week 4

So I'm a little late with my week four blog. But I have made up for it by making lots of progress on my presentation! I'm finishing up creating my presentation and am working on what I will say for the presentation. I learned a lot more about my about my project as well. Specifically about how we can correct ourselves from falling victim to biases. I learned of a couple different ways. I'll save the details for my presentation. By my next blog post I hope to have some video clips picked out to show you guys.

week 3

While I was putting together my project last weekend. I started to think more about why we have these cognitive biases and where they came from. After some reading and watching more videos than I probably needed to. I found that the source of these biases are our ancestors, and that they are formed by evolution. They are ingrained within our sub consciousness. They were developed as a shortcut to making decisions. There are many of these biases that I think are important we know about and understand. Because in addition to helping us out in making good decisions they can also cloud or thought. Hopefully I can find some interesting ways to teach and in cooperate these idea into my lesson.

Week 2

Week 2

My project is very slowly coming together. I am straightening out exactly what my presentation will consist of. I have picked out the specific biases that I will learn more about and present to the class. This week was the beginning of that process. This is difficult because I haven't found any other lesson plans or models to teach my chosen biases. So the challenge lies in finding a way to present this information, and still have everyone wake and not sleeping by the time I am done. Believe me when I say this information is useful and interesting, but it all comes down to whether I can convince my audience that.

The logical fallacies that we have been taken notes on are very similar to my chosen biases. It has made me take a step back and think about why we are subject to these biases or don't see these errors in logic. It has made me think about a whole different topic within my genius hour that I can hopefully find a way to tie into my presentation.

So far the easiest part of this project is seeing these biases play out in real life situations. I am now starting to see things and predict patterns in people's behavior solely based on my knowledge of the mind's tendency to fall victim to these biases. I now get why so many choose to study psychology in college.

Week 1

Week 1

My Genius hour is on the psychological biases and how they affect decisions making within our daily lives. I was initially inspired to do my Genius Hour on this subject because I've always been curious about psychology, but I wanted to study something that was applicable to my life.

And since I have decided on this topic, I have been finding how biases show themselves every day. Today I was having lunch with my dad when two older gentlemen and a middle aged woman walk into the restaurant. My dad mentioned that one of them was the mayor of Broadus. I told him both men seemed a little old to be the mayor. It didn't even occur to me that the mayor could be the woman. I caught myself assuming that the it had to be a man in the position of power or control, which is a bias.

This isn't some little niche of Psychology either. There are hundreds if not thousands of theses biases; and whether or not you realize it, these biases affect what you do everyday.

So as I jumped in head first to explore this world of shrouded decision making, I found myself in over my head with information. My goal is to learn something and create a presentation that is informative and enjoyable. Finding enough information is not the problem, rather finding interesting and useful information to teach is.

I started my progress by extracting biases that I found interesting and that applied to myself or my peers in this class. Then Started the brainstorming of how I could teach some of these concepts in an entertaining manner. I definitely have my work cut out for me. I also have a new found appreciation for those that write new teaching material.