As each new year dawns, hundreds of people gear up to unlock new habits. Whether it is improved fitness or relationships, these resolutions all have one thing in common - the end goal is increased happiness - and 2025 has proven to be no exception. But is there more to happiness than a new gym routine or updated social calendar? Renowned psychologist and Macmillan author, June Gruber, breaks it down for us with these helpful tips in a light, brief interview. https://www.kunc.org/in-the-noco/2025-01-09/find-your-happiness-in-2025-with-these-tips-from-a-professor-of-psychology-and-neuroscience   ... View more

Friends and colleagues, In 2015 Macmillan invited me to write about teaching Intro Psych for their Communities site. While it was an easy request to say yes to, I had no idea it would be so much fun! This is my 345th blog post (!). I estimate that the posts, collectively, have had around 500,000 views (also, !). Now I have some good news and bad news. Bad news first. This will be my last Macmillan Communities blog post. Now the good news. I will still be writing these kind of blog posts about teaching psychology. You can find the new posts at SueFrantz.com. This website—which I’ve had since 2009—had been Technology for Academics. In the last few years, my focus has shifted from writing about technology to writing about teaching psychology. It just made sense to transition SueFrantz.com from tech posts to teaching psychology posts. If you decide to follow me to the new site, in the right-most column, you can subscribe by entering your email address. When a new post goes up, you will get an email. This is the only thing I will use your email address for. I do not sell my list of subscribers—not that anyone has ever asked me to buy it. I plan to follow the same writing schedule—four blog posts a month. In closing, I want to thank Katherine Nurre at Macmillan for her years of support, and I want to thank all of you intrepid readers for your years of support. Let’s begin the next chapter! In gratitude, Sue Frantz ... View more

“What is the happiest moment of your life?” This is the question Michael Zervos asks people as he travels around the globe (Corbley, 2024). Start by covering the PERMA model of well-being which says that our happiness derives from positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and achievement/accomplishment. If you’re not familiar with the model, this page at positivepsychology.com provides a nice overview.   For this activity, ask your students Zervos’s question: What is the happiest moment of your life? Give students a few minutes to think about their answer. Begin by sharing your answer. Ask students which components of the PERMA model are relevant to your happiest moment. For example, if it was receiving an award, then positive emotion (which should be present in all answers), meaning (if the award underscored your purpose and worth), and achievement/accomplishment (it’s an award!). Next, ask your students to gather in small groups to share their happiest moments and discuss which aspects of the PERMA model are relevant to each person’s happiest moment. To conclude this part of the activity, ask a volunteer from each group to share their happiest moment with the class and its related PERMA model components. Either continuing the small group discussions or as a written assignment, ask students to visit Michael Zervos’s “The Project Kosmos” Instagram site. For each country Zervos has visited, the first video is a country overview, and then he has two videos where he has asked an individual to share the happiest moment of their lives. Students are to select five videos, each from a different country. They should have a mix of locations, ages, and gender. For each video, identify the country, briefly describe the person’s happiest moment, and then identify the related components of the PERMA model. For example, Mehdi in Tunisia. His happiest moment was when his YouTube channel reached 100,000 subscribers earning him a YouTube silver trophy. His moment speaks to positive emotions, meaning, achievement/accomplishment, and maybe even engagement. The happiest moment for Fatou in Mauritania was marrying her husband. It seems to have been an arranged marriage and her relief that he and his family were nice and welcoming is almost palpable. Her moment speaks to positive emotions, relationships, and perhaps achievement/accomplishment. To conclude this activity, ask students to identify any big themes that they noticed. In terms of what makes us happy, are we all more alike than we are different?     Reference Corbley, A. (2024, September 23). He travels to share the happiest moments in people’s lives from every country in the world. Good News Network. https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/he-travels-to-share-the-happiest-moments-in-peoples-lives-from-every-country-in-the-world/   ... View more

Researchers conduction case studies, like any other research methodology involving humans or non-human animals, must address ethical considerations. One of my favorite case studies was done with a person—identified in the literature as SM—who has Urbach-Wiethe (pronounced Er-bock Wheat-ah) disease (Adolphs et al., 1995). While the disease has a number of effects, the most striking is that it adds calcium deposits to the amygdala, rendering it inactive. You can see an MRI of SM’s brain at BrainFacts.org showing her missing amygdala (McMurray, 2020). Class discussion of the ethics of this research fits nicely in the biopsych chapter. If you’ve read Sam Kean’s book The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons, you’ll recognize SM from the amygdala chapter. If you haven’t read The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons, it is a must-read. Your coverage of biopsych will be the better for it. Before class, ask students to read SM’s freely-available, three and a half page case study (Feinstein et al., 2011). Incidentally, this is just one paper. SM has been participating in research for decades. Here’s a more recent (and freely-available) study (Cardinale et al., 2021).   Tell students they’ll be reading a case study of a woman who, due to damage to her amygdala, experiences no fear. “To provoke fear in SM, we exposed her to live snakes and spiders, took her on a tour of a haunted house, and showed her emotionally evocative films” (Feinstein et al., 2011, p. 34). If that quote isn’t enough to get students to read the article, then I’ve got nothing. Also ask students to read the supplementary material available at the end of the article (direct link for the download). This document describes how SM experienced fear up until about the age of 10, which is the age that is typical for Urbach-Wiethe disease to damage the amygdala enough that fear disappears. It also includes an interview with one of SM’s children who reports a memory of his mom picking up a massive snake as well as SM’s description of a time when a man held a knife to her throat and threatened to kill her. In my experience, an article’s supplementary material is never this interesting. Now let’s tackle the ethics. While the paper does not mention IRB approval, we can conclude that they must have had it. In the Acknowledgements section near the end of the article, the researchers note that they had a few National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants. To received an NIH grant, researchers must have IRB approval. Here is the specific section of the federal code that determines what an IRB should be evaluating in a study (Office for Human Research Protections, 2024). While the federal code for IRB approval includes informed consent, minimizing risk/harm to participants, and maintaining privacy of participants, we can find some additional information about each of these in the article and its supplementary materials. Ask students if they found any reference to informed consent in the reading. (Informed consent is mentioned twice. First, on page 34 of the article: “SM provided her informed written consent to participate.” Second, at the bottom of the first page of the supplementary materials, the researchers write, “[O]ur informed consents mention the overarching goals of advancing our knowledge with regard to general concepts such as emotion, memory, and social behavior, but never specifically state our interest in probing fear.” We now know that they do get informed consent from SM.)   