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Transforming Our Lives through Self Reflection and Psychology
A psychology professor's collection of lessons fostering self-discovery through online activities, hands-on classroom experiences, engaging lectures, and effective discussion prompts.
Kind of Psychology Teaching Resource
Self-Reflection Online Activities
Psychology concepts and individual differences demonstrated with instant feedback and essays explaining your results.
Psychology journals, to me, are kinda' like teen magazines and BuzzFeed. Like you would read an article in Teen Vogue and you have to do the quiz, obviously. So when I began studying Psychology and reading journal articles, the first thing I would do is complete any measures included. They gave me a lot to think about. Actually, I still do them and they still help me understand the psychology and myself. I hope they help you too! And in case you're exploring on your own, not in a class with a teacher, I wrote explanations to help.
On Becoming Real
it hurts sometimes
“
“What is real?" asked the Velveteen Rabbit. Does it mean having things buzz inside you and a stick-out handle? "Real isn't how you’re made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you." "Does it hurt?" "Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. When you are real you don't mind being hurt. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.
Building Blocks of the Mind
Being with Uneasy Feelings about Our Activity Results
How to processing our activity results. Remember they're limited, there's error, and it can be worth considering what our feelings are telling us if we don't like results.
Power and Limits of Our Memory
How powerful is human memory? What are its limitations? How much attention do we have to be paying to remember something? | Psychology Key Concepts: Short Term Memory; Working Memory; False Memory; Retroactive Interference [start the activity!]
Are You Left-Brained or Right-Brained, or Maybe Not?
Do people, like you, have a right-brain or left-brain personality? Do brains have a left and right side? Does one of these sides have more control, like how we're left or right handed? Key Concepts: Neural Hemispheric Lateralization; Hemispheric Dominance; Handedness; Psychology Myth [start the activity!]
Why Doesn’t Everyone Respond the Same Way to the Same Stimuli?
Everyone is motivated by contingencies, like reinforcement and punishment. But why doesn’t everyone respond the same way when experiencing the same kind of conditioning? | Psychology Key Concepts: Sensitivity to Reinforcement; Sensitivity to Punishment; Behaviorism [start the activity!]
States of Consciousness
Are You Fully Present in the Moment?
Are you fully present in this very moment, attending to exactly what you're doing, aware of thoughts, feelings, and sensations inside you and aware of your body in the world around you? | Psychology Key Concepts: Mindfulness; Awareness; States of Consciousness [start the activity!]
How Sleep-Deprived Are You? Does it Really Matter?
Reflect on how much sleep you're getting and see how it impacts your attention and memory abilities. | Psychology Key Concepts: Sleep Loss; Sleep Deprivation; Sleep Hygiene; Attention; Memory
How Easily Could You be Hypnotized?
Learn how you experience hypnosis and if you can be hypnotized more or less easily than others. | Psychology Key Concepts: Hypnosis; Altered State of Consciousness; Tellegen Alternative
How Easily Can You Get in the Zone?
Have you ever been "in the zone," a state where you're so absorbed and energized by what you're doing, you lose track of time and just enjoy the flow through the activity to completion? | Psychology Key Concepts: Flow; States of Consciousness [start the activity!]
Emotions and Motivation
Emotions in People’s Faces and Efforts to Conceal what They Feel
What emotions are on people's faces? Can people conceal emotions on their faces? Does another persons ages, gender, and ethnicity impact how you read emotion? | Psychology Key Concepts: Basic Emotions; Facial Processing [start the activity!]
Are Eyes Windows to the Soul?
What emotions do we see in people's eyes? What does your ability say about how emotions and understanding how mental states work? | Psychology Key Concepts: Emotion; Theory of Mind; Mental States; Autism Spectrum [start the activity!]
Understanding and Predicting Emotions
How well can we predict what another person will feel in a particular situation? How we can we predict how long different emotions last? | Psychology Key Concepts: Affective Forecasting | Emotion | Emotional Intelligence
What Drives Us? From the Inside and Outside
What drives us toward achieving our goals? No matter what our goals may be, it's hard work - completing a degree, quitting smoking, losing weight, or getting a promotion. Where does our motivation comes from? | Psychology Key Concepts: Intrinsic Motivation; Extrinsic Motivation [start the activity!]
