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.