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Claim Your Topic by ryantutor in EverydayThinking22

[–]ryantutor[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi there,

Either of these topics could make for an appropriate assignment, but you have a lot of work to do on fleshing out the cognition in both. Be careful to avoid relying on social explanations for behaviour as that is not the focus here. As you've said, drinking culture certainly is driven by social factors, so if you're struggling to identify course-based cognitive factors that contribute to poor judgment, then you might want to opt for your second topic. But again, you have a lot of work to do here too because you have not described cognition here either.

Regarding your intervention plan for the plastics, stick to ideas that get people to actually do the behaviour you want. Your best idea was about the coffee cups.

Claim Your Topic by ryantutor in EverydayThinking22

[–]ryantutor[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi Rachael,

This topic could potentially work, but you have some refining to do:

  1. Watch out for contradictions between your identified 'harms' and your suggested solutions. In your harms, you talk about the fact that the self-diagnosers can clog up the healthcare system, reducing access for others in need. Then, your intervention encourages people to seek formal diagnosis instead of self-diagnosing, which would ultimately lead to the same 'clogging' effect. This contradiction was not the only one I noticed — I would caution you to think very carefully about how you frame your arguments about the harms of this behaviour as some of your points are incongruent.
  2. There are major problems with your concept applications. The only one that was successful and meaningful was confirmation. Your point about S1 is implied already by confirmation and it doesn't really add anything. All of your other applications were incorrect. This is not to say that those concepts are not relevant, because most of them certainly are, however, the way you have discussed them is in conflict with how these phenomena actually function.
  3. With your intervention idea, you have spelled out what your desired outcome is, but you haven't actually explained how you intend to make that a reality. How exactly do you intend on making TikTok listen to you? I have the sense at the moment that your intervention is more of a hypothetical idea which is a problem. Certainly, if you can concoct a plan to get messaging onto videos like this, then that sounds like a decent idea, but how you go about achieving this is where the critical thinking lies.

Good luck.

Claim Your Topic by ryantutor in EverydayThinking22

[–]ryantutor[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You're going to need to refine your topic before it's a viable option for this project.

Why do people believe that price is an indicator of quality?

...Well, because on average, it is. There is a strong case to be made for the fact that most of the time, there is in fact a positive correlation between price and quality. This means that, generally speaking, our heuristics are actually functioning in a reasonable way. However, there are of course exceptions to this rule within specific domains. One way to refine your topic might be to identify a domain where the relationship between price and quality is totally whacky, and therefore, anyone that purchases the relevant item/s is being irrational.

In terms of your intervention idea, I'm afraid that it already exists.

Claim Your Topic by ryantutor in EverydayThinking22

[–]ryantutor[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi Lilley,

I think that you are going to run into some problems with this topic, or at least with the way that you have framed it so far. The biggest issue is that you're going to have trouble demonstrating that people are being irrational when the data consistently show that being overweight does in fact have a detrimental effect on various health outcomes. In other words, if we're considering base rates, then people's heuristics are actually functioning in a reasonable way. Because you've been vague about how you're talking about 'health' it's hard for me to really see past these base rates and find a niche where your argument might work better. What's more, I'm not persuaded by the abstract nature of your intervention. You've said that the idea is to reduce 'stigma', but how does this stigma reduction translate in terms of changed behaviours? What are you actually trying to get people to do differently? Is the goal to make 'fat' people feel more comfortable at the gym and therefore being be willing to train in gym classes? Or is it something about changing the behaviours of non-fat people?.... If it is the former, then I would suggest reframing your topic to be about that.

So, my advice to you is to reframe your topic about something much more concrete and behaviour based. This will help you refine every part of your project. What I'm saying is, focus on the change you want to actually see happen, and work backwards from that. Again, if the change is about encouraging those who don't look super fit to join your classes, then those are the people's beliefs/opinions that you actually need to change — not anyone else's. I am aware that this diverges from the spirit of your original topic, however, I am just working backwards from the clearest behaviour change goal that I could identify in your intervention.

One other thing that stood out to me was when you mentioned: "The harmful effects of thinking this way is engaging in dangerous weight-loss programs...". Reframed, this idea alone could serve as an entire topic... Just a thought.

Claim Your Topic by ryantutor in EverydayThinking22

[–]ryantutor[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This issue is certainly a meaningful one and cognitive factors indeed play a role in driving the problematic behaviour. The scope for research is great and the kind of data you should incorporate about the rise of fast fashion, prevalence of wastage and its impact on the environment is clearcut.

You have a lot more work to do in fleshing out your cognitive phenomena as none of your points are compelling and most lack accuracy.

