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

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

I have written previously about the fear of needles in the context of COVID vaccine hesitancy. This NPR story got me thinking about this again (Dembosky, 2024). First, we have children who are traumatized by getting shots that their conditioning continues into adulthood with the end result of less likely to volunteer to get important medical care, including vaccines. Second, we have caregivers who are traumatized by their traumatized children. It cannot be easy to know that you are the one who okayed the shot that has resulted into your child screaming. I can’t help but wonder how many people stand behind an anti-vax principle because they don’t want to admit that they are terrified of needles or can’t bear to watch their child be terrified of needles. And third, it’s traumatic for the healthcare professionals, too. In the article, one physician said doing this to children made her decide against going into pediatrics. The major point of the article is that it doesn’t have to be this way. One physician argues that there are a number of things healthcare professionals can do to make getting shots less traumatic. Use a topical numbing cream. Dentists figured that one out a long time ago (thank God!). We’re beyond time for other healthcare professionals to do the same. Numbing cream should be used routinely for children and offered to adults. For babies, while getting a shot, let them breastfeed or give them a sugar-dipped pacifier. Anything that will comfort them will help. For toddlers and older children—and I’d add adults even, distraction, distraction, distraction. The NPR story suggests “teddy bears, pinwheels or bubbles.” They missed an obvious one, though: digital distractions. These include movies, games, and music. I had a dentist who had a ceiling-mounted monitor and headphones. Patients would pick a movie to watch during a dental cleaning or other procedure. After the appointment, the dental staff would write in the patient’s chart where they were in the movie so they could pick up there on their next visit. As another example, I once had to see a dental specialist. The dentist and assistant played classic rock music during my visit—and they both sang along to the music. They were pretty good! The best I could do was sort of hum along—you try humming with your mouth hanging open! They appreciated my participation nonetheless. I never had a reason to see them again, but I would have gone back in a heartbeat. “No more pinning kids down on an exam table.” Their caregiver should hold them. In retrospect, that seems obvious.   Following coverage of classical conditioning or during coverage of phobias would both be fine places to discuss this topic with students. Here are a couple possible discussion questions. Have you (or your child) ever been offered a topical numbing cream before getting a shot? If so, what was your experience like? If not, would you consider asking for a topical numbing cream next time? We discussed a few different distractions that could be useful with children and adults. What other distractions can you think of that may be helpful for children, yourself, or other adults? The NPR story ends with suggesting that these techniques could also work with people with dementia who, like children, have no idea why someone is hurting them. There is reason to believe that the same anti-pain techniques would work with this population, too: “Numbing cream, distraction, something sweet in the mouth and perhaps music from the patient's youth that they remember and can sing along to.”  The article ends with this quote from one of the doctor’s interviewed for the story: “It’s worthy of study, and it’s worthy of serious attention.” If you’d like to give your students a little experimental design practice, divide students into small groups. Give each group a specific intervention: numbing cream, distraction, something sweet in the mouth, music from a patient’s youth. The population they are looking at are people with dementia. Students should keep in mind that dementia is not inevitable with aging (Fishman, 2017), so as they think about their sample and their intervention, they should focus on dementia, not age. Groups should identify and operationally define their dependent variable as well as identify and operationally define their independent variable. Students also need to consider the ethical challenges in conducting research with participants who are unable to give their consent to participate. Ask students to review section 3.10 of the APA ethics code and be sure to include in their study description how they would handle informed consent (American Psychological Association, 2017). After discussion, invite volunteers from each group to share their designs.   References American Psychological Association. (2017). Ethical principles of psychologists and code of conduct. https://www.apa.org/ethics/code Dembosky, A. (2024, February 13). Shots can be scary and painful for kids. One doctor has a plan to end needle phobia. NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/02/13/1230448059/shots-needles-phobia-vaccines-pain-fear-kids Fishman, E. (2017). Risk of developing dementia at older ages in the united states. Demography, 54(5), 1897–1919. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-017-0598-7   ... View more

