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Students often have little understanding of the role psychological science plays in informing us about the impact of human behavior when addressing climate change. We designed an assignment for a social psychology course based on Frantz and Mayer's use of the decision tree model of helping behavior to identify the psychological barriers that reduce the likelihood that people will take action against climate change. Students identified one barrier and designed a persuasion or influence attempt to address that barrier. The assignment integrated social psychological topics in several areas (e.g., helping behavior, persuasion). A pretest-posttest design revealed that students' knowledge of the role of psychological science in understanding climate change increased compared to a control class.

This study tested the effectiveness of video game use for instruction of factorial designs in a research methods course. Students designed and conducted a mini study, playing "Dance, Dance, Revolution", using video game scores as the dependent variable. A mixed-design analysis of variance revealed a significantly greater increase from pretest to posttest in content knowledge in the Wii activity condition compared to lecture-only and no-content control conditions. Implementing this nontraditional teaching method engaged students and increased knowledge of factorial designs in a research method course. (Contains 1 table, 1 figure and 1 note.)

Describes a classroom demonstration that uses daily horoscopes to show the effect that expectation can have on judgment. Addresses the preparation, procedure, and results of the demonstration, and student evaluations. States that the demonstration appears to be effective for teaching students about expectancy confirmation. (CMK)