In Agnes, a comic strip by Tony Cochran, the protagonist is an eccentric little girl who lives with her grandmother and who often shares her quirky ideas with her best friend, a girl nicknamed Trout.
In the May 17, 2025 strip, Agnes is sitting on the floor of her classroom with her shoes off. When asked to get back into her seat, Agnes explains that she was just “giving the toes a bit of the old ‘tug-a-roo’ because doing so “aids cognition and promotes relaxation.” The last panel is a common one for Agnes—she is visiting the principal’s office.
In Intro Psych, after covering experiments in the Research Methods chapter, share the comic strip with your students. Ask students to generate a hypothesis based on Agnes’ idea about the benefits of a little tug-a-roo of the toes.
Once your class has a workable hypothesis, ask students to work in small groups to design an experiment that would test the hypothesis. Students should identify the independent variable, including at least one experimental condition and one control condition, and the two dependent variables. For each condition and for each dependent variable, students should have operational definitions.
Following discussion, invite groups to share their experimental designs.
Working with a silly example such as this should take some of the intimidation out of experimental design for your students. But the best part? You will hear your students repeatedly saying “tug-a-roo.”
If time allows, invite students to propose follow-up research ideas. For example, might tugging on someone else’s toes aid cognition? Or would tugging on one’s own ear lobe or left thumb help?
