• 131 topics

Debate Topics for Psychology Class

Nature or nurture, trusting memory, famous experiments: an opening line for each side.

Debate Topics for Psychology Class

Does nature shape us more than nurture?

Read it out, then tap a side once for every raised hand.

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Nature, nurture and development 26

  • Are childhood routines the hardest to break? A) Yes. What was learned first has had the longest rehearsal. B) No. A routine is only as strong as its last repetition.
  • Are we born knowing right from wrong? A) Yes. Small children protest when a share is unfair. B) No. Right and wrong are taught, and differ from home to home.
  • Can five traits sum up a whole personality? A) Yes. The Big Five model sums people up on five broad dimensions. B) No. Much of its evidence is what people report about themselves.
  • Do friends shape a teenager more than parents do? A) Yes. A teenager spends all day trying to fit in with friends. B) No. Values learned at home outlast every friend group.
  • Do identical twins prove that genes decide personality? A) Yes. Same genes, and so often the same tastes and manner. B) No. Twins also share a home and the way others treat them.
  • Do people stop changing once they are adults? A) Yes. By thirty, most tastes and routines are set. B) No. A new job, a child or a move can remake a person at any age.
  • Does a baby's first bond shape every later relationship? A) Yes. Attachment theory: early bonds are a model for later ones. B) No. Later friends and teachers can rewrite an early pattern.
  • Does birth order shape who we become? A) Yes. The oldest and the youngest grow up in different families. B) No. Large studies find almost no effect on personality.
  • Does every child's thinking develop in the same stages? A) Yes. Piaget described four stages that follow in one order. B) No. A child can be ahead in one skill and behind in another.
  • Does growing up without siblings change a child? A) Yes. Sharing a room and a parent is a lesson of its own. B) No. Cousins, classmates and neighbors teach the same lessons.
  • Does intelligence stay the same through life? A) Yes. The quick child tends to become the quick adult. B) No. Skills grow with schooling and fade when they go unused.
  • Does nature shape us more than nurture? A) Yes. Babies differ before anyone teaches them. B) No. Language and beliefs come from other people.
  • Does the marshmallow test predict a child's future? A) Yes. In follow-ups, the children who waited did better later. B) No. A larger repeat of the study found only half the effect.
  • Is a great musician born and not made? A) Yes. Some children hear a tune once and play it back. B) No. Behind every prodigy is a childhood spent at the instrument.
  • Is a second language easier to learn as a child? A) Yes. Children pick up an accent that adults struggle to copy. B) No. Adults study on purpose and already know how to learn.
  • Is a shy child better left to be shy? A) Yes. Quiet is a way of being, not a fault to correct. B) No. A gentle push now spares a harder one later.
  • Is nature versus nurture the wrong question to ask? A) Yes. Genes and surroundings act on each other. Neither wins. B) No. For any single trait it is fair to ask which weighs more.
  • Is one test score a fair measure of intelligence? A) Yes. A good test puts the same questions to everyone. B) No. One morning's score misses curiosity, judgment and effort.
  • Is personality settled by the time a child starts school? A) Yes. The cautious five-year-old is often the cautious adult. B) No. People keep changing with each new school, job and friend.
  • Is play more important than lessons for a five-year-old? A) Yes. Play is where a child practices rules, turns and losing. B) No. Reading and numbers need a teacher and a plan.
  • Is reading to a baby worth it before it knows a word? A) Yes. The voice and the rhythm arrive before the words do. B) No. A baby gains as much from any talk, song or game.
  • Is self-control a skill that can be taught? A) Yes. Waiting gets easier with practice, like any skill. B) No. Some children are simply patient from the start.
  • Is teenage risk-taking a normal part of growing up? A) Yes. Trying things out is how a teenager finds the limits. B) No. Calling it normal excuses choices that can be taught.
  • Is there a deadline for learning a first language? A) Yes. The critical period hypothesis was popularized in 1967. B) No. Later researchers raised doubts about its first evidence.
  • Is there more than one kind of intelligence? A) Yes. A gifted dancer and a gifted mathematician are not alike. B) No. Those are talents. Reasoning is one measurable ability.
  • Was it right to raise baby monkeys with cloth "mothers"? A) Yes. It showed that an infant seeks comfort, not only food. B) No. The infants paid for a lesson still called controversial.