Let’s keep things light and look at some more psychology-related comic strips this week. Whether you use these in lecture, on an exam, or as discussion or assignment prompts, be sure to follow the classroom usage policy set by the comic strip’s licensing agency. If you have any doubts, link to the comic strips instead of using the image. Conformity: Close to Home by John McPherson: December 16, 2023 Identify the factors discussed in class and in your readings that contribute to conformity. In this comic strip, which of those factors are illustrated? Explain.   Operant conditioning: Real Life Adventures by Gary Wise and Lance Aldrich: December 20, 2023 Which of the father’s behaviors is being reinforced? What is the reinforcement? If the father is on a variable ratio schedule of reinforcement, what would need to happen? If the father is on a fixed ratio schedule of reinforcement, what would need to happen?   Operant conditioning: Dog Eat Doub by Brian Anderson: December 29, 2023 Which of the dog’s behaviors is being reinforced? What is the reinforcement? If the dog is on a variable ratio schedule of reinforcement, what would need to happen? If the dog is on a fixed ratio schedule of reinforcement, what would need to happen?   Sleep: Strange Brew by John Deering: December 21, 2023 Research how much caffeine is in a Starbucks venti americano. Site your source. Next, research how much caffeine is considered safe for daily consumption. Site your source. Lastly, explain how caffeine use during the day can affect sleep quality at night. ... View more

Let’s lighten things up this week and look at some psychology-related comic strips. Whether you use these in lecture, on an exam, or as discussion or assignment prompts, be sure to follow the classroom usage policy set by the comic strip’s licensing agency. If you have any doubts, link to the comic strips instead of using the image. Operant conditioning: Drabble by Kevin F@gan: November 28, 2023 (Note: The comic strip artist's name was auto-bleeped by this platform, so I replaced the first 'a' in his last name with @.) Which of dad’s behaviors is being reinforced? What is the reinforcement? What schedule of reinforcement does this best illustrate? Explain.   Operant conditioning: Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson: December 2, 2023 Which of the boy’s (Calvin’s) behaviors is being reinforced? What is the reinforcement?   Classical conditioning: Lio by Mark Tatulli: November 28, 2023 If your students are unfamiliar with the roadrunner cartoons, they’ll need to watch at least one to understand this comic strip. Fortunately, Warner Bros has made them available on YouTube. While you could choose any of these videos, you should exercise due diligence and watch several—right now, even—to ensure that you are choosing the best video or videos for your students’ educational experience. Through many interactions with the roadrunner, Wile E. Coyote has been classically conditioned. In this comic strip, identify the unconditioned stimulus, unconditioned response, conditioned stimulus, and conditioned response.   Personality: Speed Bump by Dave Coverly: November 29, 2023 While this comic strip asks us to imagine escaping a room full of extroverts, let’s imagine a little different scenario. Escape rooms feature a set of puzzles that must be solved in order to successfully finish the game and escape the room. Let’s imagine that a team of four people who all scored low on openness were trying to complete the puzzles. First, describe this trait. Next, based on your understanding of this trait, describe the challenges this group may have in solving the puzzles. Now, repeat this exercise for low conscientiousness. Again, for high agreeableness. And, lastly, for low emotional stability.     ... View more

I knew someone who didn’t want to see their primary care physician about knee pain because, “They’re just going to tell me to lose weight.” I couldn’t blame this person for not wanting to see physician. This person had gotten that message previously—more than once; going to their physician had become aversive. Operant conditioning predicted what was going to happen. Needed healthcare was avoided because they didn’t want to be chastised yet again. The biggest problem with the “lose weight” advice is that if it were that easy, we would have already done it. Also, “losing weight” is not a behavior. It’s not something we can just do. “Let’s see what’s on my to-do list today: reply to email, wash clothes, shop for groceries, lose weight.” We’re less than a month out for the next round of New Year’s resolutions. I bet “lose weight” will be on a number of resolution lists, and not necessarily because physicians have told us to lose weight. Because everyone has told us to—through words and looks. Losing weight is a poor choice for a resolution, though. Resolutions should be actionable. I can eat more vegetables, less salt, and less red meat. I can lift weights four days a week (although exercise will not help you lose weight; it just keeps you from gaining). Losing weight, however, is not actionable; it’s not a behavior. Side story: I had a husky mix who had the husky wanderlust. He got very good at escaping from our backyard. I would go out into the neighborhood to round him up. He’d come to me, I’d take him home… and put him in his kennel as punishment. Had I spent any time at all thinking about this, I could have predicted the result. He’d still escape the yard, and I’d still go back out to round him up. But now he wouldn’t come to me. That was my big DOH! moment. Why would he come? He knew he was going to be put in his crate. To reverse this dynamic, I had to pull out the special treats. These were treats that were only used for special occasions. Without too many repetitions, I could yell “special treats!” and he’d come running. Some physicians have had a similar DOH! moment. “I keep telling my patients to lose weight.” “Wait. Why aren’t my patients coming in for routine care? Why are they waiting longer to have their healthcare needs addressed when sooner is better?” “Could it be because they don’t want to talk to someone who is nagging them?” Could be. The physicians who seem to have had this DOH! moment are turning their practices into weight-neutral practices. One physician who has adopted this approach said, “We don’t recommend weight loss as a way of treating medical conditions… We recommend moving your body in a way that’s sustainable, which hopefully is joyful [and] eating food in a way that nourishes” (O’Neill, 2023). This approach is about reinforcing behaviors that contribute to good health. Weight is irrelevant. Weight-neutral medical practices may also feel more welcoming to Black women who perceive thinness as a “white” thing (Hughes, 2021). I would imagine that every time a physician tells a Black woman with this perception to lose weight, she may hear, “I want you to be more white.” It’s not hard to see why she wouldn’t be in a hurry to see this physician again. Our future healthcare professionals are taking our Intro Psych classes. Let’s help them understand the power of operant conditioning. Now, what to do about family members who feel free during holiday visits to comment on our weight (and relationships, or lack thereof, and everything else that’s not their business)? No, I don’t want to see those relatives, either.   