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

In Finland, Andres Wiklöf was clocked by the police traveling approximately 82 kph (50 mph) in a 50 kph (31 mph) zone. He was fined €121,000 (USD $129,544) (Ogao, 2023). One reason that an intended punishment is not actually punishing is that we may be willing to pay the price. I had a friend tell me that when she was teenager, she would leave her house and spend the day in the mountains. She knew that when she got home, she’d be beaten so badly with a switch that the backs of her legs would bleed. For her, being at home was much more punishing than being gone. She was willing to pay the price. The beatings did not reduce her behavior of leaving the house for the day. Let’s consider speeding tickets. Let’s say I receive a speeding ticket of $100, including fine and administrative fees. Let’s also imagine a fantasy world where I make $500,000/year. I may be willing to pay $100 in exchange for getting to my destination faster. This may be especially true if I don’t get caught every time. But even if I did, that $100 doesn’t mean much to me. It would just become the price of my commute. However, if I make $10,000/year, having to fork over $100 hurts a lot. In fact, I may not be able to buy food this week or next. The $100 penalty sounds fair on the surface—the same penalty for everyone, but what it means to each person differs significantly. Most states—but not all, e.g. Mississippi, Minnesota, Washington—also implement a points system where each traffic violation results in points (FindLaw.com, 2016). Accumulate enough points and your insurance premiums may increase (again, no big deal for wealthy drivers) or your license may be suspended. A suspended license does not mean that you cannot drive. It just means additional penalties if you are caught driving with a license suspended. Several European countries take a very different approach to fines. Instead of a fixed euro amount, they implement day-fines, sometimes called unit-fines. Finland was the earliest adopter of this system in 1921, followed by Sweden and Denmark in the 1930s (Kantorowicz-Reznichenko, 2015). In the day-fine system, a judge uses the severity of the offense to determine how may “days” a person will be fined. This number of days assigned to each offense is often pre-determined by law. Next, the courts determine what a person’s “day” is worth. What is used in the calculation also varies by country, but may include annual income and assets and, perhaps, a deduction of some amount for, say, number of dependents. And then a fraction of a day’s worth—again determined by law, such as a half, is used to determine an individual’s day-fine (Kantorowicz-Reznichenko, 2015). That brings us back to Andres Wiklöf who paid a 20 mph over the limit speeding ticket of USD $129,544. As you might now guess, Wiklöf is a multimillionaire. Is this fine actually a punishment? Will it decrease his speeding behavior? Maybe. In 2013, he received a speeding ticket that resulted in a €95,000 fine, and five years later in 2018, he received another ticket with a €63,000 fine. And here we are another five years later. One ticket every five years? I’d say the fines have been punishing (Ogao, 2023). Ask your students how much a speeding ticket would need to be for them to never drive more than 10 mph over the speed limit. (If they do not drive, ask them to either imagine that they did or ask them to ask a friend or relative this question. If this is an in-class discussion, ask them to text someone now.) Record the results where students can see. Next, ask your students if they think their state or province should move to day-fines. Why or why not? Lastly, ask your students if there are other areas where penalties should be determined by the impact on each individual person. For example, should instructors have different late penalties based on a student’s current grade with higher grades resulting in higher late penalties? Why or why not? (A student with a higher grade in the course has less motivation to submit work on time because they can afford to lose 10%, 20%, or more points on one assignment. They can effectively buy more time to complete a late-in-the-course assignment than someone with a lower overall course grade.) I have no idea what students may say to this, but at least some may say that if their grades are that high, then they’ve earned the privilege. If so, follow up by asking if the wealthy have earned the right to speed and therefore should only pay $100 fines like the rest of us.   References FindLaw.com. (2016, June 20). Driver’s license points by state. Findlaw. https://www.findlaw.com/traffic/traffic-tickets/state-specific-points-systems.html Kantorowicz-Reznichenko, E. (2015). Day-fines: Should the rich pay more? Review of Law & Economics, 11(3). https://doi.org/10.1515/rle-2014-0045 Ogao, E. (2023, June 6). Finnish businessman handed €121,000 speeding ticket. ABC News. https://abcnews.go.com/ABCNews/finnish-businessman-handed-121000-speeding-ticket/story?id=99861907     ... 