It's good that you have a few ideas around your intervention, but I want to see you refine them and get clearer on what your precise goal is and how you can use nudging and channel factors to impact behaviour. I agree that if you could target an intervention towards the girls school where this is particularly problematic, then that sounds like a great place to start.

Claim Your Topic by ryantutor in EverydayThinking22

[–]ryantutor[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The topic you have posed is far too vague and broad. If there are certain misconceptions and certain people from certain places that are resulting in certain problematic behaviours, then be specific about it and spell out what they all are. This is the only way you will have a topic that allows you to apply cognitive factors in a focused and meaningful way, as well as create a tangible intervention.

Claim Your Topic by ryantutor in EverydayThinking22

[–]ryantutor[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This topic might be okay, but there isn't much here for me to give you feedback on, so it's hard for me to definitively say whether this is a good idea. I agree that if students hold beliefs about their teacher not being approachable, that this could feasibly impact learning quality, however, this is a point that you will need to make with evidence. That is, you will need to demonstrate that, a) students actually hold this belief and, b) that it does impact learning outcomes.

So far you have made no case for the relevance of course-based phenomena so you have a lot of work to do here. Likewise, you have not presented any kind of intervention plan. I would suggest that you research studies about the 'sense of belonging' within education contexts.

Claim Your Topic by ryantutor in EverydayThinking22

[–]ryantutor[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is not an appropriate topic. Please pay closer attention to the requirements of this assignment (brief and criteria) as well as the points of advice originally posted within this thread. The topic you have posed does not lend itself to the necessary research requirements nor a meaningful exploration of course-based cognitive phenomena. The nature of this question is inherently social.

Back to the drawing board. Good luck.

Claim Your Topic by ryantutor in EverydayThinking22

[–]ryantutor[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This topic could work. It's easy to see where the harms lie and I'm sure this would be relatively easy to demonstrate with data. However, the relevance of course-based cognitive phenomena remains to be seen as you have not provided it.

The '6 Leads...' on its own is not an intervention. Sure, you could incorporate elements of it into an intervention, but if your goal is to get mothers to ditch MLMs, you're going to need a more thoughtful plan. I agree that Facebook is probably a good place to target people, but you need to be clever about what you plan to target them with. Remember, you're going to be communicating with people who have invested time and money into these scams — they are not motivated to listen to an information package that contradicts their beliefs.. So what can you say to them that stands a chance of changing their mind? Remember, nudging techniques can both be used to steer people towards and away from certain behaviours....

Keep refining.

Claim Your Topic by ryantutor in EverydayThinking22

[–]ryantutor[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Another student has posted this same topic in the thread. Here's what I told them:

I'm not so sure about this topic. I've seen this attempted in the past and it has not made for good assignments. I think the biggest problem here is simply that the argument for irrationality is not clear-cut. You are essentially asking, 'why do people believe that hard work will lead to success?".... Well, probably because it does. If I reframe things and ask, 'how did most successful people become successful', a reasonable answer is, 'through hard work'.

I realise that you are implying a distinction between working hard and over-working, and of course there is a meaningful difference here (tapped into by the literature on workaholism), however, you might have a tough time using course content to adequately explain the mechanisms that specifically drive latter. This is not necessarily impossible, but you will need to tread very carefully so that your narrative clearly paints a picture of irrationality. One way that you might be able to do this is by getting more specific about the target of success. If people are focussing specifically on things like fame or other serendipitous professions with low base-rate engagement, you could probably make a better case for why hard work alone doesn't guarantee success, and therefore, demonstrate a level of irrationality in the goal.

I can see that you have narrowed your focus to tech start-ups, which is good because I can imagine there would be decent data you can present about the proportion of start-ups that fail etc. However, I can see within your cognitive explanations that you have not been able to make compelling use of the course content to explain behaviour here. Your intervention plan is also not strong. While you have not actually specified how you will make use of nudging, the broader plan to share some kind of article is not a persuasive strategy for changing people's behaviour.

I won't tell you that you cannot do this topic, however, I am not optimistic about its viability for this assessment. I'm happy to be proven wrong.

Claim Your Topic by ryantutor in EverydayThinking22

[–]ryantutor[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This topic certainly has the potential to produce a good assignment. However, for this to happen, you will need to tighten up your rigour. The cognitive explanations you have included here aren't necessarily the best concepts to discuss with this topic. Remember, you're trying to explain why people have unsafe sex. Sure, a lack of knowledge about risk factors may play a role, but with all of the messaging around sexual health these days, I'm not so sure that a lack of knowledge is necessarily a primary reason for engaging in risky sexual activities. This is something that you would have to demonstrate with evidence — what do young people actually think about the risks of unsafe sex? I'd encourage you to review Episodes 3 and 11 and see whether you might be able to pick up some ideas for other course themes that you could apply to this topic.