Reference Hughes, E. (2021). “I’m supposed to be thick”: Managing body image anxieties among black American women. Journal of Black Studies, 52(3), 310–330. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021934720972440 O’Neill, E. (2023, December 2). Some doctors are ditching the scale, saying focusing on weight drives misdiagnoses. NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/12/02/1216455346/doctors-weight-loss-neutral-inclusive-misdiagnoses     ... View more

The New York Times published a freely-available 5-minute opinion piece on credit cards that offer rewards. They argue that the money rewards cards give back has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is from the transaction fees the credit card companies—most notably Visa and Mastercard—charge business owners. They believe that using rewards cards ultimately hurts those in the lower economic strata who are less likely to use rewards cards and so don’t reap their benefits while still paying the higher prices the businesses have to charge to cover the transaction fees. The economists and public policy experts at the International Center for Law and Economics have a different opinion. I am not an economist, but I understand enough to know that this is all more complicated than it may first appear. I am also not so naïve as to believe that if we all stopped using cash-back credit cards, Visa and Mastercard would reduce these transaction fees. As a consumer, however, I have been encountering the reinforcement and punishment of credit card use. I have a credit card that gives me 5% back on gas purchases. Our local gas stations will give me 10 cents off per gallon if I pay with cash. With gas at $3.00 a gallon, when I use this credit card, I get 15 cents off per gallon. I am reinforced with money for using the credit card. The price of gas would need to drop to $2.00 per gallon for the 10 cents for cash equals the 5% back on my credit card. Now let’s imagine a fantasy world where gas is less than $2.00 per gallon. Even if it would cost me less to pay cash, the hassle of walking into the gas station, standing in line, and waiting for the cashier to make change would make using the credit card at the pump or using the app on my phone a more desirable option. And that’s not even calculating the cost of the snacks I’m more likely to purchase if I walk in. In short, the use of this particular credit card at gas stations is reinforced. I also have a credit card that give me 3% back on restaurant purchases. Because of the credit card transaction fees, our favorite local restaurant started adding a 3.5% credit card use fee to all credit card transactions. On a $30 bill (including tip), that’s $1.5, but we would only get 90 cents back from our credit card. Sixty cents isn’t much, but it doesn’t require any extra effort on our part to pay cash—it takes just as long to wait to for server to return with change as it does to wait for them to return with a credit card receipt to sign—so we pay cash and save the 60 cents, thank you very much. In other words, at this restaurant, our credit card use is punished with an extra cost, so we don’t use it. I wonder, though, if customers at this restaurant would be even more likely to pay cash if what we were charged initially included the 3.5% credit card use fee and they framed it as a 3.5% discount for using cash. It’s an empirical question! If you’d like to give your students some experimental design practice, ask them how they would go about testing that hypothesis. Last example. We have a rewards card that gives us 1.5% back on all purchases. We had to have the thermostat replaced on our car. Our mechanic recently started passing the 3.5% cost of the credit card transaction fee onto their clients. On a bill of a few hundred dollars, I would be punished in the form of having to pay many dollars for using my credit card. This was an easy decision. I kept the credit card in my wallet and paid by check. And, no, I don’t remember the last time I wrote a check. As more businesses adopt this strategy, I look forward to the development of the handheld printer that will print checks. It’ll connect via Bluetooth to an app on my phone. I enter the business name and amount, and it prints out the check for me to sign. Ask students if they have a cashback rewards card and if they decide when to use it based on whether businesses explicitly pass the transaction fees solely onto credit card users. My examples may be specific to me—what I find reinforcing and punishing. I can see where some people choose to use the credit card regardless—either because they’ve decided that the convenience of using a card (or app) always outweighs the dollar cost or because they don’t have the cash available so need to put the purchase on credit. ... View more

