Summer SAVY 2016 (Session 1, Day 3) – Social Psychology 101

Posted by hallep on Wednesday, June 15, 2016 in Grade 5, Grade 6, SAVY.

Today was all about persuasion! Here’s what happened:

• We began by reviewing what we’ve learned so far at SAVY with a game of pictionary – what great memories our students have!
• We kicked off our discussion of persuasion by examining how understanding someone’s current attitude could help us figure out the best way to persuade them.   Our students put these new ideas to good use helping our imaginary candidate for 6^th grade class president, Sarah, convince her classmates that she was the right one for the job!
• Then we examined blast-from-the-past examples of the central and peripheral routes to persuasion. Everyone agreed that although the Nixon campaign ad made plenty of logical arguments, it was hard to forget the cheery tune from the Kennedy campaign ad. Comparing these to more recent ads showed us how a single ad could combine central and peripheral route techniques together.
• Next, we learned some of the most popular principles of persuasion, like reciprocity, scarcity, and social proof. Our students paired off to learn key terms and taught them to each other by creating short commercials for fake products – we had a good laugh watching some of our friends show off Sparkle Shampoo (“It makes your hair look like a disco ball!”), and others create a catchy jingle to convince us to buy Fizz Soda.
• After a little break, we came back to try out our skills with real commercials. Our students blew us away with how well they could dissect the different concepts they had just learned in real ads for different products. Although the flashy gimmicks and clever persuasive tricks were enticing, it looks like no one’s going to pull a fast one with our savvy shoppers for a while!

Tomorrow we take on some of social psychology’s most controversial and fascinating topics – compliance, power, and obedience!