Ethical Connections in Psychology: Grilling for Science!

One of my favorite assessment/grading bloggers (and yes, I have several, which I know says a lot about me) recently did a classroom activity that might be interesting high school psych teachers, Shawn Cornally (who blogs about science teaching and standards based grading at ThinkThankThunk) decided to grill up some meat for his students to see if they could taste the difference between ethically raised vs. factory raised meat His goal was to get students thinking and help them become "more aware of their food." This might be a great activity in a psych class during sensation and perception: Can students taste the differences between different kinds of food based on how it was grown/raised? What difference thresholds are involved? Perceptual sets? Cultural expectations? And it might be at great connection to ethics - what are the ethical implications of differences in taste, or lack of differences?

This activity might be good in combination with the "Attack of the Blue Tongue" supertaster/non-taster demonstration many of us already do. Thanks for the idea Shawn!

posted by Rob McEntarffer

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