Earlier this week it was announced that U.S. consumer credit card debt has surpassed one trillion dollars for the first time. Interestingly, there is a positive correlation between household income and the number of households who have carried their credit card debt for more than a year. “Bankrate found that 72 percent of cardholders with credit card debt and annual household incomes of $100,000 or more have been in debt for at least a year. The percentage drops to 70 percent for households with credit card debt and incomes between $80,000 and $99,999; 63 percent for people earning between $50,000 and $79,999; and 53 percent for folks making under $50,000.” (Singletary, 2023). That is a lot of people who are paying interest on their credit card balances. The current average credit card interest rate is a whopping 24.69% (Black & Saks Frankel, 2023). The average U.S. consumer has $5,947 in credit card debt (Dickler, 2023). At least some consumers pay off their credit cards every month, but let’s take someone who is carrying $5,947 in debt on a credit card with a 24.69% interest rate. Nerdwallet’s credit card interest calculator can tell us how much interest we’d pay this month: $121.87. Credit card issuers vary on how they determine minimum payments. For balances over $1,000, the minimum payment for the major credit card issuers is commonly 1% of the balance owed plus interest and fees (Tsosie, 2022). For our hypothetical person who owes $5,947, their minimum payment would be $59.47 (1% of the balance) plus $121.87 (interest) for a total of $181.34. That $59.47 barely touches the principle. Why don’t credit card issuers have an even lower minimum, say, below the amount of interest? Because U.S. federal guidelines discourage it (Tsosie, 2022). Interestingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, 29% of credit card holders make only the minimum payment or up to $50 above minimum. Why? Anchoring appears to be the culprit. These credit card holders seem to use the minimum payment as the anchor and then adjust up from that (Keys & Wang, 2019). When covering anchoring bias in Intro Psych, this example would provide an opportunity to give students a financial literacy booster. When young adults make the transition to independent living, do they have the financial literacy skills to help them keep their debt to a minimum? “Julie O’Brien [PhD in Social Psychology], head of behavioral sciences at U.S. Bank, said before they transition into the real world, it’s important to help your children understand the psychological side of finances. Buying new things can create positive emotions, which mentally reinforces to teens that spending is a good thing. Meanwhile, saving money doesn’t produce instant gratification, making it more difficult to do” (Glass, 2023). I’d even add that paying down credit card debt can be aversive. Giving money to a credit card issuer means less money for me to use. Reframing should help, though. The less money I owe on my credit cards, the less interest I’ll pay, and the more money I will have for me in the long run. Let’s say that instead of paying $121.87 in interest every month, I took a year’s worth of that interest ($121.87 x 12 months = $1,462.44) and put it into a 9-month CD that earns 5%. At the end of that term, I’d get all of my money back plus I’d make $73.12. I have noticed an interesting trend among some of my students. They have turned increasing their credit score into a game. Every time they pay down their debt, their credit score goes up. Several of my students have celebrated their increased credit scores as their good news for the week in our class online discussion boards. Their classmates have congratulated them and followed up by asking how they did it.   Talking about financial behavior in terms of reinforcement and punishment makes our coverage of operant conditioning another opportunity to talk about financial literacy.   References Black, M., & Saks Frankel, R. (2023, August 7). What is the average credit card interest rate? Forbes Advisor. https://www.forbes.com/advisor/credit-cards/average-credit-card-interest-rate/ Dickler, J. (2023, August 10). Average consumer carries $5,947 in credit card debt—A 10-year high. CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/10/average-consumer-carries-5947-in-credit-card-debt-a-10-year-high.html Glass, K. (2023, July 18). The life skills teens should know before leaving home. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2023/07/18/teen-life-skills/ Keys, B. J., & Wang, J. (2019). Minimum payments and debt paydown in consumer credit cards. Journal of Financial Economics, 131(3), 528–548. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfineco.2018.09.009 Singletary, M. (2023, August 9). Credit card debt tops $1 trillion, trapping even six-figure earners. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/08/08/credit-card-debt-1-trillion-high-earners/ Tsosie, C. (2022, November 28). How credit card issuers calculate minimum payments. NerdWallet. https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/credit-cards/credit-card-issuer-minimum-payment   ... View more

A friend and I recently stayed at a bed and breakfast in northern England. The proprietor’s dog—a black terrier named Branston—was an excellent host. There were eight of us at breakfast—four Brits and four Americans. Branston spent some time lying on the floor and some time rotating amongst us. For a few guests, he didn’t limit himself to just looking at us with his puppy dog eyes. He upped it by putting his head in our laps. While Branston’s owner would prefer that guests not give him food, she said that some do. And she said that those who do are most often Americans. She swears that Branston spends more time with Americans, identifying us by our accents. I wasn’t even halfway into my full English breakfast before I was deep into thinking about operant conditioning. Branston is on both a variable interval and variable ratio schedule of reinforcement. Variable interval. At breakfast, people drop stuff. Branston’s behavior of circulating amongst the guests is occasionally rewarded with finding food on the floor. Variable ratio. At breakfast, when Branston looks at a guest, his looking behavior is sometimes rewarded by being given a tasty morsel. If that doesn’t work, his head-in-the-lap behavior, he has learned, sometimes results in the same reward. Discriminative stimulus—anything that signals that a behavior is more likely to be reinforced. Branston has learned that some people are more likely to reward his behavior with food than others. Is there a way he can increase his odds? It sure sounds like Branston is using accents as a discriminative stimulus. If Americans really are more likely to give him food, then it makes sense that he would learn that American accents sound different than, say, British, Danish, or Italian accents. When he hears someone who sounds American, he spends more time looking at them—and putting his head is their lap—because he has learned that we’re more likely to reward this behavior. Consider using this example to explain discriminative stimulus. If time allows, give students a few minutes to share in small groups other examples of a discriminative stimulus that they have experienced or witnessed. ... View more