Memory and thinking 25

  • Are unfinished tasks remembered better than finished ones? A) Yes. The Zeigarnik effect, reported in 1927, says exactly that. B) No. The finished job is the one you can describe in full.
  • Are vivid memories of big news more accurate than most? A) Yes. Shock fixes the moment. Flashbulb memory was named in 1977. B) No. People stay highly confident while details are forgotten.
  • Can anyone remember being a baby? A) Yes. Young children can recall events from before age three. B) No. An adult's first memory usually starts near age three.
  • Can people fairly judge evidence against their beliefs? A) Yes. People do change their minds, and every convert proves it. B) No. Confirmation bias: we favor what fits our prior beliefs.
  • Can people truly do two things at once? A) Yes. People cook, talk and listen to the radio every evening. B) No. Attention jumps back and forth, and something gets dropped.
  • Can we think without language? A) Yes. Babies and animals solve problems without a single word. B) No. Try planning next week without talking to yourself.
  • Can you trust your own memory? A) Yes. Most of what we recall each day turns out to be right. B) No. A memory is rebuilt at each telling, and errors slip in.
  • Do dreams mean anything? A) Yes. Dreams return to whatever worried us that day. B) No. A dream is noise that the waking mind turns into a story.
  • Do emotions lead to better decisions than logic? A) Yes. A feeling sums up years of experience in a second. B) No. Anger and fear pick the choice we regret by morning.
  • Do optical illusions show that we cannot trust our senses? A) Yes. If two equal lines look unequal, seeing is not believing. B) No. Illusions are rare tricks. The senses are right all day.
  • Does a photographic memory exist? A) Yes. A few children are reported to hold an image briefly. B) No. Nobody has ever been shown to have a true photographic memory.
  • Does having a phone to look things up make memory lazier? A) Yes. Nobody learns a number they can look up. B) No. It frees the mind for things worth remembering.
  • Does the language you speak shape the way you think? A) Yes. Words are the tools of thought, and languages differ. B) No. Anything said in one language can be explained in another.
  • Is a gut feeling a better guide than slow reasoning? A) Yes. Daily choices are too small and too many to reason out. B) No. A gut feeling is a guess that has not been checked.
  • Is boredom good for the mind? A) Yes. With nothing to do, the mind starts making things up. B) No. A bored mind mostly looks for the nearest distraction.
  • Is cramming the night before a waste of time? A) Yes. What goes in overnight is gone by the weekend. B) No. A night of work beats no work at all on the day.
  • Is creativity a kind of intelligence? A) Yes. Finding a new answer is the hardest thinking there is. B) No. Plenty of clever people never have an original idea.
  • Is forgetting useful? A) Yes. A mind that kept everything could find nothing. B) No. Every lost fact has to be learned all over again.
  • Is rereading your notes a poor way to study? A) Yes. The testing effect favors recalling over reading again. B) No. You cannot recall what you never read closely.
  • Is short-term memory limited to about seven things? A) Yes. A much-cited 1956 paper put the span at about seven items. B) No. It depends what counts as one: a letter, a word or a phrase.
  • Is taking notes with a pen better than typing them? A) Yes. Slow writing forces you to choose what matters. B) No. Typed notes are complete, tidy and easy to search.
  • Is the brain best understood as a computer? A) Yes. Both take in information, store it and fetch it back. B) No. No computer misremembers, daydreams or changes its mind.
  • Should leading questions to a witness be banned? A) Yes. Misleading details after an event can distort a memory. B) No. Some witnesses need a prompt before they recall anything.
  • Should one eyewitness be enough to decide a court case? A) Yes. Someone who saw it happen is the most direct evidence. B) No. Research finds that eyewitness memory is fallible.
  • Should schools teach the memory palace technique? A) Yes. The method goes back to accounts from ancient Rome. B) No. Understanding a subject beats memorizing a list.

