussion.
You can learn all about those correlates that
I was telling you about that are so important
to understanding the history and the science
of happiness on this website.
That's probably all I have time for because
I know Kurt is going to pull the cane around
my neck.
But there's the new website right there.
[Applause]