Reading this freely available Ars Technica article “This is catfishing on an industrial scale” (Cole & Wired.com, 2023) left me feeling like I was watching a train wreck in slow motion. Each paragraph left me more horrified than the last. Frankly, there is a lot of psychology in this article, but for the purpose of this blog post, let’s talk about who is being reinforced for and with what. I learned in the article that some dating sites are not what they seem. After being hired by one dating site, “Liam was asked to adopt fake online personas—known as ‘virtuals’—in order to chat to customers, most of them men looking for relationships or casual sex. Using detailed profiles of customers and well-crafted virtuals, Liam was expected to lure people into paying, message by message, for conversations with fictional characters” (Cole & Wired.com, 2023). Of course, the customers think they are interacting with a real person, not a fictional character. Each virtual has a dossier as does each customer. Every two minutes, a different employee takes over the virtual persona and continues the chat. When the employee switches to a new virtual, the employee scans the dossiers of both the virtual and the customer as well as recent messages. This helps the employee know how best to respond to the customer’s latest message. The entire goal is to get the customer to send just one more message. Why the switch every two minutes? The Ars Technica article does not address this, but it must be to keep the employees from getting attached to customers and to keep the customers from getting attached to a real person. Customers pay about 2 euros to send a message to the virtual—who, again, they believe is a real person. The employees get paid a mere 2 euros/hour. At today’s exchange rate, that is US$2.14. Since that is a very low pay rate for someone, say, in the U.S., such employees may sublet. For example, if I were hired by such a company at €2/hour, I could hire someone who lives somewhere where €0.80/hour is a decent enough wage to do my job for me. While the remaining €1.20/hour is not much to someone living in the U.S., it’s more than nothing, and, frankly, it’s not a bad wage for the amount of work required—which is nothing. The Ars Technica article does point out, “While illegal and not endorsed by the customer service companies, black market subletting is common in the industry” (Cole & Wired.com, 2023). To sum up the experience of one subletter, “While he chats, he pretends to be the owner of the account, who is pretending to be a woman in the United States, who is pretending to be hundreds of virtual women” (Cole & Wired.com, 2023). Liam, who no longer works for this company, had “seen users talking to the virtuals about their heaviest emotional concerns: ‘one was talking about suicide and how the fake woman had saved him from it, now that he’d found love.’ Liam had seen marriage proposals from users, some who had been on there as long as four and a half years. ‘And how can you blame them,’ says Liam, ‘when the system is doing its best to get to know you as well as it can?’” (Cole & Wired.com, 2023). In this industry, there is a whole bunch of positive reinforcement going on. If you’d like, summarize the article for your students, and then provide examples of positive reinforcement. Or if you’d like to use this as a launch point for discussion, ask your students to read the Ars Technica article “This is catfishing on an industrial scale” (Cole & Wired.com, 2023). Next, ask whose behavior is being positively reinforced and with what. We have the customers who keep coming back, we have the owners of the company who keep running this service, we have the official employees, and we have the sublet employees. And then there are Liam and another employee, Alice, who no longer work for the company. For them, was the positive reinforcement too little to outweigh the positive punishment that came with #$%&ing* with people’s feelings? Lastly, what does it say about how lonely people must feel that they turn to such sites in the first place?   *The article does use the f-word. If that’s an issue with your student population, consider sharing a redacted article instead.   Reference Cole, L. & Wired.com. (2023, May 17). This is catfishing on an industrial scale. Ars Technica. https://arstechnica.com/culture/2023/05/this-is-catfishing-on-an-industrial-scale/   ... View more

I read with increasing horror a New York Times article describing how college and university athletic departments have partnered with sportsbooks to encourage betting among their students. (The legal betting age in the U.S. varies by state. In ten states the minimum age is 18, in Alabama it is 19, and in all of the rest—including D.C.—it is 21. See the state list. In Canada, the age is 18 or 19 depending on province. See the province list.) “Major universities, with their tens of thousands of alumni and a captive audience of easy-to-reach students, have emerged as an especially enticing target” for gambling companies (Betts et al., 2022). While what I’d like to write is an opinion piece about the financial state of colleges and universities (how is it that public funding has evaporated?), how athletic departments have come to operate outside of the college and university hierarchy (why does my $450 airfare to travel to a professional conference have to be signed off on by a raft of people, but an athletic department can sign a $1.6 million dollar deal without the university’s Board of Regents knowing anything about it?), and the ethically-suspect behavior of a college or university using their student contact information—such as email addresses that the institution provides to them and requires them to use for official communication—to encourage those students to bet on sports. But