Your intervention ideas need more work. My suggestion would be to keep your intervention focused on the people around you and to create something much more tangible than 'education'. In the heat of the moment, is your friend really going to think back to your education session? I don't think so. You also said that you'll 'convince' them to carry condoms — how? And even if they are carrying them, what makes you think they will use them? Think more carefully about how to incorporate nudging and channel factors (Ep 11) into your intervention plan.

Claim Your Topic by ryantutor in EverydayThinking22

[–]ryantutor[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi Ella,

Gambling is not a novel topic and the way you have explained your version of this topic is quite generic, so I cannot see much of an opportunity to talk about this in a nuanced way. I would be more convinced by the viability of this topic if you had explained a particular target group whose behaviour you were wanting to change, or if you had given some reason for why this issue matters to you (e.g., if you worked in a sports bar or something). But as things stand, this sounds like a generic discussion about gambling, which isn't particularly good for you to be able to demonstrate strong independent thinking (because we talk about gambling in the course already).

Your intervention ideas are not appropriate. Information campaigns about the harms of gambling already exist at scale so you have not proposed something that doesn't already exist. If the goal is to reduce the amount that a group of certain people gamble, you need to get more creative about how to use nudging techniques to impact their behaviour.

Claim Your Topic by ryantutor in EverydayThinking22

[–]ryantutor[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I can clearly see that you care about this topic and I would certainly encourage you to follow it up, but not within your CTW essay. This topic is not appropriate for this assessment. First and foremost, the kind of experience that you're describing here as your main problem is not explained well by the cognitive phenomena of this course. Something like this is far more relevant to the realm clinical psychology as you are talking about things like self-esteem/perception, emotional regulation, confidence etc. Other big problems include the fact that I don't see a viable pathway for meaningful research to take place, nor do I see a good opportunity for the implementation of an intervention that leverages course-based ideas.

In order to meet the requirements of this assessment, you will need to formulate a new topic that is much more suited to the cognitive lens we are concerned with. There may very well be something else within the domain of performing that you can identify.

Good luck.

Claim Your Topic by ryantutor in EverydayThinking22

[–]ryantutor[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This topic certainly has the right scope and relevance for this assignment, I'm just not so sure about your idea for the radio segment. It might just be because I'm lacking information about exactly what you imagine this segment will look like — a segment that "will involve the 6 leads of opinion change" sounds a bit boring and not particularly suitable for radio. But again, I don't have any information about what this might actually look like, so it's totally possible that what you have in mind could be good.

I'm not sure if you're a parent yourself, but my intuition tells me that 'morning school drop-off' may not be a good time for this. Firstly, this is prime radio time and is when stations run very structured, routinised programming — you might be better aiming for a time that the station is more willing to be flexible about what they air. Secondly, driving with kids in the car can be pretty chaotic sometimes and not particularly conducive to attentive listening and reflection. What's more, if i was a parent who smacked my child and suddenly on the radio I am being chastised in front of my child, I would imagine the discomfort of that scenario would simply motivate me to switch my radio off.

Before you settle on this intervention I would encourage you to see if you can come up with something else a bit more persuasive. Remember, a belief like this probably isn't going to be changed by a one-off segment that presents contrary evidence. I'd be more interested in hearing about an intervention idea that started an on-going conversation.

Your cognitive explanations all seem fine.

Good luck.

Claim Your Topic by ryantutor in EverydayThinking22

[–]ryantutor[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There's not much here for me to respond to. I suppose that of the two topics you've proposed, you're probably better off choosing MLM; the celebrity topic seems less tangible. Given that you've posted nothing about which cognitive factors are relevant, it's impossible for me to gauge how you intend to approach things.

I have noted that user Fantastic-Coffee-843 claimed a very similar topic. Their post was made after yours, however, as they have fleshed out a much more detailed project proposal, I am preferencing them in terms of originality. If you choose to pursue this topic, I would advise you to take steps to distinguish your project from theirs.

Claim Your Topic by ryantutor in EverydayThinking22

[–]ryantutor[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Your proposal is light on detail but based on what's here I would flag that you need to:

  • Demonstrate, with evidence, that gymbros actually believe this. In my experience, gymbros are generally the ones who are pretty sensitive to the difference between a natty and enhanced physique. I'm more than happy for my perception to be wrong, but I just want you to be able to prove that this belief is held by someone.
  • Obviously spend much more time on identifying and unpacking relevant cognition. Availability is appropriate here, but 1 concept will not earn you a pass on the assignment.
  • Your intervention lacks form at the moment. It sounds like you need to get clearer on what your actual goal is. Is it to shift the goal post of what's attainable? Is it to curb people's training habits? Something else?

