Anthony Pratkanis –Teaching Statement 2003-04
Professor in Psychology

Major Courses

I am an experimental social psychologist and teach the following courses:  Introductory Social Psychology (Psych 40; a large 120-200 student lecture course designed to introduce students to the field of social psychology, develop skills in the scientific method and in applying social psychology to the solution of practical problems), Social Influence (Psych 145; a large 60-90 student lecture course which teaches major influence tactics and how they are used in settings such as the mass media, democracy, and small groups), Consumer Psychology (Psych 141; a small senior seminar of 30-35 students teaching students how to apply psychological concepts to consumer behavior, understand the institutions of marketing, and be wise consumers, and Social Psychology of Flimflam (Psych 150; a small senior seminar of 30-35 students teaching students how to apply social psychological concepts to understand belief, debunk some common flimflams in our demon-haunted world, and use the scientific method to evaluate claims).  In addition, I supervise undergraduates in conducting research and senior honors theses.

Philosophy of Teaching

My philosophy of teaching is based on seven principles.

Begin by basing the course on behavioral objectives.  A behavioral objective is a skill that the course is designed to teach.  Each of my courses has overarching objectives (see above) and each component (lecture, readings, assignments, etc.) has specific objectives (such as “describe cognitive dissonance theory” or “critique a catharsis model of aggression”).  These objectives allow the student to make an informed decision about taking the course and then serve to organize class activities.  With objectives in hand, the instructor is free to think up the most effective way to teach each objective.

Answer questions that you want answered.  My courses are about things I wonder about with the assumptions that others will too.  I describe what I have found out about these questions and in the process teach the basic principles of social psychology.  For example, I explain why Timothy McVeigh blew up a building and in the process teach theories of aggression, what happens to a group that predicts the world will end when the world doesn’t end to teach dissonance theory, and how a car sales agent works to explain social influence principles.

When giving a lecture, tell stories.  Information is remembered best when embedded in a story.  I tell such stories as how Branch Rickey hired Jackie Robinson (to teach prejudice reduction), how researchers made psychology’s most remarkable discovery (on the power of situations), and how Kurt Lewin got people to eat sweetbreads (on self-generated persuasion).

Students learn by doing.  I try to make my courses project-oriented with students engaged in a range of activities (e.g., in-class exercises, homework projects, and analyses) that make use of course principles.  One highly successful activity is the group poster project where students work in teams to carry out a major research project, which is then presented to the rest of the class.

There are only superficial differences between great teaching and great research.  While teaching requires specialized communication skills and research requires specialized design skills, these are superficial differences.  Both teaching and research are about discovering new things or as Feynman puts it, the pleasure of finding things out.  Both the teacher and the students should always be discovering new things in the classroom.

The instructor must maintain high standards of integrity and performance.

Education is really teaching about how to question and how to find answers to those questions.  Everyone in the course should feel free to question and learn.  We respect those scholars that came before us and what they accomplished, but if we are to honor them we must question what they tell us and try to improve upon their answers.  The instructor as a democratic leader serves as a role model for this process.

Major Teaching Accomplishments

I have produced a number of materials that are used in instruction at UCSC and other universities including:  Age of propaganda (book based in part on lecture notes for Social Influence; it has been translated into seven languages and is used as a text in university courses worldwide), Guide to the analysis of propaganda and persuasion (student and teacher guidebook), The fraud fighter handbook (used by AARP to teach about fraud), The science of social influence (in press, edited book for teaching students how to conduct social influence research), my research article on the pique technique has been reprinted in workbooks to teach social psychology research methods, two 20-plus page TA manuals designed to teach graduate students how to teach including such activities as how to prepare a lecture, supervise student teams, and return exams,  Would you jump on the bandwagon? (video based on appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show used to teach conformity), Follow the leader  (video based on appearance on NBC Dateline used to teach conformity), Weapons of Fraud (video produced by AARP used to teach about influence and fraud), and Social Connections (video produced by McGraw-Hill to teach about conformity and obedience). 

I have also supervised a number of senior theses that have contributed to the scientific literature.  Two are of particular note.  Jay Eskenazi’s thesis testing subliminal self-help tapes was published in Basic and Applied Social Psychology, has served as the basis for reports by both the National Academy of Science and British Psychological Association, was admitted into trial evidence, has been cited in Introductory Psychology textbooks, and is used by Research Methods textbooks as an example to teach experimental design.  Derek Rucker’s thesis on projection as an interpersonal influence tactic won the 1998 SUNY at Stony Brook prize for the best undergraduate research in political psychology, was published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, and subsequently received an honorable mention for the 2000 SPSP Student Publication Award (normally given to graduate students).

Some additional honors include giving a recent Psi Chi (undergraduate honor society in psychology) talk at Colorado State University, recent keynote speaker for Thirty-Third Annual Western Psychology Conference for Undergraduate Research, a recent NPR interview was written up as part of a teaching note on Psychological Warfare by another instructor (see King, 2004, Teaching of Psychology, 31, 27-30), my lecture on how Mr. Branch Rickey hired Jack Robinson to play baseball (given in Psych 40) was the recipient of a custom-made Cooperstown bat as best paper at the Fifth Annual Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, and I was selected to be an instructor at National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology (annual conference designed to teach psychology teachers how to teach psychology).

Perhaps my most memorable moment in teaching came in Social Psychology of Flimflam. In this course, I often perform various magic tricks as a means of illustrating how psychic and other frauds occur and to serve as a challenge to students to figure out how the deception was executed.  One year, I successfully predicted the winner and score of the Super Bowl.  It was a particularly well-executed trick, and students could not figure out how it was done despite extensive effort.  However, four weeks later a student came into classroom, took over the lecture, and promptly duplicated the trick (with great elaboration and fanfare) to predict a nationally televised tennis match.  I took this as the ultimate confirmation that the students were truly learning the principles of the course.  Next September that student will begin his teaching career.