I’m not going to write that opinion piece. At least not in this forum. Instead, I am going to write about what I know best: teaching Intro Psych. If our colleges and universities are going to encourage our students to gamble on sports, psychology professors need to be more explicit in discussing gambling. Within casinos, slot machines are the biggest gaming moneymaker (see this UNLV Center for Gaming Research infographic for an example). For everything you could possibly want to know about slot machines, I highly recommend Addiction by Design by Natasha Dow Schüll, cultural anthropologist at New York University. Slot machines and sports betting are similar in that they both pay out on a variable ratio schedule. People play slot machines to escape; they are powered by negative reinforcement, not positive. Each win provides the ability to play longer, and thus to spend even more time not thinking about problems at school, at work, at home, or in the world. The goal of the slot machine manufacturer and casino is to get you to stay at the machine longer. Having recently visited a casino, I was impressed by some of the newer innovations designed to do just that, such as comfy seats and phone charging pads built into the slot machine itself. While sports betting may—initially at least—be driven by positive reinforcement. Each win feels good and apparently outweighs the punishment of a loss. However, like slot machines, sports betting can become an escape. The time spent planning bets, placing bets, monitoring the games and matches one has put money on, and then trying to find ways to fund the next round of bets can be time not spent thinking about problems at school, at work, at home, or in the world. Since we’re talking about decision making, cognitive biases are also at play. For example, the availability heuristic may have us give undue attention to the big betting wins our friends brag about. Are our friends telling us about their big losses, too? If not, we may feel like winning is more common than losing. We know, however, that winning is not more common. Every time someone downloads the University of Colorado Boulder’s partner sportsbook app using the university’s promo code and then places a bet, the university banks $30. If the sportsbook is giving away $30 every time, how much money in losing bets per person, on average, must the sportsbook be collecting? While there are many topics in the Intro Psych course where sports betting can be discussed, I’ll suggest using it as an opener for discussion of psychological disorders. To be considered a psychological disorder, a behavior needs to be unusual, distressing, and dysfunctional (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Ask students to envision a friend who lies about how much they are gambling, who has wanted to quit or greatly reduce how much they are betting but can’t seem to be able to, and who is using student loans to fund their betting. Do your students think their friend meets the criteria for a psychological disorder? Why or why not? If you’d like, have students discuss in small groups, and then invite groups to share their conclusions. Gambling disorder is a DSM-V diagnosis categorized under “Substance Use and Addictive Disorders.” In previous editions of the DSM, it was called “gambling pathology” and was categorized as an impulse control disorder. Also in previous DSMs, illegal activity was a criterion for diagnosis; that has been removed in DSM-V. To be diagnosed with gambling disorder, a person must—in addition to impairment and/or distress—meet at least four of the following criteria: Requires higher and higher bets to get the same rush Becomes irritable during attempts to cut back on gambling Has been repeatedly unsuccessful when trying to cut back or stop gambling Spends a lot of time thinking about gambling When stressed, turns to gambling as an escape Chases losses (for example, after losing a $20 bet, places an even higher bet to try to get the $20 back) Lies about how much they are gambling Gambling interferes with their performance in school or in a job or has negatively affected interpersonal relationships Gets money from others to support their gambling Poll your students—even by a show of hands—to find out if they know someone, including themselves, who meet at least four of these criteria. For help with a gambling problem, residents of the U.S., Canada, and the U.S. Virgin Islands can contact the National Problem Gambling Helpline by calling or texting 1-800-522-4700 any day at any time. For those who prefer chat, visit this webpage. For additional peer support, recommend gamtalk.org. References American Psychiatric Association (Ed.). (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders: DSM-5 (5th ed). American Psychiatric Association. Betts, A., Little, A., Sander, E., Tremayne-Pengelly, A., & Bogdanich, W. (2022, November 20). How colleges and sports-betting companies ‘Caesarized’ campus life. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/20/business/caesars-sports-betting-universities-colleges.html ... View more

The American Heart Association (AHA) developed a list of the seven top predictors of cardiovascular health, dubbed “Life’s Simple 7” (American Heart Association, n.d.). A longitudinal study of 11,568 volunteers spanning a median of 28 years found that when volunteers had high “Life’s Simple 7” scores, their risk of stroke decreased, even when they had a higher genetic risk (Thomas et al., 2022). All of the “Life’s Simple 7” factors have behavioral components. Don’t smoke. Quitting counts. Former smokers who have not smoked in over a year earn a green checkmark. Body mass index (BMI) between 18.5 and 25 is optimal. For someone who is 5’6”, AHA’s ideal weight is between 115 and 154. A reverse BMI calculator, such as this one, makes it easier to identify a target weight. Moderate exercise (e.g., brisk walk) for at least 150 minutes each week. Healthy diet. The AHA defines this as 4.5 cups of fruits and vegetables per day, 3 servings of whole grains per day, and 2 servings of fish per week. Additionally, we should consume less than 36 ounces of