Ask students if they have any evidence that the researchers are keeping participant information confidential. (Because we never learn who SM is, the researchers are maintaining her privacy by keeping information about who she is confidential.) Ask students if they have evidence that the researchers protected SM from harm. (On page 34, the researchers write, “For ethical reasons, we chose three situations capable of inducing fear with little to no risk of direct harm to the subject.”)    Ask students if deception was used in this case study. It’s worth noting that the federal code for IRBs does not mention deception (Office for Human Research Protections, 2024). The American Psychological Association (APA) ethics code (8.07), however, does (American Psychological Association, 2017). The APA does not disallow deception, but the ethics code dictates that deception must be used with careful consideration and participants should be told about the deception, ideally, at the conclusion of the study. Without seeing the informed consent form given to SM, we cannot know for certain that deception was not used. However, given that the researchers list on page 34 the three situations that SM would be exposed to and immediately after state that she provided her informed consent, we can reasonably conclude they told her what they were going to be doing. Ask students if they believe the researchers debriefed SM following this study. Debriefing is not mentioned in the article nor is it required by the federal code for IRBs (Office for Human Research Protections, 2024). While the APA ethics code asks that researchers debrief participants, they give researchers an out in 8.08(b): “If scientific or humane values justify delaying or withholding this information, psychologists take reasonable measures to reduce the risk of harm” (American Psychological Association, 2017). We know that SM has been tested many, many times in the last 30 years or so. The researchers tell us in their supplemental material that their informed consent forms say that they are testing emotions generally but not fear specifically. They do this to avoid the chances that SM will change her behavior to give the researchers what they are looking for. It makes sense that the researchers wouldn’t tell her in a debriefing after each study that they are studying her experience of fear specifically. That would clue her in that the next study would also be about fear. We can argue that 8.08(b) applies. In order for the future research with SM to be of scientific value, she cannot know that the researchers are specifically testing her for fear. To conclude this discussion, ask students to identify other potentially fear-inducing situations researchers could use. And, more importantly, what fear-inducing situations carry too high a risk for harm? (Would ziplining be okay? Bungee jumping? Parachuting out of an airplane? How can researchers evaluate such activities for risk?)     References Adolphs, R., Tranel, D., Damasio, H., & Damasio, A. (1995). Fear and the human amygdala. The Journal of Neuroscience, 15(9), 5879–5891. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.15-09-05879.1995 American Psychological Association. (2017). Ethical principles of psychologists and code of conduct. https://www.apa.org/ethics/code Cardinale, E. M., Reber, J., O’Connell, K., Turkeltaub, P. E., Tranel, D., Buchanan, T. W., & Marsh, A. A. (2021). Bilateral amygdala damage linked to impaired ability to predict others’ fear but preserved moral judgements about causing others fear. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 288(1943), 20202651. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2020.2651 Feinstein, J. S., Adolphs, R., Damasio, A., & Tranel, D. (2011). The human amygdala and the induction and experience of fear. Current Biology, 21(1), 34–38. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2010.11.042 McMurray, C. (2020, December 9). Patient S.M. https://www.brainfacts.org:443/in-the-lab/tools-and-techniques/2020/patient-sm-120920 Office for Human Research Protections. (2024, June 11). 2018 Requirements (2018 Common Rule) [Page]. https://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/regulations-and-policy/regulations/45-cfr-46/revised-common-rule-regulatory-text/index.html   ... View more

Any time researchers are gathering data from people or non-human animals, they must be cognizant of and address a number of ethical considerations. Here’s a naturalistic observation study whose ethics could be discussed in the research methods chapter or as a research methods booster in the development chapter or in the social psych chapter (helping). It addresses two of Intro Psych’s integrative themes: “Ethical principles guide psychology research and practice” and “Applying psychological principles can change our lives, organizations, and communities in positive ways” (APA, 2022). Researchers wanted to observe how caregivers—both family members and paid providers—interacted with people with advanced dementia “to understand how care may be improved and inform the development of caregiver educational resources” (Backhouse et al., 2024, p. 2). The article is freely available. To do their study, the researchers needed to observe (and video record) caregivers providing care to people with advanced dementia. While caregivers could be presumed to be able to give consent to participate in the study, ask students if a person with advanced dementia would be able to understand enough to be able to give consent. If not, could someone give consent on their behalf much like parents and guardians are able to give consent for children? After discussion, direct students to page 3 of the research article, in the section titled “Ethical Considerations and Consenting Processes.” Next, ask students to consider the kinds of personal care a caregiver may give to a person with advanced dementia. After listing several, such as teeth cleaning, eating, shaving, and bathing, ask students if some kinds of personal care should be excluded from observation. (Would observing some types of behaviors be potentially harmful?) The researchers determined what behaviors were okay to video record by asking the caregivers which “ones they thought the person, and themselves, would not mind having observed and recorded” (Backhouse et al., 2024, p. 3). By that standard, ask students which behaviors they identified they think would be safe to include. After discussion, direct students to the “Data Collection” section on page 3, and ask them to read the first paragraph under “Video recordings.” Next, ask students how they would record the interactions between caregiver and person with advanced dementia. Would they hide the camera (deception), or would they have a person in the room video recording openly? Which is more ethically problematic? After discussion, direct students to page 3 to read the second paragraph under “Video recordings” for the decision the researchers made.   