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 2015, the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) added behavioral science questions to the test. If you haven’t read the MCAT’s overview of the Psychological, Social, and Biological Foundations of Behavior Section, it’s worth a look. Two-thirds of the questions from this section are expected to come from Intro Psych. They say that this “section emphasizes concepts that tomorrow’s doctors need to know in order to serve an increasingly diverse population and have a clear understanding of the impact of behavior on health.” As readers of this blog know, as an Intro Psych instructor deciding what should and should not be in the course, I keep my audience in mind. Many of our Intro Psych students will be pursuing careers in healthcare, and, for at least some of them, that means taking the MCAT. Some of us think about what we cover in our courses in terms of what we want students to remember years from now. What might the physicians of tomorrow remember from their Intro Psych course of today? I recently purchased this book written by physicians for physicians-to-be: Boland, R. J., Verduin, M. L., Ruiz, P., Shah, A., & Sadock, B. J. (Eds.). (2022). Kaplan & Sadock’s synopsis of psychiatry (12th ed.). Wolters Kluwer. The print edition of the book comes with free (pre-purchased, really) access to the ebook. All you need to do is enter the access code, give them your name, and pick the option that best describes your role. Here are my options: medical student, nursing student, resident, fellow, practitioner, nurse, nurse practitioner, program director, program coordinator, librarian. That’s it. Not even an “other” category. Since I had to pick something to continue the registration process, I decided to throw some love to my librarian colleagues. And where do I practice my librarianship they wonder? None is an option, but if I’m going to pretend to be a librarian, I’m okay being a librarian in the U.S. At least some of their data will be meaningful. In the chapter on anxiety disorders, they have a section on the neurobiology of these disorders with a subsection titled “Neuroimaging Studies.” For reasons that are unclear to me, within that subsection is a sub-subsection titled “Psychological Studies.” I’m guessing that this was an error, and that this sub-subsection was supposed to be a section at the same level as the neurobiology section. I logged into the ebook to see if they may have fixed it there. Nope. So, there you have it. Psychological studies are a type of neuroimaging. That section weirdness aside, I found their description of classical conditioning fascinating.   Behavioral scientists have helped to elucidate the psychology of fear and anxiety through both animal and human studies. A full discussion of the psychological research is well beyond the scope of this chapter, but most relevant to anxiety disorders are the work of Pavlov and later scientists on the nature of conditioning. In the classic studies, the scientist exposes an animal to an (sic) neutral stimulus, such as an auditory tone, and then presents the tone while introducing an aversive stimulus, such as an electric shock. With the repeated pairing of the two stimuli, the neutral stimulus becomes associated with the aversive one, to the point where it alone can elicit the same response even when removing the aversive stimulus. The result is that the animal has been conditioned or learned to fear the neutral stimuli. In behavioral science, the neutral stimulus is called the conditioned stimulus and the aversive one the unconditioned stimulus. If the scientist presents the conditioned stimulus without the unconditioned one and repeats this often enough, the animal will no longer associate the two stimuli; this is called extinction. How long extinction learning takes will depend on the particular stimuli and the individual animal. It also can depend on context, and a different setting can change the response. Behavioral studies suggest that the animal does not forget the conditioning. Instead, it is now competing with a new memory. Under appropriate circumstances, the pairing, and associated fear response, can be reinstated. As humans are animals, they experience conditioning and extinction as well. The relevance to anxiety disorders, particularly phobias, should be obvious. Research in conditioning has gone well beyond this simplified description to identify and elaborate the many subtleties of conditioned learning. (Boland et al., 2022, p. 411). Some observations. First, behavioral science and behavioral scientists have replaced psychology and psychological scientists. I knew we were doomed when behavioral economics replaced cognitive psychology, but it still pains me. I know many of you rebranded your departments of psychology as departments of psychological science. Have you rebranded again to the department of behavioral science? And is it solely behavioral science because the cognitive research has gone to economics? Identity crisis, anyone? Second, evidently it is important for the psychiatrist-to-be who is reading this text to know the terms conditioned and unconditioned stimulus. The terms conditioned and unconditioned response, however, are not noteworthy. And that brings me back around to an earlier blog post. How important are any of these terms? Third, extinction gets a shout-out by name and spontaneous recovery gets a shout-out by description, sort of. This sentence is a little mysterious to me: “Under appropriate circumstances, the pairing, and associated fear response, can be reinstated.” Yes, if you present the tone and shock the rat again, the fear would be reinstated. I’m not sure if that circumstance is appropriate, however. In any case, I’m just not sure what they were getting at here. Four, even though the authors recognize that this is a “simplified description,” I would have loved to have seen generalization get a mention. Yes, your patient is afraid of the person who sexually assaulted them, but your patient is also going to show some fear of people who look like their attacker. Of course, we cannot assume that the authors, editors, and reviewers of this text are representative of all physicians, but it does give me something to think about. Is this what our Intro Psych students remember about classical conditioning years later? Is this what we want them to remember?    ... 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

