Some of My Friends are Fat, others are Thin and Some are Built like Arnold Schwarzenegger: A Body Typing Exercise That Teaches Critical Thinking

Abstract

Undergraduate students benefit from a class exercise that examines the relationship between body builds and personality characteristics. Procedures were designed to allow students to confront biases about their own friends and acquaintances in the context of Sheldon's somatotypes (Sheldon and Stevens, 1940;Sheldon, Stevens and Tucker, 1942). Class discussion about this demonstration can incorporate a broad range of topic areas, including stereotyping, the history of personality theory, personality assessment techniques, the importance of research control and the limitations of correlational research.

Creating Instructor Resources as a Student Project

“…There is strong support for the effectiveness of active learning strategies over the traditional lecture (e.g., Butler, Phillmann, & Smart, 2001;Davis & Buskist, 2006;Harton, Richardson, Barreras, Rockloff, & Latané, 2002;Yoder & Hochevar, 2005). Such strategies are associated with greater student enjoyment (Lawson, 1995), motivation (Watson, Kessler, Kalla, Kam, & Ueki, 1996), and retention of class material (Harton et al, 2002), as well as the development of critical thinking skills, such as the ability to evaluate explanations of psychological phenomena and identify personal biases (Boatright-Horowitz & Mashikian, 2005;Mathie et al, 1993). Cooper (1995, p. 7) suggested that, 'In lectures, students often hear a highly skilled problem solver resolve complicated issues without hearing the diversity of ideas that went into the lecturer's ultimate resolution'.…”