It is expected that the researchers would maintain participant confidentiality. Direct students to the “Data Availability” section on page 11 to read how confidentiality is maintained. Lastly, institutional review. This study was conducted in the UK, so researchers were ethically bound by the UK Policy Framework for Health and Social Care Research. We see in the “Ethical Considerations and Consenting Processes” section on page 3 that the researchers received ethics approval from the Queen’s Square Research Ethics Committee, London. The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) has dozens of Research Ethics Committees (REC) that are sprinkled throughout the UK. Each REC tries to have at least 15 members. In 2022-2023, half of the REC members were considered lay members—people who are not “currently registered health care professionals, individuals with professional qualifications or experience in clinical research or a previously registered doctor or dentist” (Annual Report for Research Ethics Committees (RECs) in England 1 April 2022 to 31 March 2023, 2023). Ask students to read the 15 “Principles that apply to all health and social care research” and align them with APA’s five general principles. Are there some that don’t fit? If so, should they be included in APA’s ethics code?   There is no mention in the article of a debriefing. In my reading of the UK’s NHS 15 principles, a debriefing is not required. The closest thing to it I see is Principle 11: Accessible Findings where participants must be given access to the research results. While we’re here, let’s take a look at the results. In this study, researchers found that nurturing attentiveness was a key contributor to positive personal care interactions. Ask students to find the researchers’ operational definition of nurturing attentiveness. Hint #1: it’s on page 5. Hint #2: It’s in the “Qualitative Content Analysis” section. To conclude this discussion, ask students to identify other populations who receive care from caregivers where those interactions could also be investigated using this type of naturalistic observation.   References Annual Report for Research Ethics Committees (RECs) in England 1 April 2022 to 31 March 2023. (2023). https://www.hra.nhs.uk/about-us/committees-and-services/res-and-recs/research-ethics-committees-annual-reports/annual-report-research-ethics-committees-recs-england-1-april-2022-31-march-2023/ APA. (2022). Psychology’s Integrative Themes. American Psychological Association. https://www.apa.org/ed/precollege/undergrad/introductory-psychology-initiative/student-learning-outcomes-poster.pdf Backhouse, T., Jeon, Y.-H., Killett, A., Green, J., Khondoker, M., & Mioshi, E. (2024). Nurturing attentiveness: A naturalistic observation study of personal care interactions between people with advanced dementia and their caregivers. The Gerontologist, 64(6), gnae004. https://doi.org/10.1093/geront/gnae004   ... View more

More and more of our students are uninterested in having children. The global fertility rate (number of children per woman) has declined from almost five in 1950 to just a little more than two in 2023. In the United States, we have gone from about three children per woman in 1950 to an all-time low of 1.6. There are 11 countries (per United Nations data) with a fertility rate of one or fewer. In fact, the U.N. data show only three countries that have increased their fertility rate since 1950: Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, and Chad. And how much has the fertility rate increased in each of those three countries? 0.1 (Roser, 2024). After covering child development in your Intro Psych lifespan chapter or in your Lifespan course, share the above data, and then ask your students if any of them have children. Of those who do not, ask if they plan to have children. A Pew Research poll conducted in the summer of 2023 found that of the respondents between the ages of 18 and 49, 47% reported that they were unlikely to have children (Minkin et al., 2024b). Ask students for what reasons people ages 18 to 49 may give for why they are unlikely to have children or why they did not have children. Invite students to work in small groups to generate their list.  After discussion has died down, ask a volunteer from each group to share their list. Write each reason where the class can see it. When a group duplicates the reason of an earlier group, and a mark next to the reason. Share with students the results of a spring 2024 Pew Research poll of 770 adults between the ages of 18 and 49 who neither have children nor intend to have children (Minkin et al., 2024b). Here were the major reasons given: Just don’t/didn’t want to: 57% (women: 60%; men: 50%) Want/wanted to focus on other things: 44% Concerns about the world: 38% Can’t/couldn’t afford raising one: 36% Environmental concerns: 26% Haven’t found/didn’t find right partner: 24% Don’t like children: 20% Negative family experiences as a child: 18% (women: 22%; men: 13%) Medical reasons: 13% Spouse doesn’t/didn’t want children: 11% The same respondents were asked what benefits they saw in not having children. If time allows, ask students to work in small groups to identify the benefits they see. Here were the major benefits respondents identified: Time for hobbies/interests: 80% Money for things they want: 79% Ability to save money: 75% Job/career success: 61% Social life: 58% Of respondents 50 years of age and older who do not have children, 26% worry about having to someone to care for them in their later years. Although of those 50 years of age and older who do have children, 20% worry about the same thing. If you would like to turn this into a written assignment, ask students to interview friends and family members who do not have children the same questions you asked them. Encourage students to interview at least two people who are at least 10 years apart in age. If you’d like to do a deep dive into this as an example of survey research, be sure to read the methodology section for this survey (Minkin et al., 2024a).   References Minkin, R., Menasce Horowitz, J., & Aragão, C. (2024a, July 25). Methodology: The experience of U.S. adult who don’t have children. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2024/07/25/adults-without-children-methodology/ Minkin, R., Menasce Horowitz, J., & Aragão, C. (2024b, July 25). The experiences of U.S. adults who don’t have children. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2024/07/25/the-experiences-of-u-s-adults-who-dont-have-children/ Roser, M. (2024, March 12). Fertility rate. Our World in Data. https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate   ... View more

