What can a card game, an emoji, and a homemade stress ball teach us about human behavior? At a recent Family STEM Night, the Center for Social and Behavioral Science (CSBS) and the Illinois Science (I-Sci) Explorers team invited local families to explore the social and behavioral sciences through hands-on activities designed to spark curiosity about how people think, feel, and interact with one another.
The event welcomed 37 participants for an evening of interactive learning. Families rotated through activity stations that introduced key social and behavioral science concepts—such as emotions, decision-making, probability, and community design—through creative, accessible experiences.
A highlight of the evening was the leadership of the program’s newest team members. Four of the six activities were designed and led by undergraduate team members, while another was developed by graduate student Apoorva Nag during an I-Sci workshop last semester and adapted for this event. Their creativity and enthusiasm helped create a welcoming space where families could learn together through play and conversation.
Discovering Social & Behavioral Science in Action
Probability and SET
This activity introduced families to prediction, patterns, and strategic thinking through dice experiments and the card game SET. Participants practiced spotting patterns while explaining their reasoning.
Guess Who
This activity, designed and led by Bailey Dunsmore, used the classic game to explore how people in a community are both similar and different, encouraging reflection on the diverse traits and experiences that shape individual identities.
Create A City
This activity, designed by Bailey Dunsmore, invited families to design their own cities—including people, buildings, holidays, and rules—before exploring others’ creations like sociologists or anthropologists. The activity highlighted how culture, norms, and human behavior shape communities.
Emotion Wheel
designed and led by Apoorva Nag, guided participants in creating a tool that connects specific feelings with coping strategies, promoting self-awareness and healthy emotional responses.
Emoji Creator
This activity, designed and led by Sarah Jones, encouraged participants to design emoji faces representing different emotions and discuss how people express feelings in unique ways. The activity fostered empathy, perspective-taking, and emotional understanding.
Make a Stress Ball
This activity, designed by Sarah Jones, gave families the chance to create a hands-on stress ball while discussing how stress affects the body and healthy ways to manage it.
Throughout the evening, families were highly engaged, sparking thoughtful conversations and discovering new ways to think about everyday experiences through a social and behavioral science lens.
Connecting Research and Community
Events like Family STEM Night reflect CSBS’s mission to support research, collaboration, and community engagement that advances understanding of human behavior and social systems. Through programs like I-Sci Explorers, CSBS helps undergraduate and graduate students translate research ideas into hands-on activities that make social and behavioral science accessible to families and young learners. As they share their work in creative, interactive ways, student leaders spark early curiosity about STEM and social science concepts. In doing so, CSBS connects academic research with the broader community and inspires curiosity about how social and behavioral science shapes our world. These efforts are made possible through collaboration with the Beckman Institute, the Cancer Center at Illinois (CCIL), the Center for Social & Behavioral Science (CSBS), the Institute for Sustainability, Energy and Environment (iSEE), the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), and the Illinois Chancellor’s Office of Public Engagement.
Stay Connected with I-Sci Explorers
Want to see more activities like these in action? Follow I-Sci Explorers on Instagram for photos from events, activity highlights, and updates about upcoming programs that bring social and behavioral science to families and classrooms.
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