Details: In-class experiment
Course: Biological Psychology
In this course, students are expected to learn about the biological basis of human behaviors and to understand the research techniques that are used in Biological Psychology. In one of the lessons, students are invited to conduct an experiment on themselves. The experiment was designed based on a study published on the scientific journal, Science (Willaims and Bargh 2008). The study aims to demonstrate the concept of emotion embodiment that our emotion can be altered by the physical status of the body. In the class experiment, half of the students were given a cup of hot water while the other half was given a cup of cold water. Then, they were all given the same neutral description of a person (Person A) and were asked to rate the personality of that person using a 7-point likert scale. Without knowing the rationale of the experiment beforehand, students who held a cup of hot water rated Person A as a warmer person than the students who held a cup of cold water. Although the difference was not statistical significance due to the small sample size, students got a sense about the effect of how physical warmth can promote interpersonal warmth and how a biological psychology experiment can be conducted with simple manipulations.
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