In doing some research on pain, I came across an open access journal article on an experiment that was testing the effectiveness of pain reprocessing therapy. Their control conditions were usual care and an open-label placebo (Ashar et al., 2022). An open-label placebo (aka non-deceptive placebo) is one where the study volunteers are told that they are being given a placebo. In that study, the placebo did confer some painkilling benefits, but the clear winner was pain reprocessing therapy. Yay! But what about this non-deceptive placebo business? Here's another open access article that used a non-deceptive placebo (Guevarra et al., 2024). This experiment was on reducing depression, anxiety, and stress that were COVID-related. The researchers used the non-deceptive placebo as the experimental condition. The control condition received no treatment, just an assessment. “We hypothesized that the non-deceptive placebo intervention would reduce COVID-related stress, overall stress, anxiety, and depression compared with the control group” (Guevarra et al., 2024, p. 3). Their study took place in Spring 2021 when many places were still under COVID lockdown when COVID-related stress was common. If you would like to give your students some experimental design practice either right after covering experiments in the research methods chapter or as an experimental design booster when you cover stress, give your students this hypothesis, and ask them to fill in a source of stress for students like themselves: “The non-deceptive placebo intervention would reduce [source of stress] stress, overall stress, anxiety, and depression compared with the control group.” The source of stress could be something like food insecurity, financial worries, or major exams. Really, anything students find stressful works. Ask students to work in small groups to design an experiment that would test their hypothesis. Students should identify the independent variable and its levels and the dependent variable. They should also give consideration to where researchers conducting such a study would find volunteers. After discussion has subsided, invite a volunteer from each group to share the experiment their group designed. For the COVID-stress study, researchers recruited participants on social media. Each participant was paid a total of $60 for completing all four sets of surveys (enrollment, baseline, midpoint, and endpoint). They only included adults who were experiencing COVID-related stress as measured by the COVID Stress Scale. Participants were randomly assigned to the control condition or to the non-deceptive placebo condition. Those in the non-deceptive placebo received information on what a non-deceptive placebo is and how effective they are. Since this study was conducted remotely, participants in this condition were sent placebos in the mail. The participants were instructed to take the pills for two weeks, one pill with breakfast and one pill with or after dinner. Where does one get placebos, you ask? Amazon. For this study, researchers used Zeebo’s blue and white capsules. Zeebo markets themselves as “the world’s leading placebo brand.” Their placebos are considered a dietary supplement. I suppose they have to be something, and they’re clearly not a drug. The directions on the Zeebo bottle: “For bothersome symptoms. Take as needed.” Disclaimer: “You may or may not respond to placebo. Do not use Zeebo to replace or delay medical treatment.” And it was only after typing Zeebo four times did I finally realize it’s “placebo” without the “pla.” They’re not cheap at $24.45 for 45 capsules ($22.45 if you do ‘subscribe and save’). You can get a 30-count placebo pill made by a brand called Generic for $14.95. In short, expect to pay about 50 cents for each pill. Although the more expensive the placebo, the more effective it is (Díaz-Lago et al., 2023). Given that, I’d encourage Zeebo to add a more expensive placebo to their product line: Zeebo Extra Strength.   The non-deceptive placebos were effective in reducing COVID stress, overall stress, anxiety, and depression. The control group also experienced decreases in all four measures, but the decreases for the participants in the non-deceptive placebo were much greater (Guevarra et al., 2024). If you’d like to read more about non-deceptive placebos, here’s an open access review and meta-analysis from the journal Nature in 2023 (Spille et al., 2023).     References Ashar, Y. K., Gordon, A., Schubiner, H., Uipi, C., Knight, K., Anderson, Z., Carlisle, J., Polisky, L., Geuter, S., Flood, T. F., Kragel, P. A., Dimidjian, S., Lumley, M. A., & Wager, T. D. (2022). Effect of pain reprocessing therapy vs placebo and usual care for patients with chronic back pain: A randomized clinical trial. JAMA Psychiatry, 79(1), 13. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2021.2669 Díaz-Lago, M., Blanco, F., & Matute, H. (2023). Expensive seems better: The price of a non-effective drug modulates its perceived efficacy. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 8(1), 8. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-023-00463-4 Guevarra, D. A., Webster, C. T., Moros, J. N., Kross, E., & Moser, J. S. (2024). Remotely administered non‐deceptive placebos reduce COVID‐related stress, anxiety, and depression. Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being, aphw.12583. https://doi.org/10.1111/aphw.12583 Spille, L., Fendel, J. C., Seuling, P. D., Göritz, A. S., & Schmidt, S. (2023). Open-label placebos—A systematic review and meta-analysis of experimental studies with non-clinical samples. Scientific Reports, 13(1), 3640. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-30362-z     ... View more

Here’s some experimental design practice for your Intro Psych students. This would work right after covering experiments in the research methods chapter or as an experimental design booster in the social psych chapter. Ask students to read this Science Daily summary of an experiment on grocery purchases (Shin et al., 2024), and then work in small groups to answer the following questions. The article does not explicitly say what the research hypothesis was. However, based on the information given, what do you believe their primary research hypothesis was? What was the independent variable? Identify each level of the independent variable. (The experiment used a within-participants design, meaning each participant experienced each level of the independent variable.) What was the primary dependent variable? Briefly summarize the results. This study was conducted in a virtual grocery store using virtual money. Can we assume researchers would see similar results in a real grocery store where consumers were using their own money? Why or why not? Using the same independent variable and dependent variable, describe how this study could be conducted in the field under real-life conditions. The original research article (Shin et al., 2024) includes photos of the online store, how the nutritional score was displayed for each item, and how the individual’s nutritional score was displayed. If time allows, share with your students that the participants were recruited from Facebook and Instagram, were all in Singapore, were 21 years of age and older, and were the primary shopper in their household. How might each of these factors influence the results? One last note about the within-participants design. The researchers noted this design as a study limitation in their research article (Shin et al., 2024). They acknowledged that there seemed to be carryover when participants saw nutritional labeling first followed by the control condition. Since the conditions were counterbalanced, the researchers also compared participants just based on the first store they saw. They still saw the effect of peer influence.     Reference Shin, S., Gandhi, M., Puri, J., & Finkelstein, E. (2024). Influencing the nutritional quality of grocery purchases: A randomized trial to evaluate the impact of a social norm-based behavioral intervention with and without a loss-framed financial incentive. Food Policy, 125, 102646. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2024.102646   ... View more

