Upload
ngodung
View
221
Download
2
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
PROJECT GUTS
Closeness with Friends and Family “Family members can be your best friends, you know. And best friends, whether or not they are
related to you, can be your family.” – Trenton Lee Stewart
INSTRUCTOR HANDBOOK
Session Four: 3.5 hours total, including breaks Part One: Social Science 30 minutes: Read/Discuss: “Do We Treat Friends and Family Differently?” 60 minutes: Activity: Design a Hypothesis (Break) Part Two: Computing 15-‐20 minutes: Modeling: Build Links model 60-‐75 minutes: Activity: Science of Friendship model Supplies:
Laptops or computers Large graph paper Markers or sharpies
Student Handouts: Handout: “Do We Treat Friends and Family Differently?” Handout: Hypothesis
Models from NetLogo Models Library: NetLogo models library, curriculum models, Links
PAGE 2 INSTRUCTOR HANDBOOK
Read/Discuss: “Do We Treat Friends and Family Differently?” 30 minutes
Read and discuss similarities and differences between family members and friends while considering concepts of kin selection and inclusive fitness.
Activity: Designing a Hypothesis, Part 1 35 minutes
Modeling: Build Links Model 15-20 minutes
Students read together the “Hypothesis” handout. Students break into groups of about 3-‐4 students per group and work together to design a hypothesis. After brainstorming research questions related to friends and family relationships, students choose a single hypothesis that will guide their experimental design. They write their research question and hypothesis on a large post it or on the board and are prepared to discuss a possible experiment they could design to test their hypothesis.
Activity: Designing a Hypothesis, Part 2 25 minutes
Students build a model, using links as agents. (See Netlogo models library, curriculum models, Links)
Each group presents their research question, hypothesis and experiment idea to the class. They should first state explicitly their research question and hypothesis, and then describe an experiment they could design to test their hypothesis. The discussion should focus on what makes an experiment and whether the experiment will test their prediction. The group then discusses the different ideas—are their similarities? differences? How might the experiments allow us to assess casual relationships by manipulating only one variable while holding everything else constant? Students agree on one hypothesis to test as a class. Student create an MTurk Survey to test their hypothesis. (see sample survey, L6).
PAGE 3 INSTRUCTOR HANDBOOK
Extensions
Guide to the basics of experimental design http://liutaiomottola.com/myth/expdesig.html NetLogo Discuss and suggest experiments to run with the model – brainstorm ideas, focusing on experiments to collect data that would answer a question Form small groups for final projects, begin writing up proposed changes to model for experiments (begin model planning form).
Download and review model in general terms. What does the interface show? What sliders are available? What do the monitors and graphs show? What does the information interface say about the purpose of the model? Create four small groups of students. Each group will study one slider including: Where is it created and called in the code? What does the information window say about it? Each group conducts experiments using only that slider and determines which graphs are affected and how. Groups report their results to whole group.
Activity: Science of Friendship Model 60-75 minutes
Our friends and family members make up two groups of people that we tend to have close feelings for. These groups have different traits that characterize our relationships with them. One of the most important differences is that we get to choose our friends. This is voluntary association, one of the key distinguishing features between friends and family members. Another key difference is that we are related to your family. In most cases, this means that we share some amount of DNA with our relatives. Evolutionary anthropologists predict that this sharing of genes underlies our altruism towards family members. Called kin selection theory, it means that one way we can spread our genes is by helping family members who share those genes, also known as inclusive fitness. In a test of kin selection theory, Howard Rachlin and Bryan Jones used their social discounting experiment to test for whether people help family members more than friends. Their results showed that even if people felt the same level of closeness between a friend and a family member, they were willing to give up more to help their family member. Kin selection theory also predicts differences in helping family members at different levels of relatedness. In one experiment, Elainie Madsen and colleagues asked participants to sit in a painful position; the longer they stayed in that position, the more money a relative would receive. Researchers found that the more DNA the participants shared with their relatives (i.e. the closer the relatives), the more time they spent in the painful position. So, while we often feel close to both family members and friends, given the differences between these two relationship types, our feelings of closeness and willingness to help may differ between these two groups as well.
Background: Do we treat friends and family differently?
PROJECT GUTS
Student Handout 1 “Family members can be your best friends, you know. And best friends, whether or not they are
related to you, can be your family.” – Trenton Lee Stewart
PROJECT GUTS
Student Handout 1
Vocabulary Kin Selection – an evolutionary theory about a strategy where an organism directs helping behavior towards kin because kin share similar genes. Inclusive Fitness -‐ An evolutionary theory that suggests the fitness of an organism can be tied to others who share similar genes.
PAGE 5 UNIT #: THE SCIENCE OF FRIENDSHIP
What is your hypothesis? A hypothesis is an educated hunch we have about how things work. It can come from an existing theory or it can come from our own experience. One hypothesis our lab works with draws from evolutionary theory, stating that on average, people should be more willing to give to people they share more genes with (e.g., genetically related kin). William Hamilton made this argument about all biological organisms in the 1960s, and many researchers have examined whether his kin selection hypothesis applies to humans specifically. We might also develop a hypothesis from our own experience. For example, we might feel we are more likely to give to family members, regardless of our genetic relatedness with them (in-‐laws, step-‐siblings…). We would then test whether this applies to a wide range of people other than ourselves. A key element of a good hypothesis is that it asks how some outcome will change, such as our willingness to give, if we change a condition, such as whether we are giving to a stranger, a friend or a family member. Testing a hypothesis with experiments: What are the conditions we will assign people to? To test a hypothesis using an experiment, we assign some people to one condition (e.g. thinking about a genetically related person) and some people to another condition (e.g. thinking about someone we are not genetically related to, but who we feel equally close to). One important feature of an experiment is that people are randomly assigned to one condition or the other. This ensures that the only systematic difference between the two groups of people is whether they were exposed to condition 1 or condition 2. To test the kin selection hypothesis above, we might assign people to two conditions: (1) think of a genetically-‐related family member who you feel particularly close to, (2) think of a close friend who you feel particularly close to. We could then ask them questions about sharing or helping-‐-‐like we have used in previous sessions. Here we have tried to make the conditions very similar except for genetic relatedness, so any difference we see between the conditions should arise from differences in genetic relatedness. Based on the kin selection hypothesis, we would expect the level or amount of sharing to be greater among genetically-‐related kin given the same level of closeness. What would be another condition we could add that would be even more comparable to genetically related family members?
PAGE 6 UNIT #: THE SCIENCE OF FRIENDSHIP
In your group, consider the following as you frame a hypothesis and an experiment. 1) What is your hypothesis? (be sure to include the outcome) 2) What are the conditions you will assign people to?
Vocabulary Experimental Design – an orderly procedure carried out with the goal of verifying, refuting, or establishing the validity of a hypothesis. Experiments provide insight into cause-‐and-‐effect by demonstrating what outcome occurs when a particular factor is manipulated. Control Group – A group in an experiment that does not receive the manipulated treatment that is used as a baseline for comparison. Treatment Group – A group in an experiment that receives the manipulated treatment and compared with the control group. Independent Variable –A variable that is manipulated and can be thought of as the cause. Dependent Variable – A variable that is measured after the manipulation and is thought of as the effect.