Learning and motivation 26

  • Are most fears learned? A) Yes. Nobody is born afraid of exams or of speaking in public. B) No. A baby startles at a loud bang without a single lesson.
  • Can a drooling dog tell us anything about people? A) Yes. Pavlov's dogs showed how one thing comes to signal another. B) No. A person can reason about a signal and choose to ignore it.
  • Can anything be learned with no reward at all? A) Yes. In a classic study, rats learned a maze without a reward. B) No. Finding the way around is a reward in itself.
  • Do a teacher's high hopes raise a student's results? A) Yes. In one school study, young pupils labeled bloomers gained. B) No. Researchers have failed to repeat a strong effect.
  • Do children learn aggression by watching it? A) Yes. In the Bobo doll studies, children copied an adult's blows. B) No. Hitting a toy built to be hit is not hurting a person.
  • Do people learn better alone than in a group? A) Yes. Alone, you move at your own pace. B) No. Explaining an idea aloud shows whether you know it.
  • Do people learn more by watching than by doing? A) Yes. Most skills begin with seeing someone else do them. B) No. Nobody learned to ride a bicycle from the sidewalk.
  • Do rewards make people learn better? A) Yes. A prize gives a reason to start. B) No. When the prize goes, the effort goes with it.
  • Does a reward for a hobby make you enjoy it less? A) Yes. Overjustification: a prize can crowd out the interest. B) No. Paid athletes and artists still love what they do.
  • Does counting a daily streak build a lasting routine? A) Yes. Nobody wants to break a chain they have kept for a month. B) No. When the streak breaks, the routine often goes with it.
  • Does imagining a skill count as rehearsing it? A) Yes. Athletes and musicians run through a move in their heads. B) No. A skill lives in the hands, and hands learn by doing.
  • Does praise lose its power when given for everything? A) Yes. A compliment handed to everyone tells nobody anything. B) No. Encouragement is not a prize, and it does not run out.
  • If rewards shape behavior, is free choice an illusion? A) Yes. If consequences steer every act, choice is only a feeling. B) No. People turn down rewards for reasons of their own.
  • Is a deadline the best motivator there is? A) Yes. Nothing focuses the mind like a due date. B) No. Work done in a panic is rarely anyone's best.
  • Is failure a better teacher than success? A) Yes. A mistake shows exactly where the gap is. B) No. Success shows what works, and that can be repeated.
  • Is fear of a bad grade a useful motivator? A) Yes. A consequence makes the work feel real. B) No. Fear teaches a student to avoid the subject.
  • Is habit stronger than willpower? A) Yes. A habit runs by itself. Willpower has to be summoned. B) No. Every habit began as a decision somebody made.
  • Is human learning basically the same as animal training? A) Yes. Reward and repetition shape a person as they shape a pet. B) No. People learn from a story, a rule or a single example.
  • Is one long study session as good as several short ones? A) Yes. The hours are the same, and a long sitting goes deeper. B) No. The spacing effect favors sessions spread out over time.
  • Is punishment a worse teacher than reward? A) Yes. Punishment shows what not to do and never what to do. B) No. A cost that follows at once is hard to forget.
  • Is the best motivation the kind that comes from inside? A) Yes. Interest keeps going after the prizes stop. B) No. Most people need a paycheck, a grade or a coach.
  • Is training a dog with treats a kind of bribery? A) Yes. The dog sits for the biscuit, not for you. B) No. A reward that follows good work is pay, not a bribe.
  • Is trial and error the most natural way to learn? A) Yes. Thorndike's law of effect: what satisfies gets repeated. B) No. People skip the errors by asking someone who knows.
  • Must basic needs be met before anyone can learn? A) Yes. Maslow's hierarchy of 1943 puts bodily needs first. B) No. The hierarchy is criticized for lacking conclusive evidence.
  • Should a classroom run on points and stickers? A) Yes. A small reward on the spot makes a rule easy to follow. B) No. Children begin to ask what they get for everything.
  • Should lessons match each student's learning style? A) Yes. Students say a lesson that suits them is easier to follow. B) No. Critics find no consistent evidence that matching helps.