I’m a fan of infusing research methods throughout the Intro Psych course. We introduce psychology’s most common research methods early in the course, but we should revisit them every now and again in the context of psychology’s content to help make them stick. Think spacing effect.   First, a note on getting journal articles. For college and university faculty, accessing journal articles through their library’s databases is usually a pretty easy process. If your library doesn’t have it, you can request it through interlibrary loan (ILL). For high school teachers, getting research articles can be challenging. Some journals will make some articles freely available. Some authors make their articles freely available to download via ResearchGate. You will need a ResearchGate account, but it is free to join. Other authors—or the same authors, but different journal articles—will give you the option to contact them via ResearchGate for a copy of their article. If the author isn’t on ResearchGate, email them directly to ask for a copy of their article. Provide a full citation. Researchers may publish several articles on the same topic in the same year. Wherever you find an abstract, you can often find the email address of the lead author. If you can’t find the email address, you can usually find their affiliation. An Internet search of their name and affiliation will usually yield a page at their institution that includes an email address. Do not ever feel shy about contacting researchers to request a pdf of an article or to ask questions about their research. The vast majority of researchers, frankly, are thrilled to learn that someone is interested in their research. I’m not kidding. Interlibrary loan (ILL) may be another option for you. Ask your public library librarians if they do ILL for journal articles. Also, don’t be afraid to ask your friends who are college or university faculty. Just be sure to rotate your requests through your network. You don’t want to wear out your welcome with one person with a single request for a dozen articles! Finally, be aware that some of the classic case studies discussed in Intro Psych textbooks are not good examples, such as Phineas Gage. “Recent historical work, however, suggests that much of the canonical Gage story is hogwash, a mélange of scientific prejudice, artistic license, and outright fabrication,” writes one of my favorite science writers, Sam Kean (Kean, 2014). (If you have not yet read Kean’s book The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons, I highly recommend it. Kean dives into each major area of the brain, discussing both its history and current research.) Below are some case study examples, organized by pillar (Gurung et al., 2016). As with all research articles, you don’t have to understand every word to get the point. That’s probably a message worth communicating to our students. Researchers write journal articles for other researchers who are doing research in their same area. They are not writing for a general audience. Even researchers who work in other areas of the field may not grasp every word. And that’s okay! If you can get enough of the big picture to share the research with students—even if it’s in broad strokes—you are good to go. Here's an example of where I needed help with the big picture. I wrote a blog post recently on how the mapping of the motor cortex that we’ve taught for decades is wrong (Frantz, 2024). It was based on fMRI findings researchers published in the journal Nature (Gordon et al., 2023); the article is freely available. The lead author, Evan M. Gordon, is a radiologist at the Washington University School of Medicine. I am absolutely certain radiologists would understand just about every word in that article. I, however, am not a radiologist. I’m not even a biopsychologist; my background is in social psychology. With a rudimentary understanding of biology, however, I could grasp most of the article, but there were places where I struggled enough that I could not quite see the big picture. So, I did the only reasonable thing. I emailed Gordon. He replied very quickly—and graciously. It took an exchange of just a few emails for me to get it. The result was that blog post.   Biological Stevens, J. A., Cole, W. G., & Vishton, P. M. (2012). Using touch or imagined touch to compensate for loss of proprioception: A case study. Neurocase, 18(1), 66–74. https://doi.org/10.1080/13554794.2011.556124. [Download full text via ResearchGate.] Feinstein, J. S., Adolphs, R., Damasio, A., & Tranel, D. (2011). The human amygdala and the induction and experience of fear. Current Biology, 21(1), 34–38. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2010.11.042. [Full text available.] Tuckute, G., Paunov, A., Kean, H., Small, H., Mineroff, Z., Blank, I., & Fedorenko, E. (2022). Frontal language areas do not emerge in the absence of temporal language areas: A case study of an individual born without a left temporal lobe. Neuropsychologia, 169, 108184. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2022.108184. [Download full text via ResearchGate.]   Cognitive Linden, M. V. (1996). Semantic memory and amnesia: A case study. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 13(3), 391–414. https://doi.org/10.1080/026432996381953. [Download full text via ResearchGate.] Gould, C., Froese, T., Barrett, A. B., Ward, J., & Seth, A. K. (2014). An extended case study on the phenomenology of sequence-space synesthesia. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00433 [Download full text.]     Developmental Kocabaş-Gedik, P., & Ortaçtepe Hart, D. (2021). “It’s not like that at all”: A poststructuralist case study on language teacher identity and emotional labor. Journal of Language, Identity & Education, 20(2), 103–117. https://doi.org/10.1080/15348458.2020.1726756 [Request full text from the authors via ResearchGate.] Nelis, P., Pedaste, M., & Šuman, C. (2023). Applicability of the model of inclusive education in early childhood education: A case study. Frontiers in Psychology, 14, 1120735. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1120735 [Download full text.]     Social & Personality Herrick, S. S. C., Rocchi, M. A., & Couture, A. L. (2020). A case study exploring the experiences of a transgender athlete in synchronized skating, a subdiscipline of figure skating. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 44(5), 421–449. https://doi.org/10.1177/0193723520919816. [Request full text from the authors via ResearchGate.]   Ferguson, D., & Martin-Dunlop, C. (2021). Uncovering stories of resilience among successful African American women in STEM. Cultural Studies of Science Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-020-10006-8. [Request full text from the authors via ResearchGate.] Leporelli, E., & Santi, G. (2019). From psychology of sustainability to sustainability of urban spaces: Promoting a primary prevention approach for well-being in the healthy city designing. A waterfront case study in Livorno. Sustainability, 11(3), 760. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11030760. [Download full text via ResearchGate.] Hu, X., Sidhu, G. K., & Lu, X. (2022). Exploring positive psychology factors in the quality of English as a foreign language classroom life: A case study. Environment-Behaviour Proceedings Journal, 7(22), 17–22. https://doi.org/10.21834/ebpj.v7i22.4153. [Download full text via ResearchGate.]   