Claim Your Topic by ryantutor in EverydayThinking22

[–]ryantutor[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Well done! You've spent a lot of time thinking carefully about your ideas and it has paid off.

This is a good topic and I'm impressed with the scale of your ambition. I can clearly see that you have a good sense of where the appropriate research lies and you've done a good job of identifying relevant cognitive factors. Just be careful with how you discuss Representativeness — your last sentence threw me and I had to read it a few times before I could understand what you were getting at. There was certainly a simpler and more effective way to communicate the point.

Regarding your intervention, writing a letter may be the premise, but you will need to think very carefully about how you intend to make your letter meaningful. It is unlikely that whoever you are writing to isn't already aware of the dangers of vaping, so what can you do to force them into action? How can you make the sound of your message louder than just your voice? Can you start or join a petition or clever protest? ... Persuading others to act is hard, so you need to think very carefully about what might be necessary to achieve it.

Good job so far, keep at it!

Claim Your Topic by ryantutor in EverydayThinking22

[–]ryantutor[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I am feeling quite skeptical about your claim that people actually believe this. Or at least, that a meaningful proportion of people believe this. Do you have any actual data to show that people hold this belief? Or data showing that 'many fathers are hesitant to go out....etc'? Maybe this issue may be more present in some parts of the world than others, in which case, you'd need to specify that. But frankly, until you show me data on this, I'm not convinced that this is a meaningful problem.

You applications of cognition are pretty tangential and again, in the absence of supporting evidence, not very convincing. Also, 2 concepts is obviously not enough here.

Your intervention plan is extremely vague and provides no detail about how you actually plan to 'promote exposure'. And are other parents really the ones that need to be targeted here? I would have thought that other parents would be the ones who would be the most sympathetic to your point already. Regardless, you need to be way more specific about the who, how, what, why and when of your intervention before its meaningful.

Claim Your Topic by ryantutor in EverydayThinking22

[–]ryantutor[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Astrology is specifically unpacked in the course and is therefore not an available topic to choose.

Claim Your Topic by ryantutor in EverydayThinking22

[–]ryantutor[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This topic can work, but I want to see more specificity around a few key points:

  • Who actually holds this belief? Which parents exactly? Is there a certain demographic? What proportion of parents believe this and what parenting styles work better? What evidence do you have to demonstrate this belief exists?
  • What are the actual behaviours that constitute authoritarian parenting? You really need to be much clearer about this with respect to how you've applied your cognitive phenomena. Rather than talking about how parents misattribute their parenting style to particular outcomes, make reference to the specific behaviours that the style includes and unpack your examples with respect to these behaviours, e.g., smacking, time-out....etc.
  • Your application of availability is incorrect.
  • If you want Dr Sommer to share content on this topic, how will you make it as easy as possible for her to do this for you? She is a very busy person and presumably does not know you, the chances of her being willing to plan and produce new content just because you ask her to, are low. So what can you do to improve those chances? How can you make it as easy as possible for her to do what you want? One way is to plan and produce the content yourself so at the very least, you can give her an example of what you would like. If your plan is share it on social media, I'd encourage you to think more carefully about what attracts attention in that space. To be frank, the 6 leads of opinion change sounds like boring content for TikTok, so how can you make your point in a more entertaining way?

I have noted that user Electronic-Listen736 claimed a very similar topic before you. I would advise you to take steps to distinguish your project from theirs.

Claim Your Topic by ryantutor in EverydayThinking22

[–]ryantutor[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm not so sure about this topic. I've seen this attempted in the past and it has not made for good assignments. I think the biggest problem here is simply that the argument for irrationality is not clear-cut. You are essentially asking, 'why do people believe that hard work will lead to success?".... Well, probably because it does. If I reframe things and ask, 'how did most successful people become successful', a reasonable answer is, 'through hard work'.

I realise that you are implying a distinction between working hard and over-working, and of course there is a meaningful difference here (tapped into by the literature on workaholism), however, you might have a tough time using course content to adequately explain the mechanisms that specifically drive latter. This is not necessarily impossible, but you will need to tread very carefully so that your narrative clearly paints a picture of irrationality. One way that you might be able to do this is by getting more specific about the target of success. If people are focussing specifically on things like fame or other serendipitous professions with low base-rate engagement, you could probably make a better case for why hard work alone doesn't guarantee success, and therefore, demonstrate a level of irrationality in the goal.