Kinds of Intelligence
Puzzles that May – or May Not – Tap Intelligence
What exactly is intelligence? Is it real? Can we measure it? How do our feelings about groups we're a part of impact our results? | Psychology Key Concepts: Intelligence; IQ; Stereotype Threat [start the activity!]
Are You a Fish Trying to Climb like a Monkey?
Imagine you’d like to know how capable all the animals of the forest are, so you devise an ability test – how well you climb trees. Monkey’s excel! But fish flounder. Maybe intelligence is really many different talents? | Psychology Key Concepts: Multiple Intelligences; Intelligence; Talents [start the activity!]
Do You Think like an Adult about Hypotheticals?
How does our thinking about hypothetical abstract situations adapt as we grow from childhood, into adolescence, and adulthood? Which of Jean Piaget's stages describes your thinking? | Psychology Key Concepts: Formal Operations; Concrete Operations; Piagetian; Hypothetical-Deductive Reasoning [start the activity!]
Success Beyond Intelligence
How We Construe Things Matters for Our Success?
There's more to success than intelligence and personality traits like conscientiousness. How we understand our experiences and our orientation toward success and failure matters too. | Psychology Key Concepts: Locus of Control; Self-Efficacy; Growth Mindset; Fixed Mindset [start the activity!]
How Much Do We Like to Think?
Do you care to be curious? How much do you like to think deeply, or maybe you just like to be spontaneous. How much do you reflect while solving problems? | Psychology Key Concepts: Need for Cognition; Cognitive Reflection [start the activity!]
Is the Unexamined Life not Worth Living?
What is wisdom? If we examine life, or anything, how do we decide what's true? These are big questions and, possibly, part of our development into adulthood. | Psychology Key Concepts: Wisdom; Wise Personality; Perry's Stages; Post-Formal Operational Thought [start the activity!]
Is a Science of Creativity Even Possible?
Everybody's unique and if any aspect of humanity feels impossible to quantify, it's creativity. Let's try four distinct ways Psychology approaches creativity. | Psychology Key Concepts: Creativity; Eminent Creativity; Creative Personality; Divergent Thinking; Creative Activities [start the activity!]
Liking & Relationships
Why Do We Like Some Paintings but Not Others?
Why do we like what we like, and dislike what we dislike? Tastes in people, music, and art vary. To understanding liking, lets rate some paintings. | Psychology Key Concepts: Familiarity Effect; Mere Exposure Effect; Art Appreciation [start the activity!]
How Much Do We Need People and Why?
Everybody needs relationships - affiliations. Being human means we especially need affiliation when we feel threatened. But individuals vary widely in how much we need relationships and our motivations for them. | Psychology Key Concepts: Need for Affiliation; Interpersonal Relationships [start the activity!]
Love, True Love
Possibly the most ubiquitous theme in all of human history, across every culture, is love. Pervading novels from before Penelope in the Odyssey and Plato’s Myth of Aristophanes, and pervading music, poetry, art, and life. How do we understand love and do cultures vary? | Psychology Key Concepts: Romanticism; Romantic Love; Folk Psychology [start the activity!]
Do You Gossip? Is that Really so Bad?
How much of a gossip are you? What motivates our gossip? Does it maybe serve a purpose?
Psychology Key Concepts: Gossip; Gender Stereotypes; Intersubjectivity
Psychology Key Concepts: Gossip; Gender Stereotypes; Intersubjectivity
Identity and Self-Concept
Who Am I? How I Fit in the World?
Some people seem to be born with a clear sense of who they are. Others struggle to figure out our identities. Still others just don't care so much about the roles they could play. Where are you in finding your identity? Psychology Key Concepts: Identity Status; Identity State; Moratorium; Foreclosure [start the activity!]
How Do We Present Ourselves to Others?