sugary beverages (e.g., sweet tea, sugar-sweetened coffee and soda) per week and less than 1,500 mg of sodium per day. The Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) eating plan has more specifics. Total cholesterol under 200. Blood pressure lower than 120 over 80. Fasting blood glucose lower than 100. As a concluding activity for the Intro Psych course, ask students—either as a solo or group project—to choose one of AHA’s seven factors. Some factors will overlap. For example, blood pressure is related to high BMI, low exercise, and too much dietary sodium. For their chosen factor, students are to identify at least one concept from at least three different chapters that are relevant to their factor. Operant conditioning, stress, and conformity, for instance, may all arguably play a role in each of the seven factors. To end this section, students are to suggest one concrete behavioral change plan that an individual can implement. Point out to students that their suggested plan needs to be more than “exercise more” or “eat better.” Pretty much everyone already knows that. Explain that there is often a difference between knowing what we should do and actually doing it. Most students know that they should start working on research papers early in the term, yet how many students actually do? Telling students to get to work on their research papers as soon as the papers are assigned is unlikely to change behavior. What, then, might actually change behavior? Encourage students to use what they learned in the course to inform their suggestion. Our health is not just an issue for individuals. It is also a social justice issue. If we do not have access to quality healthcare, we don’t know what our blood pressure, cholesterol, and fasting blood glucose numbers are, let alone have someone who can help us move those numbers into heart healthy territory. If we live in a community with only a corner store and no grocery store, our ability to purchase fruits, vegetables, and whole grains may be limited or too expensive for us to purchase, whereas processed foods that tend to be high in sodium may be easier to get. For an overview of issues in health equity, invite students to read Jennifer Kelly’s presidential paper in the American Psychologist (Kelly, 2022). For their project, ask students to describe racial, ethnic, socio-economic, or other societal disparities for their chosen factor and provide possible explanations for those differences. As an example, people who have less money are more likely to live in neighborhoods where they feel unsafe. If it feels unsafe to be outside our home, we are unlikely to walk 150 minutes each week. We could use a treadmill indoors, however if we had the money to buy a treadmill and the space to set it up—or the money for a gym membership, we probably would not be living in a neighborhood that feels unsafe. Students are to suggest one concrete plan that can be enacted at the community level that would help reduce health disparities for their chosen factor. For example, are there things community leaders can do to make communities safer or ways they can create safe exercise spaces? Through doing this project, students will have more of an appreciation for the role that psychology and communities can play in improving the health of everyone.   References American Heart Association. (n.d.). Life’s simple 7. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://playbook.heart.org/lifes-simple-7/ Kelly, J. F. (2022). Building a more equitable society: Psychology’s role in achieving health equity. American Psychologist, 77(5), 633–645. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0001019 Thomas, E. A., Enduru, N., Tin, A., Boerwinkle, E., Griswold, M. E., Mosley, T. H., Gottesman, R. F., & Fornage, M. (2022). Polygenic risk, midlife life’s simple 7, and lifetime risk of stroke. Journal of the American Heart Association, e025703. https://doi.org/10.1161/JAHA.122.025703   ... View more

In the June 2022 edition of the APA Monitor on Psychology is an excellent article on the psychology of traffic safety. The article features David Strayer’s “four horsemen of death”: speed, impairment, fatigue, and distraction. Given the number and breadth of psychological concepts covered, this article provides fodder for a good end-of-term assignment. It may also save the lives of your students. Note that the journalist uses the term “crash” rather than “accident.” “Crash” is the preferred term by U.S. government agencies, such as the CDC and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The word “accident” implies an incident that could not be avoided. The word “crash” does not carry that connotation. Giving the causes of traffic fatalities are due to driver decision-making, whether it be the driver of the vehicle or the driver of another vehicle, “crash” is a better descriptor than “accident.”   Ask students to read the article “Improving Traffic Safety” (Pappas, 2022), and then answer the following questions. How many people died on U.S. roadways in 2020? Speed. What percentage of the 2020 traffic fatalities were estimated to be caused by excessive speed? The article describes three ways that our environment can contribute to unsafe driving. Take a photo of a road in your area that illustrates one or more of these environmental hazards. Explain. The article also describes three ways that our environment can contribute to safe driving. Take a photo of a road in your area that illustrates one or more of these environmental benefits. Explain. In a survey of drivers at the beginning of the pandemic, researchers “saw an increase in respondents saying they were more likely to break the law because they knew they were less likely to be caught.” Explain this finding in terms of operant conditioning. With fewer people on the roads during the pandemic shut-down, researchers speculate that street racing may have increased. What Ontario law led to a reduction in street racing? Explain this effect in terms of operant conditioning. If you are primarily a driver, what can you do to reduce your chances of dying in a car crash due to speed? If you primarily a passenger, what can you do to reduce your chances of dying in a car crash due to speed? Impairment. What percentage of the 2020 traffic fatalities were estimated to be caused by impaired driving? Based on your reading of the article, describe the relationship between stress, alcohol, and driving while impaired. What Big Five personality trait is associated with a history of driving while impaired and reckless driving? Given your knowledge of this trait, why might that association exist? Fatigue. What percentage of the 2020 traffic fatalities were estimated to be caused by fatigue? Why might this number be an underestimation? Summarize what you learned in this course about the effects of sleep deprivation. Choose five effects, and for each, briefly explain how it could negatively effect driving.   