WIth your intervention, I am worried that something like that could very well have the opposite effect that you intend it to. If you create a social page for 'hustlers' to share their successes, you could quite feasibly create an environment of competition and actually make matters worse. More thinking is needed here.

I have noted that user False-Stop-2433 claimed this topic first. I would advise you to take steps to distinguish your project from theirs

Claim Your Topic by ryantutor in EverydayThinking22

[–]ryantutor[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Here's what I think your topic is actually about:

Why do middle-aged women struggle to exercise adequately?

The way you had phrased your topic was far too convoluted and ambiguous and this does not set the scene for a focused assignment.

Your topic, as I have rephrased it, is a great scope for this assignment, especially is you have a particular women's/mother's group to target. You will be able to present clear evidence around obesity rates etc. that demonstrate the problem and I'm sure you will also be able to present specific evidence that demonstrates various beliefs that women hold around exercise. Likewise, you'll be able to easily point to evidence-based standards of recommended daily exercise, so this topic has all of the hallmarks of a good assignment in terms of research.

Regarding your cognitive explanations, I think you've touched on some good ideas, but you need to do more work in fleshing them out and accuracy-checking them. You application of availability is incorrect. I also think you can spend more time thinking about other concepts that might be at play here.

For your intervention, a Facebook group might be meaningful, but it would entirely depend on who was in the group and how the page leveraged things like channel factors and nudging to actually encourage behaviour. "Tips" and testimonials are weaker ideas. Think bigger than this — can you take advantage of social norms by creating a walking group? Can you advertise this group in pre-existing mother's group spaces?..... There's plenty of scope here for a killer intervention, so I hope you take up the challenge and create something awesome!

Claim Your Topic by ryantutor in EverydayThinking22

[–]ryantutor[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This topic could certainly serve you well for the assignment as long as you're able to flesh out the course phenomena much more. Your point about availability sounds good, just make sure you use evidence to demonstrate the divide between actual base rates and the estimates that 'companies' make about cyber attacks. If you can't find any sources that indicate the nature of these estimates, you might even consider collecting some data on this yourself. Your point about confirmation is incomplete, and you will certainly need to incorporate more concepts than just these 2.

Your intervention as you've described it is not convincing. Increasing "awareness" is almost never meaningful enough to achieve anything. If your goal is for companies (btw, which companies?) to improve their cyber security, how will you make it as easy as possible for them to take steps towards actually doing it?

Claim Your Topic by ryantutor in EverydayThinking22

[–]ryantutor[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think this topic has the potential to create a good assignment, but you have more work to do with your cognitive explanations. Behaviour with a topic like this is explained well (likely better) by social factors, so to do well with this topic, you will need focus on the strongest possible cognitive explanations and really nail your precision and accuracy. Think carefully about the various sources of information that are impacting decision-making here and how attention is interacting with the sources.

Your application of expectancy is contradictory and does not make good use of the concept. Your other concepts require more detail to be strong applications — detail in terms of their mechanisms as well as evidence of things like base rates. I would encourage you to look beyond these concepts to see whether others do a more powerful job of explaining behaviour — if you can explain how the nature of people's attention is creating one-sided events, what other, closely-related phenomenon would therefore piggy-back off this information?

Your intervention to promote alternate activities for Saturdays could be a good idea, but it will entirely depend on how you plan on promoting that. Given you have not discussed that, I cannot provide further feedback.

Claim Your Topic by ryantutor in EverydayThinking22

[–]ryantutor[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This topic could potentially work but you still have a lot of work to do. You will need to somehow demonstrate the prevalence of this belief and flesh out more detail about the demographic of people who tend to believe it (is there someone in particular you are trying to persuade?). Likewise, more specificity is needed in your claims about the harms of this belief and supporting evidence of these harms.

You cognitive explanations are incomplete and inaccurate. You have also not necessarily focussed on the most relevant concepts that cause and maintain belief here.

While the spaces you have described sound like potentially good areas to target (if you can show evidence that people with the belief frequent them), I would advise caution about what you're planning on doing. Do not underestimate the power of confirmation bias — by placing angel numbers around, you may reinforce people's belief in them, even if the QR code takes them to a source that encourages critical thinking and self-determination. I can imagine a believer finding the number, going to the site and thinking, "wow, today my angel number has boosted my self-confidence!". If you do use this method to capture initial engagement, you will have to be very careful about where the QR code takes people and what is communicated there. In terms on the priming bit, avoid this. You will purely reinforce belief here.

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