Social psychology 27

  • Are people more honest when they think they are watched? A) Yes. Most rules are kept best where they can be seen to be kept. B) No. Honest people are honest in an empty room.
  • Are people more persuaded by a story than by a number? A) Yes. One face is remembered when a thousand figures are not. B) No. A story proves one case. A number covers them all.
  • Can facts alone change someone's mind? A) Yes. People do give up a belief when the evidence piles up. B) No. A belief tied to who you are is defended, not weighed.
  • Did the Stanford prison experiment prove anything? A) Yes. Planned for two weeks, it was stopped on the sixth day. B) No. A critic has argued that the guards were told how to behave.
  • Do first impressions last? A) Yes. Everything later is read in the light of the first meeting. B) No. One good conversation can undo a bad first minute.
  • Do groups make worse decisions than individuals? A) Yes. Groupthink: a wish for harmony can lead to a poor decision. B) No. A group catches the errors one person cannot see.
  • Do people put in less effort in a group than alone? A) Yes. Social loafing: men pulled a shared rope less hard. B) No. Nobody wants to be the one who let the team down.
  • Do the Milgram experiments prove that most people obey? A) Yes. In the first version, 65% went to the highest shock level. B) No. Moved from a famous university to an office, fewer obeyed.
  • Do we blame character too quickly when others slip up? A) Yes. The fundamental attribution error is the name for doing so. B) No. How a person acts, time after time, is their character.
  • Do we choose friends who are like us? A) Yes. Shared tastes are what start most friendships. B) No. The best friend is often the one who is nothing like you.
  • Do we like things more just because we see them often? A) Yes. Mere exposure: familiarity alone can build a liking. B) No. A song played too often becomes the one we cannot stand.
  • Does a crowd bring out the worst in people? A) Yes. In a crowd nobody feels the blame is theirs. B) No. Crowds also cheer, rescue and give.
  • Does an audience make people perform better? A) Yes. Social facilitation: people do better with others present. B) No. Under watching eyes, a difficult task gets harder.
  • Does wearing a uniform change how a person behaves? A) Yes. Dressed for a role, people start to play it. B) No. Character goes on under any jacket.
  • Is a shared goal the best cure for a feud between groups? A) Yes. Working side by side leaves no time for the old quarrel. B) No. Once the job is done, the old sides form again.
  • Is advertising psychology used against the buyer? A) Yes. An advertisement is built to work before you think. B) No. Knowing the trick is there is enough to resist it.
  • Is anonymity what makes people unkind? A) Yes. A name attached to a remark makes its author think twice. B) No. People are rude to each other face to face every day.
  • Is competition enough to turn two groups into rivals? A) Yes. At Robbers Cave in 1954, contests set two groups at odds. B) No. Rivalry needs a prize worth fighting over, not just a game.
  • Is going along with the group a weakness? A) Yes. Agreeing to keep the peace gives up your own judgment. B) No. Trusting others is how any team gets through a day.
  • Is one bystander more help than ten? A) Yes. The bystander effect: people help less in company. B) No. Ten people are ten chances that somebody steps in.
  • Is one dissenting voice enough to break a group's hold? A) Yes. In Asch's tests, one correct partner cut conformity. B) No. A lone objector is easier to ignore than to join.
  • Is peer pressure ever a good thing? A) Yes. A team that trains hard pulls its slowest member along. B) No. A good choice made to fit in is still not your own.
  • Is the situation a stronger force than character? A) Yes. Change the room and the rules, and most people change too. B) No. In the same room, under the same rules, people still differ.
  • Should schools teach how conformity and obedience work? A) Yes. Knowing the pull is the first step to resisting it. B) No. A lesson at a desk changes little in a real crowd.
  • Should teachers grade work without seeing the name on it? A) Yes. The halo effect: one good impression colors the next. B) No. Knowing the student lets a teacher see progress.
  • Would most people give a wrong answer just to fit in? A) Yes. In Asch's tests, about a third of answers went along. B) No. In the same tests, most answers stayed independent.
  • Would most people today refuse Milgram's experimenter? A) Yes. People now are raised to question authority. B) No. Nobody expects to obey until someone in charge insists.