According to the article, what have Australian highway authorities done to combat boredom on empty stretches of highway? Distraction. What percentage of the 2020 traffic fatalities were estimated to be caused by distracted driving? Explain how stress may contribute to distracted driving. Explain how the design of cars may contribute to distracted driving. Give at least one example. Conclusion. What was the most surprising thing you learned in this article? Explain. Identify at least one concept you learned in this course that could apply to speed, impairment, fatigue, or distraction but was not discussed in the article. Briefly describe the concept, and then explain how it could be a contributor to car crashes.   Reference Pappas, S. (2022, June). Improving traffic safety. Monitor on Psychology, 53(4), 46–55.       ... View more

In a 2008 10-minute TED Talk, Joshua Klein described how he created a vending machine for crows, and how he trained crows to use it using basic operant conditioning principles. Once trained, crows deposited coins in exchange for peanuts, a tasty snack for crows. (See? You’re not the only one working for peanuts.) While the coin vending machine is fun, it’s not very practical. Maybe, say, in the 1970s coins were commonly dropped on the street, because, well, there were more coins being carried around. But now? I doubt that our local crow population be able to come up with enough coins to cover the cost of the peanuts. Coins, though, are not the only thing that could be deposited in a vending machine. Södertälje, Sweden (home to the Tom **bleep** Experiment Science Museum*) evidently has a problem with people tossing their cigarette butts on the ground. A company called Corvid Cleaning has created a crow vending machine where, once trained, crows will be able to deposit cigarette butts in exchange for peanuts. After covering operant conditioning, share the above information with students, then open it up for discussion. Here are a few discussion questions to get things started. What responsibility does Corvid Cleaning have to ensure that the crows are not harmed by the litter they are picking up? [They report that they will be monitoring the health of the crows.] Is it ethical to pay wild crows to pick up human litter? Would it be more ethical to train humans to not toss their cigarette butts on the ground? Using what we know about operant conditioning, how could we train humans to not litter?   *I visited the museum’s website to learn the story behind the name. Because my knowledge of Swedish is limited to what I learned from the Muppets Swedish chef, I was very thankful that they offer an English translation. From the museum’s About page: “The slightly quirky name Tom **bleep** originates from a an imaginary figure who carried out scientific experiments in the French magazine L'Illustration at the end of the 19th century. Tom **bleep** demonstrated experiments and encouraged the readers to try out various fun activities with a scientific theme. Which is pretty much what we do here at Tom **bleep** Experiment!” ... View more

In the Society for the Teaching of Psychology (STP) Facebook group, Bridgette Martin Hard wondered why conditioning (as in classical and operant conditioning) is called conditioning (members of the STP Facebook group can read the discussion). While I had heard that this was due to a mistranslation of Pavlov’s work, it was Olga Lazareva who provided the details. Lazareva explains that Pavlov wrote условный in his papers. When you pop that into your favorite Russian translation website, you’ll see that the most common English translations are “conditional” and “contingent.” Lazareva goes on to say, “Pavlov called the whole thing условный рефлекс, or conditional reflex, to be distinguished from безусловный рефлекс, or unconditional reflex, because he viewed CR as automatic as UR, once acquisition was completed. We now know that's not entirely correct, and the word ‘reflex’ never stuck in English, but is still used in Russian literature instead of ‘conditioning’.” Conditional, frankly, does make a whole lot more sense than conditioned. As Ruth Frickle noted in that same Facebook thread, “Now I can stop being vaguely annoyed when my students say conditional.” Instead, we can say, “You know, you’re closer to being right than you know.” In a 2012 Scientific American article, science journalist Jason G. Goldman took a crack at reversing 100 years of bad translation usage and explained classical conditioning using the terms conditional and unconditional. He footnoted why he used conditional and not conditioned. Note that most English-language textbooks use the terms "unconditioned stimulus," "unconditioned response," and so on. This is due to a translation error from Pavlov's Russian to English. The better translation would be "conditional." You go, Jason! In all seriousness, Jason is onto something. We can all decide—right here, right now—to dump our use of conditioned and use conditional instead. Let’s talk about the unconditional stimulus, the unconditional response, the conditional stimulus, and the conditional response. We can footnote just as well as Jason can. We don’t need to continue to perpetuate a bad translation. Let’s honor Pavlov’s legacy by using his (properly translated) terminology. Who’s in? ... View more