How much do we pay attention to what people around us do or think? Why do some people want to know what others are wearing to an upcoming event, and others don't even think to ask? | Psychology Key Concepts: Self-Monitoring; Self-Presentation [start the activity!]
“Best Time of Your Life?” Teenage Self-Concept
In some ways, teens are still like children, and adults, but somehow psychologically different. Where are you along our journey from childhood into adulthood in our struggle for a self-concept. | Psychology Key Concepts: Personal Fable; Imaginary Audience; Adolescent Angst; Self Concept [start the activity!]
How Do We Understand Who We Are?
Who are you? How do you understand who you are? Do individuals and cultures vary in how they respond to, “tell me about yourself?” | Psychology Key Concepts: Interdependent Self-Concept; Independent Self-Concept; Collectivism; Individualism [start the activity!]
Personality Traits
Jungian Sixteen Personality Types
Carl Jung speculated about the structure of personality and many people have created inventories cataloging personality types. Classify yourself into one of sixteen types and explore how much this approach is scientifically valid. | Psychology Key Concepts: Personality Traits; Personality Type; Temperament [start the activity!]
Big Five Personality Traits with Thirty Facets
The most scientifically-validated and nuanced way Psychology describes personality. Your results include five big dimensions of personality and six subtle facets of each. Please note, an especially long activity. | Psychology Key Concepts: Big Five Personality Traits; Five Factor Model; Lexical Hypothesis [start the activity!]
Personality in Our Story-Telling
Tell a story about some drawings I'll show you. Even if it's not so valid, experiencing a projective personality test can be fun. | Psychology Key Concepts: Projective Personality Test; Freud; Thematic Apperception Test; Rorshach Ink Blots [start the activity!]
Different Kinds of People
Have Gender Expectations Changed since the 70’s?
Are you a girly girl, sensitive new age guy, macho man, or tomboy? That feels limiting. How should we think about masculinity and femininity? Are they opposites? Could we be both? | Psychology Key Concepts: Bem Sex Role Inventory; BSRI; Androgyny; Femininity; Masculinity [start the activity!]
Gifts for Our Children – Roots & Wings
Finally, our chance to blame everything 'wrong' with us on our parents! Not really. But parenting styles matter. Examine the parenting style of one of your caregivers or examine your own parenting style with your children. | Psychology Key Concepts: Parenting Style; Authoritarian; Authoritative; Permissive [start the activity!]
Thinking about the World
What Do You and Others Think?
How do we think and feel about various issues: fantastical hypothetical, celebrities, growing up, and politics. How do other people think and feel about the same issues? How do our own thoughts and feelings compare with our impressions of other people's thoughts and feelings. | Psychology Key Concepts: False Consensus Effect; Social Cognitive Bias [start the activity!]
What is this Person Like? Let’s Bake a Cake!
How do you seek out information on a topic? Are there common ways people gather information? You'll consider how you might understand somebody's personality and you'll try a new cooking recipe. | Psychology Key Concepts: Confirmation Bias; Social Cognitive Bias [start the activity!]
Linda and the Conjunction Fallacy
After reading a classic paragraph about Linda, estimate some chances about her. How accurately and statistical sensible are our probability estimates? | Psychology Key Concepts: Conjunction Fallacy; Folk Statistics; Social Cognition; Stereotype [start the activity!]
Interpret Stories of Death and Responsibility
How do we decide who is to blame when bad things happen? Read two short vignettes and assign a percent of responsibility to each character. | Psychology Key Concepts: Just World Hypothesis; Blame the Victim; Attribution [start the activity!]
How Do We See Fairness in Life?
What is the world like? How does history and your life unfold? People have a wide range of perspectives and here we'll learn where we fall on in our understanding of fairness in the world. | Psychology Key Concepts: Just World Hypothesis; Attribution [start the activity!]
Dispositions towards Others
Why were People Okay with Nazis?
