Student Intervention Proposal

Cars, Trucks, Vans, oh my! In the Western world, we have an overwhelming number of vehicles to get around. Many people have their own vehicle, if not two and if they don’t, they have the option of using a taxi, Uber, or Lyft. Many people at Purdue University drive their car to class even if they live on campus out of sheer convenience. The arguable over usage of vehicles in the US is harmful to the environment, unsustainable, and expensive. That is where my sustainable intervention comes in. My intervention is to get Purdue students to ride their bikes to class instead of driving 3 times a week. In order to make my intervention successful, I plan to use the social psychology concepts of anchoring and adjustment, priming, and the availability

The sense of panic that sets in as you jolt up out of bed. The feeling of your heart stopping in your chest as you look at the clock. Odds are, most college students have had this happen at least once. They remember the process of throwing on any clothing in sight and booking it to class to maybe make it on time, but most likely not. In my intervention plan to get Purdue students to ride bikes to class 3 times a week, I plan to use priming with a question about a time they woke up late to class in order to influence their behavior. Priming is the process of temporarily increasing accessibility of a specific schema or a mental framework of how events occur. When someone mentions the words “waking up late for class”, it temporarily makes the schema of what happens when they wake up late for class more available. After using priming to bring about this schema, my intervention will arrive at the fact that students who have bikes are able to get to class quicker than those that walk or drive and have to find a parking spot, potentially saving them from being late at all. Using this technique allows me to relate to their real-life schemas and show them that there is a possible change in what usually happens. Now, when they think of their schema, they have an alternative and see they can change the outcome by getting a