In the third week, I hosted a one-hour workshop on the daily application of psychology. My target audience consisted of fifteen local grandmothers who spoke at least 50% of the Taiwanese Hokkien dialect, which I still find quite challenging to comprehend (though I believe I've made some progress). The design thinking process was tough, so let me break it down for you: 

The most important factor was relevance. My audience had nearly zero knowledge of psychology and was probably not very keen on learning about it. How could I intrigue them? Why would they want to listen to a young person talk about psychology for an hour? After consulting with people around me, I decided to focus on cognitive biases—the very topic that first drew me into the world of psychology. Cognitive biases are systematic errors in judgment and decision-making processes, something everyone can relate to. 

With the topic in mind, the next question was how to present it. When teaching this class, my professor assigned students to two groups (experimental and control) through Moodle. Despite my numerous attempts to outsmart the professor and the established researchers, I never succeeded. This personal experience with cognitive biases made the lecture particularly engaging. I could adopt the same presentation method, but I faced two main challenges: i) the elderly probably cannot use technology as well as university students; ii) the examples typically used to illustrate these biases are often grounded in a Western context, which the elderly might not understand. Therefore, my mission was to localize the knowledge and examples. 

My PowerPoint:  

As you can see above, my PowerPoint presentation was structured into three parts: 

1. Present three scenarios, asking the elderly whether they think it is a good deal and why. 

2. Reveal the psychological theories behind each scenario, explaining why some might perceive it as a good deal when, in reality, it is merely a framing effect. 

3. Relate the theories back to real-life examples, such as discount posters in Taiwanese supermarkets. 

Over the course of an hour, I introduced eight cognitive biases, including the anchoring effect, decoy effect, scarcity bias, free effect, authority bias, loss aversion, reciprocity bias, and left-digit effect. Many participants shared their own shopping experiences and discussed how marketing strategies influenced their choices (some even critiqued my examples, deeming them unrealistic). They were more engaged than I had anticipated, asking questions and laughing together, creating a warm and interactive atmosphere. By the end of the session, I could no longer “trick” them into thinking my scenarios were a good deal. 

Reflecting on the workshop, I realized that my initial fears about language barriers and technological challenges were manageable. Psychology is the study of humans—a subject that everyone can relate to. All I needed to do was channel my passion for the subject and share it with those around me. After studying psychology for two years, I had lost sight of why I chose this field. The academic essays and theories had distanced psychology from its human essence. Psychology became words on paper and numbers in equation. This workshop reminded me of the core reason I was drawn to psychology in the first place: the desire to understand humans.

To understand humans and use that knowledge to make the world better.