LOOK AT THE ATTACHMENTS.
Emotions Project
Cognitive Psychologists use systematic observations, models, and theories. In this project, you’re going to use systematic observations and models to test a strategy for regulating emotions.
We’ve been learning about Attention, Memory, Categorization, and Judgment, but we’ve been learning about them separately. They’re not separate. Whenever we do anything, we’re choosing what to pay attention to, using information from memory, categorizing stimuli, learning new information, and making judgments. For this project, you’re going to try one of the strategies that we’ve learned about emotions. As a reminder, here’s what we’ve learned (instructions for each are in the Emotion Strategies document on Blackboard):
Categorization: Reappraisal, Emotional Granularity
Memory: Self-Distancing, Reminiscing, Reappraisal
Attention: Dropping Anchor, Experiential Savoring, 5-4-3-2-1
Judgment: Cognitive Restructuring, Cognitive Defusion (Silly Voices, Playing with Text, Musical Thoughts), Noticing What’s Not Wrong
For this project, you’re going to
1. try a strategy for at least three days
2. use your observations to come up with a model of how the strategy works
3. reflect on what worked and what didn’t
4. connect your model and experience to concepts and principles from class
There are three parts to this assignment:
Step 1: Choose a strategy
· Choose a strategy to try for at least three days
· Write out a plan for that describes the specific steps you will take (e.g., use version 2 of self-distancing one a night before bed for three days)
· Come up with a plan for how to log observations of your strategy. For example, if you’re doing 5-4-3-2-1, you might rate your stress before and after, or write a journal entry about how you felt before and after.
Step 2: Try your strategy at least three times to get multiple observations. Log your observations (and submit your logs)
Step 3: Create a model of your strategy
· Based on your observations, come up with a model that describes how your strategy works step-by-step. Explain the model and illustrate it using specific examples from your experience.
· Explain how your strategy works using four concepts from at least two different units
o Define each concept
o Explain how it applies to your model
Part 3: Analyze the experience
· Describe how the strategy went. Here are some questions to consider:
o Did it help? Why or why not?
o Did the strategy work as planned? Did anything unexpected happen?
o Did you encounter any barriers to using the strategy?
· Connect three concepts from at least two different units to your experience
o Define each concept
o Explain how it applied to your experience
Part 4: Plan for the future
· How might you improve your plan? Take into account specific barriers that you encountered and come up with an idea to cope with them.
· Connect your plan to one concept.
o Define the concept
o Explain how it applies to your plan
Integrate Principles
Make sure to bring in two principles and explain how they connect to your concepts and topic (e.g., your strategy, your experiences). You can put these anywhere in your project.
Guidelines
You need at least 8 unique concepts, with at least three units represented. The units are What is Cognitive Psychology?, Categorization, Memory, Attention, and Judgment. See the list in the attachment “concepts”. These concepts must be Cognitive rather than Emotions.
Use concepts to explain how/why things work, not label. For example, if I’m writing about forming a habit of checking my mail regularly (something we’re bad at in my house), it’s not useful to say, “I need to store the goal of checking my mail in long-term memory.” Here, all I’m doing is labeling what memory system is being used to remember to check mail. It’s obvious that we need to remember something, and it’s unclear how stating this will help people remember to do it. Instead, I might say something like, “One reason why I often forget to check my mail is that we place the mail on a desk near the front door, in a room we don’t use very much. As a result, I have inattentional blindness for checking the mail. Inattentional blindness is the tendency to miss what we’re not paying attention to. Since we don’t use the desk, I hardly pay attention to it; it’s in the background, so I fail to notice the growing stack of mail on the desk.” Here, the concept of inattentional blindness explains why we don’t check the mail, and in doing so opens the path to potential solutions, such as putting the mail in a more salient location or providing strategies to get me to pay attention to the desk.
Integrating Principles: You can use principles anywhere in your assignment. Just make sure you quote it and explain how it connects to your habit or experience, and also to a concept. PRINCIPLES ARE IN THE ATTACHMENT “PRINCIPLES”.
Provide Specific Examples from Your Experience: Try it out and reference what really happened. Talk about the day you planned to go to the gym but went to hang out with friends instead, or the day you forgot entirely and didn’t realize it until the next day. This is why it is important to write notes over the few days that you try out your habit.
Format: I want you to practice skills that you might use in the future. True, you will likely write in Microsoft Word or Pages, but you do that a lot in other classes. You need opportunities to develop other skills. Any assignment submitted in an alternative format can earn up to 10 bonus points (depending on how well it is done; just putting a bunch of text in PowerPoint slides won’t earn points, but useful images, animation, and/or voiceover will earn more points). Here are some alternatives to Word and Pages:
1. Create a slideshow with voiceover recordings
2. Create an infographic
3. Create a website using Google Sites
Grading
Describe Strategy (40 points)
· Describe habit and rationale for starting, changing, or eliminating it
· Has a model with boxes and arrows that describes the psychological and behavioral processes involved in the strategy.
o Explains model in words with examples from log/experience to illustrate
· Use four concepts from at least two different units to explain how the strategy works:
o Each concept is accurately defined
o You explain how each concept applies to your strategy/model
Analyze Experience (30 points)
· Provides a log successes and failures
· References things that really happened, talking about what went well, what happened that was unexpected, barriers, and/or things that could be improved
· Use three concepts from at least two different units to explain your experience:
o Each concept is accurately defined
o You explain how each concept applies to your strategy/model
Plan for the Future (10 points)
· Briefly describes a plan to keep using the strategy in the future that addresses issues you encountered or that help improve the strategy based on your experience.
· Connects the strategy to one concept
o Defines concept
o Explains how concept connects to strategy
Principles (10)
o Explain how two principles connect to habit, plan, and/or experience
Presentation (10)
o Project is clear and well-organized.
o The project looks appealing (e.g., formatting, color schemes, etc.)
o Includes at least 8 unique concepts, with at least three units represented.
Bonus points for using an alternative format (more points for effective use of format)