Experiments and ethics 27

  • Are surveys a trustworthy way to learn what people do? A) Yes. Nobody knows your routines better than you do. B) No. People answer as the person they would like to be.
  • Can a questionnaire measure personality? A) Yes. Ask enough questions and a steady pattern appears. B) No. It measures how people describe themselves.
  • Can a rat in a maze teach us about human learning? A) Yes. The basic rules of reward work across species. B) No. A rat does not read, plan a career or sit an exam.
  • Can a study of the researcher alone be good science? A) Yes. Ebbinghaus mapped the forgetting curve by testing himself. B) No. One mind cannot stand for everyone's.
  • Can an online quiz tell you anything true about yourself? A) Yes. Even a silly quiz makes you notice what you prefer. B) No. It tells you what you told it, with a label on top.
  • Can findings from college students be applied to everyone? A) Yes. Attention and recall work the same way in any classroom. B) No. Most samples come from a small, wealthy share of the world.
  • Could it be right to rerun a famous unethical study? A) Yes. Leaving the doubt in every textbook has a cost too. B) No. A rule that bends for a good question is not a rule.
  • Do people act naturally when they know they are studied? A) Yes. After a while people forget the observer is there. B) No. The Hawthorne effect: being observed changes behavior.
  • Do sixty-year-old studies still describe people today? A) Yes. Human nature does not change in a lifetime. B) No. Schools, families and work have all changed since.
  • Do those who know least overrate themselves most? A) Yes. The Dunning–Kruger effect of 1999 describes just that. B) No. One reading calls the pattern mainly a statistical artifact.
  • Does one famous study get too much weight in textbooks? A) Yes. One dramatic study is remembered over ten careful ones. B) No. A vivid study is how a student holds on to the idea.
  • Is a case study of one person real evidence? A) Yes. One unusual case can overturn a rule. B) No. One person may simply be unusual.
  • Is a laboratory too artificial to tell us about real life? A) Yes. Nobody acts the same in a bare room near a clipboard. B) No. Only a lab can change one thing and hold the rest still.
  • Is behavior the only thing psychology can truly measure? A) Yes. Behavior can be seen and counted. Thoughts cannot. B) No. Leaving out thought leaves out most of being human.
  • Is it ever right to deceive people in a study? A) Yes. People who know the real aim behave differently. B) No. Consent means little if the study is not what you agreed to.
  • Is looking into your own mind a valid research method? A) Yes. Only you can report what your experience is like. B) No. Nobody else can check the report.
  • Is psychology a real science? A) Yes. It has had a research laboratory of its own since 1879. B) No. A thought cannot be weighed or put under a lens.
  • Is psychology just common sense with numbers? A) Yes. Most findings are things a grandparent could have told you. B) No. Common sense says "opposites attract" and "like seeks like".
  • Should a child, not only the parent, agree to a study? A) Yes. The child is the one in the room. B) No. A small child cannot weigh what a study involves.
  • Should a finding be repeated before it is taught? A) Yes. Of 100 studies redone in 2015, well under half held up. B) No. Waiting years for a repeat would freeze the field.
  • Should a headline say "causes" when a study finds a link? A) Yes. Readers want to know what to do, not a statistics lesson. B) No. A link can run the other way, or come from a third thing.
  • Should a study stop the moment a volunteer is upset? A) Yes. No finding is worth a volunteer's distress. B) No. Many true things about people are uncomfortable to find.
  • Should people be paid to take part in studies? A) Yes. Their time is worth something. B) No. Pay draws those who need the money, not a fair mix.
  • Should studies be run blind to the expected result? A) Yes. Clever Hans the horse was reading his trainer's cues. B) No. Someone has to understand a study well enough to run it.
  • Should the Stanford prison experiment stay in textbooks? A) Yes. Its flaws teach as much as its findings. B) No. Certain critics have called it unscientific.
  • Was the Little Albert experiment wrong even for 1920? A) Yes. An infant was frightened on purpose and could not agree. B) No. Its author wrote that the fear was not strong or lasting.
  • Were the Milgram experiments worth the distress caused? A) Yes. They showed what nobody had predicted. B) No. Volunteers believed they were giving a stranger real shocks.

How it works

These debate topics for psychology class are 131 questions with no settled answer, in five groups that follow the course: development, memory, learning, social psychology and research methods. Every study and date on a card is sourced under the list.

Read the full guide

Social psychology debate topics

Social psychology holds them: whether most people would give a wrong answer just to fit in, whether the Milgram experiments prove that most people obey, and whether one dissenting voice is enough to break a group's hold.

Debate topics for a developmental psychology class

Nature, nurture and development holds them: whether every child's thinking develops in the same stages, whether a baby's first bond shapes every later relationship, and whether the marshmallow test predicts a child's future.

  • Before a Hard card that names a study, let the class look it up. The card states one fact; the argument needs the method.
  • After the vote, ask who changed sides and why. In a psychology class, the reason is the lesson.

Questions and answers

What are good psychology debate topics?

Ones every student already has a view on: Is forgetting useful? Do first impressions last? Is habit stronger than willpower? All three are Easy cards, so nobody needs to have done the reading.

What are debate topics for high school psychology?

Pick Easy or Medium. A Medium card leans on one idea from the course, such as the bystander effect or the testing effect: Is one bystander more help than ten? Is rereading your notes a poor way to study?

What topics do psychologists debate?

The Hard cards follow arguments still running in the field: whether the Stanford prison experiment proved anything, whether a finding should be repeated before it is taught, and whether lessons should match each student's learning style.

Which psychology topics are up for debate?

The debatable topics in psychology are the ones where studies pull both ways: Do those who know least overrate themselves most? Do a teacher's high hopes raise a student's results? Does a photographic memory exist?

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