Week 1 Discussion — Two Lenses on One Behavior — Traditional alternative (no AI)

Instructors: publish this instead of the adaptive version if you prefer, and unpublish or delete the adaptive one.

Hook

Everyone has a ready explanation for why people do what they do. This week you learned that psychology tests those explanations instead of trusting them: it looks at one behavior through six perspectives, and it asks whether a claim is stated precisely enough to be proved wrong.

Your discussion question — choose Option A or Option B; they carry the same weight and the same rubric, and you say which you picked.

Option A: Pick a behavior you have seen up close — your own or someone else's, at home, at work, on a team, or online (putting things off, snapping at people when tired, helping a stranger, scrolling late at night). Explain it from two of this week's six perspectives. Which explanation do you find more convincing, can both be partly true at once, and what would you want to observe to decide?

Option B: Pick a piece of common-sense wisdom about people that you actually believe ("opposites attract," "practice makes perfect," "people never change"). Is it falsifiable as it is usually said? Rewrite it as a hypothesis that data could prove wrong, say what result would change your mind, and explain whether hindsight bias might be what makes it feel true.

There is no single right answer here. A roommate who studies with music on, a teammate who freezes on penalty kicks, or the saying that people never change can each be argued well in more than one direction. Pick one you actually care about, and tell us the story.

Expectations

Activity format: one initial post followed by two substantive peer replies. Plan on about 45 minutes across the two deadlines; your instructor sets both due dates in Canvas.

AI use: this version of the discussion uses no chatbot. Write your post and your replies from your own reasoning, in your own words.

Your initial post — by the first due date (early in the module week):

• Say which option you chose.
• For Option A, name the behavior and give one explanation from each of two named perspectives; for Option B, state the saying, say whether it is falsifiable, and rewrite it as a hypothesis.
• Use at least two of this week's terms (behavior, mental processes, perspective, biopsychosocial model, empiricism, hindsight bias, theory, hypothesis, falsifiable) correctly.
• Give your judgment, with a reason: which explanation convinces you more and why, or what result would change your mind.
• Length: roughly 150–250 words if written. You may instead record your post as audio or video (about two minutes) and attach a transcript; both forms are scored by the same rubric.

Your replies — by the second due date (the end of the module week):

• Reply substantively to at least two classmates.
• A substantive reply does more than agree: offer a third perspective the poster did not use, point out a word that makes a hypothesis impossible to test, or ask what observation would settle the question. "Nice point!" on its own does not count.

What a strong post looks like:

I chose Option A. My younger brother always does his chores at the last minute. From the behavioral perspective, waiting has worked: the chores still get done before anyone gets upset, so the habit keeps paying off. From the cognitive perspective, he may expect the chores to take less time than they do. I think both are partly true, which is what the biopsychosocial model would say. To decide which matters more, I would watch whether he starts earlier on a week when waiting stops working.

Notice how it names the behavior, uses two perspectives by name, keeps the language hedged, and says what would settle the question. That is the bar.

Participation rubric

This discussion is worth 10 points. The three criteria below look at your initial post and your peer replies.

Post early if you can — the best threads happen when people have time to reply before the second due date.

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