Do people just have attitudes toward people and issues of the day, or is there a deeper personality driving people's mindset toward freedom and restriction? In the wake of the Holocaust, social and personality began exploring what kind of person would be okay with Nazis? | Psychology Key Concepts: Authoritarianism; Fascism; F-Scale; Theodor Adorno [start the activity!]
Personality & Politics of Freedom and Restraint
People long for liberal democracy, but somehow find totalitarianism appealing too? Why would Hitler and Stalin emerge with enthusiastic support? Are people on the right wing and left wing similarly susceptible? | Psychology Key Concepts: Right Wing Authoritarianism; Left Wing Authoritarianism [start the activity!]
Frustration & Aggression, Individual & Cultural Differences
Eventually everyone can be frustrated enough to become aggressive. But some people are more likely to become aggressive than others. What about different kinds of aggression? | Psychology Key Concepts: Culture of Honor; Hostile Attribution Bias; Stable Individual Differences [start the activity!]
Who is it Okay to Feel Negatively Toward?
All of us have to quickly size up situations. Knowing the groups somebody fits can help us decide who is worth our time. Sometimes we think about a kind of person as mostly the same and maybe not as good as other kinds of people. Let's learn something about who we feel it's more or less okay to treat differently. | Psychology Key Concepts: Prejudice; Stereotyping; Discrimination [start the activity!]
Morality
Thinking through Morally Challenging Dilemmas
What are ways people reason through morally challenging situations. Let's wrestle with two moral dilemmas inspired by the developmental psychology of Lawrence Kohlberg | Psychology Key Concepts: Kohlberg's Moral Stages; Post-Conventional Morality; Heinz Dilemma [start the activity!]
Empathy, Altruism, and Ethics of Care
How do we feel about morality? Do empathy, perspective-taking, and caring matter? | Psychology Key Concepts: Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis; Carol Gilligan Ethics of Care. [start the activity!]
What’s Fair Divvying Costs and Benefits?
What is a fair when dividing benefits and costs among people? Do all of us agree about fairness, or do individuals or cultures vary? | Psychology Key Concepts: Distributive Justice; Social Justice; Equality; Equity; Merit; Need [start the activity!]
What Intuitions do We Build Our Morality upon?
People have underlying intuitions, gut reactions, or instincts for what is right and wrong. But does everybody share these foundation of their morality? | Psychology Key Concepts: Moral Foundations; Jonathan Haidt; Purity; Obedience; In-Group Loyalty [start the activity!]
Umbrella View of Activities
Orientation to Copernican Revolution Activities
Let's practice Copernican Revolution activities, get our certificate, verification code, and turn it in. Making sure it makes sense with a quickly done activity before doing longer ones | Psychology Key Concepts: Theory of Mind; Folk Psychology; Practice [start the activity!]
How Do You Already Think about Psychology?
Before you start learning about Psychology, your teacher may like to know how you already think about topics and compare when you finish your class. | Psychology Key Concepts: Psychology; Pre-test [start the activity!]
Your Thinking about Psychology and Our Class Now?
Psychology teachers, like me, like to understand how our students’ thinking about Psychology changes as we go through our classes. Here's is a post-test of your understanding of Psychology so you can see your growth while you have been learning about the field. | Psychology Key Concepts: Psychology; Post-Test [start the activity!]
Terms of Service and Consent
Though not legally research with human participants, similar principles apply. Risks do not exceed those of everyday life. Using our services constitute agreement with our Terms of Service and Consent.
Being with Uneasy Feelings about Our Activity Results
How to processing our activity results. Remember they're limited, there's error, and it can be worth considering what our feelings are telling us if we don't like a results.
Notes for Teachers, with legend:
Please have alternative ways to earn credits. I complete each activity myself and share my results with my students, modelling self-reflection and starting discussion. I hope you will too. Some activities might leave students feeling anxious about their results and I note especially sensitive activities with a blue heart (💙).. Some activities are are so sensitive I wouldn't assign, but I create because they can be so helpful (e.g., mental health screeners).. Most activities measure individual differences (📈) of traits, abilities, attitudes, and beyond. Some demonstrate psychology concepts in action (🎨). I hope some online activities help you!