Mental & Physical Health Black, Z. A., & McCarthy, P. (2020). A case study of a trainee sport psychologist adopting a person-centred approach with a professional basketball player. Sport & Exercise Psychology Review, 16(2), 74–83. https://doi.org/10.53841/bpssepr.2020.16.2.74. [Author’s accepted manuscript.] Borg, M. B. (2002). The Avalon Gardens Men’s Association: A Community health psychology case study. Journal of Health Psychology, 7(3), 345–357. https://doi.org/10.1177/1359105302007003226. [Request full text from the author via ResearchGate.] Blackwell, S. E., & Holmes, E. A. (2017). Brightening the day with flashes of positive mental imagery: A case study of an individual with depression. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 73(5), 579–589. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.22455. [Download full text.]     References Frantz, S. (2024, July 20). The classic motor cortex map is wrong. Macmillan and BFW Teaching Community. https://community.macmillanlearning.com/t5/psychology-blog/the-classic-motor-cortex-map-is-wrong/ba-p/21746 Gordon, E. M., Chauvin, R. J., Van, A. N., Rajesh, A., Nielsen, A., Newbold, D. J., Lynch, C. J., Seider, N. A., Krimmel, S. R., Scheidter, K. M., Monk, J., Miller, R. L., Metoki, A., Montez, D. F., Zheng, A., Elbau, I., Madison, T., Nishino, T., Myers, M. J., … Dosenbach, N. U. F. (2023). A somato-cognitive action network alternates with effector regions in motor cortex. Nature, 617(7960), 351–359. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-05964-2 Gurung, R. A. R., Hackathorn, J., Enns, C., Frantz, S., Cacioppo, J. T., Loop, T., & Freeman, J. E. (2016). Strengthening Introductory Psychology: A new model for teaching the introductory course. American Psychologist, 71(2), 112–124. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0040012 Kean, S. (2014, May 7). Phineas Gage, neuroscience’s most famous patient. Slate. https://slate.com/technology/2014/05/phineas-gage-neuroscience-case-true-story-of-famous-frontal-lobe-patient-is-better-than-textbook-accounts.html ... View more

“’You never know if your perception is a normal perception or if it’s a particular perception that differs from other ones,’ says Fabien Hauw, a neurologist and cognitive neuroscientist” (Makowski, 2024a). Many years ago, after I finished a short lecture on synesthesia in Intro Psych, one of my students raised her hand. She said, “I have synesthesia.” She went on to say that she didn’t know it was an unusual thing until a few months earlier when she was standing with a group of friends, and one was talking about this peculiar thing he had just learned about in his (my) Intro Psych course. As he explained that some people see colors when they hear sounds, my current student said, “Doesn’t everyone experience that.” All eyes turned her. No, no, they don’t. Some number of terms later, I shared with students that sometimes when it’s quiet—most commonly before falling asleep—a sudden noise results in a flash of a light pattern, such as a bright hashtag/pound sign or checkerboard. My (now laughable) mistake was that I assumed this was an experience everyone had. The looks on my students’ faces made it clear that it is not. Interestingly (or not), I haven’t had this experience in at least five years—neither the flash of light nor those looks on my students’ faces. With that as my mental backdrop, I read with great interest an article in the July/August 2024 issue of Scientific American about ticker tape synesthesia, aka ticker taping (Makowski, 2024b). The article is available freely online (Makowski, 2024a). It’s especially interesting because the writer—a copy editor for Scientific American—has ticker tape synesthesia. The name ticker tape synesthesia is unfortunate, because to explain what this is to our students we first have explain what a ticker tape is. The Wikipedia article on ticker tape will get your students (and you?) up to speed quickly. We already have to explain what a cocktail party is when describing the cocktail party effect, so we’re used to this sort of problem. Sir Francis Galton described ticker tape synesthesia in 1883. While he didn’t call it that, he did reference the telegraph technology that made ticker tapes possible: Some few persons see mentally in print every word that is uttered; they attend to the visual equivalent and not to the sound of the words, and they read them off usually as from a long imaginary strip of paper, such as is unwound from telegraphic instruments. The experiences differ in detail as to size and kind of type, colour of paper, and so forth, but are always the same in the same person (Galton, 1907, p. 67). In short, ticker tape synesthesia is personal captioning—words that are heard become words that are seen. As a person with this form of synesthesia hears someone speaking—including themselves (Hauw et al., 2023), their brain automatically generates text. Some people describe the text as scrolling across their mind’s eye, like a ticker tape. Others describe it as a few words appearing and then being replaced with the next set of words. Others describe the text as coming out of the mouth of the person who is speaking. What if the person doesn’t know how to spell the word? The word may appear as fuzzy text. What if two people are speaking? There are two streams of text in different locations (Makowski, 2024b). Some people with ticker tape synesthesia report that the written words may look different depending on context. For example, if the speech they are hearing is particularly emotional, the words may take on a different color, may tremble, or may be larger. Some report that louder voices result in larger words. What about words that are sung? The words may be less visible or may “undulate according to the melody” (Hauw et al., 2023, p. 171). And what about numbers? They typically appear as Arabic numerals rather than written out as words (Hauw et al., 2023). I wonder if someone who is well-versed in APA-style would see numbers one through nine as spelled out rather than as Arabic numerals. And if they would apply the exceptions, such as “6 cm.”   Research into the underlying brain mechanisms of ticker tape synesthesia is just getting started, but as you might imagine initial results show increased activity between the areas of the brain associated with seeing written words and the areas associated with processing speech (Hauw et al., 2024). Even though ticker tape synesthesia is currently thought to be rare, I suspect that the more people hear about it, the more people will say, “I experience that. Doesn’t everybody?”     References Galton, F. (1907). Inquiries into human faculty (2nd ed.). https://galton.org/books/human-faculty/text/galton-1883-human-faculty-v4.pdf Hauw, F., Béranger, B., & Cohen, L. (2024). Subtitled speech: The neural mechanisms of ticker-tape synaesthesia. Brain, 147(7), 2530–2541. https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awae114 Hauw, F., El Soudany, M., & Cohen, L. (2023). Subtitled speech: Phenomenology of tickertape synesthesia. Cortex, 160, 167–179. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2022.11.005 Makowski, E. (2024a, July 1). My synesthesia transforms speech into text I ‘see’ in my head. Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/my-synesthesia-transforms-speech-into-text-i-see-in-my-head/ Makowski, E. (2024b, August). Speech transforms into text I “see.” Scientific American, 331(1), 90–92.   ... View more

