Reflection

Week 14: Social Psychology and The Sustainable Future

This was one of my favorite projects to complete because I had full control over how I

wanted to structure and present the information. I am a very indecisive person, but I liked how

we had three chapters we could choose from. I was very interested in the environmental aspect of

social psychology. I learned that social psychologists can play an important role in creating

sustainable futures because they can analyze people’s behaviors, beliefs, and attitudes about

climate change. This will help climate scientists and others understand why people still do not

accept climate change. They can break up why there is a division among people about the topic

of climate change. It also taught me that climate can affect the way people behave. It introduced

many ways to reduce consumption and to have intrinsic values over extrinsic values.

I had a lot of experience from past projects. I wanted to present Chapter 16 with a

persuasive technique. I was stuck between making a persuasive announcement or a flyer. I

created a flyer because I like constructing expressive and informative flyers. I interviewed five of

my friends for this project. I repeated and explained the questions about intrinsic and extrinsic

values to each of the interviewees. This helped me process the information and maintain the

information for a longer period. In the second part of my project, I created a five misconceptions

slide. I realized that there is a lot of myths about climate change and I wanted to clear them up.

In the process, I learned how to make counterarguments and look from both perspectives of the

idea. This project helped me understand why some people thought the way they do. This type of

information is useful in other classes because you can understand the other side’s perspective

which will reshape how you communicate with them.

This project incorporated terms from other chapters which almost made this project feel

like the bow that wrapped up the whole class. It’s important to use the cumulative knowledge
you built in the class to make new material make sense. If I were to read the chapter without

prior knowledge, it would be harder to make the connections.

At the end of the project, I incorporated my reflection. In my reflection, I connected the

concepts from the chapter to the community. I have realized that my learning process improves

and I retain information more when I can connect the terminology to the world. I can grasp the

material better and longer. This technique can be used in a lot of my courses and other project-

based courses. It’s a skill to connect the information to examples we see every day.

The feedback I received for this project encouraged me. I put a lot of thought into this

project and I gave myself time to do each individual part of the project. Since the feedback was

positive, this shows that when I put my mind into the work and construct the project in my

vision, I do better and I retain the information. I will use the techniques I learned from this

project and apply them to future projects in other courses. I think it’s important for classes to

incorporate more of these projects in lecture courses so that students can be examined on more

than just test grades and assignments.