Summary: Who said statistics were boring? Using magic and circus motifs, this program demonstrates the significance of probability theory and the importance of using the correct test to analyze research data. Host Amy and her friend Matt the Magician guide viewers through the need to make probability statements, and along with a team of students, use juggling skills to explore choice of test. Setting...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: This video focuses on effective ways to understand and organize data using descriptive statistics. Analyzing data collected from studies of young music students, the video helps viewers sort through basic data-interpretation concepts: measures of central tendency, levels of measurement, measures of dispersion, and graphs. A wide range of organization principles are covered, including mode,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: A dream may be the most difficult human experience to quantify-but dreaming is an excellent topic for building qualitative research skills. This program illustrates experiments, designed and conducted by students, that revolve around sleep and dreams. In the process, it provides thorough insight into the issues relevant to collecting and utilizing qualitative data. Viewers are shown how to...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: Adam suspects that most hairy dogs have balding owners. Testing his "pet" theory at a local park, he quickly finds flaws in his own experiment. This video demonstrates Adam's second test, involving better preparation, more rigorous analysis, and an exciting pasta cook-off. Showing how Adam can effectively determine the best spaghetti recipe, the program illustrates concepts that are central to...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: What if twelve strangers were deposited in separate locations all over New York City and ordered to find each other-without being told where to look? This ABC News program presents an intriguing psychological puzzle involving participants who must join up-somehow, somewhere-in a city of eight million people. Incorporating principles from the mathematical discipline known as game theory, the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: The Selfish Gene is frequently misread as a biological justification for ruthless behavior. In this classic program, author Richard Dawkins sets the record straight through an exploration of selfishness and enlightened self-interest built upon evidence from the Prisoner's Dilemma game and real-world non-zero-sum social situations. "The tragedy of the commons," symbiotic behavior among animals,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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Summary: When people decide whether or not to follow the crowd, what happens inside their brains? This ABC News program explores that question, highlighting neurological research that helps explain conformity and sheds light on the complex relationship between group and individual behavior. Placing test subjects in candid-camera style settings, the program illustrates how social pressures can alter...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: This program brings to life five of psychology's most significant studies: Bandura's Bobo Doll Experiment, 1961; Milgram's Study of Obedience, 1963; Ainsworth's Strange Situation Experiment, 1971 and 1978; Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment, 1973; and Loftus's Eyewitness Testimony Experiment, 1974. Footage from the original experiments and from contemporary reconstructions is featured...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: What compels a seemingly normal person to disregard a fundamental societal principle and commit murder? In this disturbing program, correspondent Steve Aveson reports on recent scientific research into the behavior of killers. An exclusive interview with serial killer Joel Rifkin, convicted of strangling 17 women, is combined with neurological testing, brain scans, and even information derived...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: Psychological experiments have shown that the natural human desire to conform can lead people to mistrust their own experiences, turn a blind eye to the suffering of others, and even inflict harm on the defenseless. But these findings have come at a price: the potential emotional damage of those being studied. This three-section program grapples with some of the thorny ethical issues arising...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: As time creeps by, the exercise of reward and punishment and the friction of social inequality within the microsociety of prison take their toll, fraying nerves among the prisoners and generating anxiety among the guards. In this episode, two inmates form an unlikely alliance-and the guards are taken by surprise when three prisoners launch a nighttime revolt. Contains harsh, inflammatory, and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: Are the results of scientific experiments affected by the desired outcome of the researcher conducting the trials? In this TEDTalk, psychologist Dan Ariely tells two personal stories that explore a subtle and perhaps subconscious bias that can lead to a scientific conflict of interest. "The most difficult thing," Ariely says, "is to recognize that sometimes we, too, are blinded by our own...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: With their mental health histories kept secret, ten adults enter a period of psychiatric observation in an isolated group setting. It is up to a panel of experts to determine who is healthy and who isn't. This program documents the first three days of the session, which features several tests designed to bring out evidence of mental disorders. Simulated urban warfare evokes reckless behavior;...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: This program clarifies selected principles of science by contextualizing them through easily comprehensible applications of psychological research. Divided into five sections, the video illustrates the hypothetical-deductive model of scientific reasoning via Piaget's classic conservation experiment and Donaldson and McGarrigle's challenge of it; the analysis of statistics involving scenarios in...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: In this episode, the primal exercise of negotiation and opportunism is explicated as 12 prisoners and guards band together to form a new and balanced society. Mere hours later, faced with an inability to enforce the commune rules, four members fill the power vacuum by launching a ruthless bid for control of the group. Contains harsh, inflammatory, and explicit language.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: The Austrian-born psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, whose work varied from profound to radically unconventional, died in an American prison in 1957. This program documents his life and the progressively defiant actions and ideas that brought it to such an ignominious end. Interviews with prominent members of Germany's medical and psychoanalytic community help to clarify Reich's initially productive...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: Other than Freud, no psychologist has been so discussed, critiqued, and, at times, maligned as B. F. Skinner. Using both archival and newer film, this program takes a penetrating look at who Skinner was and what he really said in his 20 books. Skinner’s specialized terminology is introduced in context so students will understand how it was intended to be used and the research that produced it....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1999
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Summary: How long can mental illness stay hidden, especially from the eyes of trained experts? This program rejoins a group of ten adults-five of them healthy and five of them with histories of mental illness-as psychiatric specialists try to spot and correctly diagnose the latter. Administering a series of collaborative and one-on-one tests, including assessments of personality type, physical...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: With its images of violence, war, and radically foreign cultures, the stark realities presented by the new medium of television made an impression on those who studied the mind and behavior, causing them to reexamine the very essence of what it means to be human. This program features archival footage of the 20th century's most influential social scientists as they strive to define human...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: Perhaps the most intriguing field of medicine is the one that seeks to understand consciousness itself. This program provides a tour of the most advanced work in brain research and cognitive science, as well as the latest applications of these discoveries in treating patients with brain disorders. Using MRI and EEG to determine areas of brain activity, researchers explore the connection between...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Echoing the infamous Milgram experiment from the 1960s, this ABC News program sets up a psychological test in which an authority figure urges men and women to inflict pain. Test administrator and social psychologist Dr. Jerry Burger interprets the disturbing findings. The program also analyzes the 1971 Stanford prison experiment as well as the 2004 hoax in which a McDonald's manager and her...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: Philip Zimbardo has spent decades researching the transformation of character that occurs when generally good people are led to engage in evil actions. In this lecture, Zimbardo discourses on theories of conformity, prejudice, aggression, social influence, and antisocial behavior. Topics include the permeability of behavioral boundaries; the nature of evil and its societal consequences;...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: Nothing in human experience is quite so astonishing as the enormous changes that occur during the five short years that transform a newborn into an actively curious, exploring kindergartner. Filmed in 1996, this program examines the work of Lev Vygotsky and Jean Piaget, illuminating the similarities of and differences between their contributions to a greater understanding of the cognitive...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1996
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Summary: This program asserts that the testing of a causal hypothesis involving cognitive development is best done through a combination of observational and experimentational methods. Kathy Sylva and Peter Bryant, both of the University of Oxford, and other researchers share their insights into categorizing and codifying patterns of play through observation, avoiding common experiment-related pitfalls...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006