Here are two free resources that will help you prepare for your next Intro Psych course. While I suggest assignments, you can certainly keep these for your own reference.      Neuroscience I hear from Intro Psych instructors that the biopsych chapter is one they are frequently uncomfortable teaching. As a resource, I highly recommend this free book: Brain Facts: A Primer on the Brain and Nervous System. It is published by the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) and is available as a pdf, ePUB, MOBI, and as a Sound Cloud audio book. At 136 pages (71 pdf pages), its 18 chapters will help you help your students better understand psychology’s biological underpinnings. Here’s a sample of chapters: Chapter 2: Senses & Perception Chapter 7: Infant, Child, & Adolescent Brain Chapter 11: Childhood Disorders Chapter 12: Psychiatric Disorders Chapter 14: Injury & Illness Better yet, because this book was written for a general audience, you can assign chapters to students. For example, first ask your Intro Psych students to match each chapter in the Brain Facts book with the chapters you will be covering in the course. Next, ask students to pick one chapter to read. A student who was particularly interested in the biology of sleep might choose Chapter 9: Brain States. Or a student with a grandparent who is experiencing cognitive challenges might choose Chapter 8: Adult and Aging Brain. Or a student who has experienced addiction—either themselves, or as a friend or family member—might choose Chapter 13: Addiction. Since the purpose of this activity is to introduce students to free resource from a reputable organization, you can simply ask students to quote part of the chapter that they chose to read that they found particularly interesting, and then explain why they found it interesting. If you’d like to put a minimum word count on the assignment, tell students that the quote does not count toward that word count. Score the assignment as complete/incomplete.   Industrial/Organization Psychology For instructors wanting to include more examples of how psychology can be applied to real-world situations, the good folks at the Society for Industrial/Organizational Psychology (SIOP) have written a free I-O chapter. You are welcome to use this chapter—just be sure to give SIOP credit. If your Intro Psych textbook allows for customization, add the chapter to your book. The nicely-designed pdf is 23 pages. The chapter could work as an end of course assignment. If you are using APA’s integrative themes, one option would be ask students to quote text from the chapter that illustrates each of the integrative themes with a brief explanation of how their chosen example fits the theme. If you are not using the themes, another option would be to ask students to quote text from the chapter that illustrates content from, say, at least five chapters that you covered in the course. Again, each quote should be accompanied by a brief explanation of how that quote fits with their chosen chapter. This assignment could also be scored as complete/incomplete.         ... View more

Need another example of the American Psychological Association’s integrative theme #1: “Psychological science relies on empirical evidence and adapts as new data develop”? The motor cortex map that psychology instructors have been teaching since the 1940s is now known to be wrong. In retrospect, that’s not too surprising. Wilder Penfield and Edwin Boldrey mapped it by electrically stimulating different areas of the motor cortex and seeing which muscles moved. Today’s brain imaging techniques are, let’s say, more refined. In this open access Nature article, Evan Gordon and colleagues (2023) report using fMRI to map the motor cortex. And it sure looks different.* [Nature gives these permissions for this article and its images: “Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.”] Figure a is, of course, the classic homunculus. Figure b is what researchers found when they looked at the motor cortex with fMRI. There are two big differences. First, there are three main areas centered by toes, fingers, and tongue. The areas on either side of these core areas, researchers believe, control opponent muscle groups. For example, one elbow area may control the biceps whereas the other elbow area may control the triceps (E. Gordon, personal communication, July 18, 2024). The second big difference are the three action/body areas. These action/body areas connect to many areas of the brain including those associated with free will, executive control, and pain. The action/body area between the areas centered on the fingers and centered on the tongue has especially strong connections to the visual cortex, perhaps creating a mechanism for eye-hand coordination (Gordon et al., 2023). What about the somatosensory cortex? Researchers have found a few differences (Willoughby et al., 2021), but we should be able to stick with our existing somatosensory cortex map for the time being. The motor cortex mapping team are working on solving the challenges associated with mapping the entire somatosensory cortex (E. Gordon, personal communication, July 18, 2024). We can let students know that research is ongoing on the specifics, but that the general principle that the greater the sensitivity of the body part, the more area devoted to it in the somatosensory cortex still holds.    As for the map of the motor cortex, it’s going to take a bit of time for the textbooks to catch up to this new information because of the publishing timeline, but they will get there.   Reference Gordon, E. M., Chauvin, R. J., Van, A. N., Rajesh, A., Nielsen, A., Newbold, D. J., Lynch, C. J., Seider, N. A., Krimmel, S. R., Scheidter, K. M., Monk, J., Miller, R. L., Metoki, A., Montez, D. F., Zheng, A., Elbau, I., Madison, T., Nishino, T., Myers, M. J., … Dosenbach, N. U. F. (2023). A somato-cognitive action network alternates with effector regions in motor cortex. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-05964-2 Willoughby, W. R., Thoenes, K., & Bolding, M. (2021). Somatotopic arrangement of the human primary somatosensory cortex derived from functional magnetic resonance imaging. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 14, 598482. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2020.598482   ... View more

We know that using a cell phone while driving is dangerous, and that the risk of crashing is even greater among teenage drivers (Gershon et al., 2019). I’ve heard people say, “Let them crash. They’ll learn.” While punishment delivered as an environmental consequence can be effective, we’re not talking about a child not watching where they are walking and bumping into a pole. We’re talking about people piloting 2,000-pound missiles filled with flammable liquids traveling over 60 mph. Not only might a crash caused by inattention kill the driver, but it might kill their passengers, pedestrians, and the occupants of other vehicles. In addition to the cost in lives, there are the medical costs of the people who survive and the financial payouts related to the vehicles. The more people that crash vehicles, the greater the cost of medical and car insurance for everyone. In sum, we are all better off when people do not crash. After covering operant conditioning, invite your students to work in small groups (in person or in a class discussion forum) to answer this question: What can we do to encourage drivers to use their cell phones less while driving? If you’d like to add in some experimental design practice, ask students how they could test their ideas. They should include the levels of the independent variable with operational definitions and the dependent variable with operational definition. Invite volunteers from each group to share their ideas and their experimental designs. Lastly, share with students this freely available journal article that describes how one research team addressed this issue (Delgado et al., 2024). Ask students to answer the following questions: The researchers didn’t have a hypothesis because they didn’t have a prediction of the results. Instead, they had a question and an objective. What were these? When was the study conducted? How many volunteers participated in the study? How long were data collected from each volunteer? There were six levels of the independent variable which the researchers called “trial arms.” Identify all six, and describe how each was operationally defined. What was the primary dependent variable which the researchers call “measure”? How many seconds per hour on average were the control group volunteers on their phones while driving? The researchers report that their statistical analyses showed that the only interventions that had an effect compared to the control group were “standard incentive plus feedback,” “reframed incentive plus feedback,” and “double reframed incentive plus feedback.” How many seconds per hour less compared to the control group on average were the volunteers in these three groups on their phones while driving? What was the average cost per person for the most successful intervention? In the “discussion” section of the article, the researchers note that the heaviest phone users while driving showed no impact from the interventions. What do you think the heaviest phone-use-while-driving drivers are doing on their phones while driving? Identify an incentive that you think would help such drivers reduce phone use while driving. I recently had a conversation with a person who said that she knows that being on her phone while driving is dangerous. When she finds herself picking up her phone when she is driving, she immediately tosses it into the backseat.   References Delgado, M. K., Ebert, J. P., Xiong, R. A., Winston, F. K., McDonald, C. C., Rosin, R. M., Volpp, K. G., Barnett, I. J., Small, D. S., Wiebe, D. J., Abdel-Rahman, D., Hemmons, J. E., Finegold, R., Kotrc, B., Radford, E., Fisher, W. J., Gaba, K. L., Everett, W. C., & Halpern, S. D. (2024). Feedback and financial incentives for reducing cell phone use while driving: A randomized clinical trial. JAMA Network Open, 7(7), e2420218. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.20218 Gershon, P., Sita, K. R., Zhu, C., Ehsani, J. P., Klauer, S. G., Dingus, T. A., & Simons-Morton, B. G. (2019). Distracted driving, visual inattention, and crash risk among teenage drivers. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 56(4), 494–500. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2018.11.024   ... View more

“If you could introduce any two scientists, regardless of where and when they lived, whom would you choose, and how would their collaboration change the course of history?” (Bismuth et al., 2023, p. 28). The good people at the journal Science asked young scientists that question. (Access the freely available article.) Some of my favorite pairings are Leonardo da Vinci and the Richard Feynman (theoretical physicist), da Vinci and Nikola Tesla (electrical and mechanical engineer), Ada Lovelace and Alan Turing (both computer scientists), Abu Ali al Hasan ibn al-Haytham (mathematician and optician) and Isaac Newton (physicist), and Charles Darwin and Deisy das Graças de Souz (psychologist who studied behavior evolution). With each pairing, the writer briefly explains what each scientist was known for and why the pairing would have changed the course of history. I am very interested to hear how your students would answer this version of the question: If you could introduce any psychological scientist to another scientist, regardless of where and when they lived and regardless of discipline, whom would you choose, and how would their collaboration change the course of history? Posed at the end of an Intro to Psychology course, this could be a fascinating class discussion, in person or online. Give the question to students at least a week before the discussion to give students time to consider their chosen scientists. For me, I have to wonder what our kitchens would like now if Lillian Gilbreth’s engineering mind had collaborated with Leonardo da Vinci’s engineering mind. I bet they could have sorted out a better solution for our refrigerators—the one appliance that just does not quite fit seamlessly into our kitchens. Refrigerators are more of a sore thumb, actually. They are not standard size. They don’t sit flush with our counters and cabinets. Any cabinets above them are useless. For that matter, I would love to hear your answer to that question. Please post your thoughts in the comments.   Reference Bismuth, K., Sharma, V., Powell, J. R., Tang, H., Cao, B., Huang, J., Patel, R. J., Bezerra, P., Zhang, X., Wen, Q., Oda, F. S., Verstiuk, O., Khan, M. S., Virgüez, E., Zhi, Y., & Dedyo, J. M. (2023). NextGen voices: Historic introductions. Science, 382(6666), 28–30. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adk8769 ... View more

It’s easy for us to talk about schedules of reinforcement in terms of bar-pressing rats. And it’s just as easy for us to talk about vending machines and slot machines. The behavior for both rats and humans is largely the same: pressing a button or lever. The reinforcement in these cases is something concrete: food or money. But reinforcement can be other things, too. For example, the praise we get from others, such as our caregivers, friends, and teachers, can be a very powerful reinforcement. After covering reinforcement in Intro Psych, ask students to work in small groups to identify three to five behaviors that are reinforced by the words or emotional responses of other people. For example, if we tell a joke and people laugh, we are more likely to tell more jokes. If people laugh at dad jokes but not knock-knock jokes, we are more likely to tell more dad jokes. Or if people groan at our dad jokes and we enjoy that response, we are more likely to tell more dad jokes. I’m convinced that people who frequently make puns enjoy the groans, speaking as one who groans at puns. Washington Post advice columnist Carolyn Hax was asked by a reader, “When I make big life decisions and even some small ones, I wonder, will [my parents] be impressed or disappointed? And I often feel hurt when they don’t offer praise when I’m expecting it. They are extremely judgmental” (Hax, 2024). In Hax’s reply, she writes, “If you were a lab rat, you’d be mashing the reward button all day for two? zero? random cubes of cheese” (Hax, 2024). While lab rats don’t work for cheese, the point holds. Ask students to read the (gifted to you) Hax column, and answer the following questions: What behavior of the letter-writer is (occasionally) reinforced by their parents? What is the reinforcement? Is the reinforcement given on a fixed or a variable schedule? Explain. If the letter-writer was on a ratio schedule of reinforcement, what would that mean? If the letter-writer was on an interval schedule of reinforcement, what would that mean? If you have covered intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, ask your students these additional questions. 6. Based on the letter, was the letter-writer getting a tattoo intrinsically motivated or extrinsically motivated? Explain. 7. Based on the letter, is the desire to hide the tattoo from their parents intrinsically motivated or extrinsically motivated? Explain.     Reference Hax, C. (2024, June 10). She’s in her 40s and thriving, yet craves her parents’ approval. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2024/06/14/carolyn-hax-daughter-craves-parent-approval/       ... View more