What if you ran a company where your employees are spending their days in their cubicles staring at computer screens in silence? What if you wanted your employees to interact face-to-face a little more? Would you be willing to give your employees free drinks to talk to each other? Here’s another creative example for the next time you cover operant conditioning. (Read more here.) Kokuyo, Co., a manufacturer of office supplies, installed a Suntory Beverage & Food company vending machine in one of their offices. While the vending machine behaves like other vending machines, it has one additional feature. If an employee grabs a buddy and they both allow the vending machine to scan their employee ID cards at the same time, the vending machine dispenses a free beverage to both employees. While there is no guarantee that those employees, with free beverage in hand, will have a conversation, it certainly provides the opportunity. The behavior: inviting a fellow employee to go to the vending machine with you. If you continue to make buddy trips to the vending machine, the positive reinforcement is a free beverage. If the behavior is occurring too frequently, the vending machine can be programmed to limit the hours when free beverages would be available, or it can be programmed to limit how many free beverages a particular ID can get in a specific time period. Maybe it can also be programmed so that a pair of IDs can only be used a certain number of times, and after that, you have to invite someone else? If you’d like, challenge your students to think about how the Kokuyo management would know if the vending machine was working to increase employee face-to-face interactions. What variables would students measure? And if the vending machine was not working as well as they would like, what else could the company do? Maybe put the vending machine in a space with a living room-type atmosphere, complete with comfy chairs? Do some beverages lend themselves better to conversation than others? For example, might a vending machine that dispensed coffee or tea be more effective at encouraging conversation than, say, one that dispensed energy drinks? Having taught many classes in two- to three-hour blocks for almost 30 years, I witnessed the short class breaks only occasionally leading to students talking to each other. Would such a vending machine outside the classroom increase interactions? What if the machine required, say, three student IDs to dispense a free beverage or snack? The cynical side of me wonders if that would lead to student ID theft? But then I suppose that wouldn’t last long because if Student A reported their ID missing, a quick scan of the vending machine’s data would show which other student used Student A’s ID at the machine.   In what other contexts can your students see value in having such a system? What else might be dispensed from a machine that students might find reinforcing? (Having reread that question, I’m not sure this is the best question to ask students. They’re your students; use your best judgment.) ... View more

Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation is promoting intentional acts of kindness this September (#BeKind21) with a goal toward better mental health for everyone. Every day, from September 1 to September 21, let’s engage in purposeful acts of kindness to others and ourselves. I encourage you and your students to sign up.   Zara Abrams (2021) provides a nice summary of the research on kindness, emphasizing its benefits to both our physical and mental health. Even small acts, such as bringing a colleague coffee, counts. Buying me a beer also counts. Without too much difficulty, we can tie acts of kindness into what students are learning in their Intro Psych course. Here are a few examples. Biopsych chapter: Which neurotransmitters are most likely to be released in our brains when we do good deeds for others? Explain Development chapter: What are developmentally-appropriate good deeds we could perform for each group: toddlers, middle-schoolers, high-schoolers, middle-aged adults, older adults? Explain. Learning chapter: Identify at least three acts of kindness you have engaged in. Was your act positively reinforced? Explain. Memory chapter: We tend to have stronger memories for events that are emotional. Based on the emotional reaction of those who were on the receiving end of your kindness, will any of your acts of kindness be remembered years from now by one of your recipients? After September 21st, give your students an opportunity to reflect on their experience. What was especially good about engaging in intentional acts of kindness? Were there any surprises? Will they continue to be intentionally kind?   References Abrams, Z. (2021, August). The case for kindness. American Psychological Association. https://www.apa.org/news/apa/kindness-mental-health ... View more

Good cartoonists are excellent observers of people, and that’s why cartoons can be a tremendous resource for teaching psychology. Use these cartoons by visiting their websites as copying/pasting into your slide deck or your learning management system is most likely a violation of copyright. Use these to freshen your operant conditioning examples, or use these as a basis for discussion or as a stand-alone assignment. Edge City, May 3, 2021. We see both Colin’s behavior and his father’s behavior. What behavior has likely been positively reinforced? And what behavior has likely been negatively reinforced? Explain. Deflocked, March 26, 2021. We know both the sheep’s behavior and the sheep’s mother’s behavior. Which behavior has been positively reinforced? And which behavior has been negatively reinforced? Explain. Bleeker: The Rechargeable Dog, March 11, 2021. The real dog has learned to turn off the robot vacuum. Has the “turning off” behavior been positively or negatively reinforced? Explain. Stone Soup Classics, February 9, 2021. Max has learned a new word. When he yells this word, he gets a reaction that will likely increase the chances of him saying it again. Has his saying the word been positively or negatively reinforced? Explain. Nest Heads, December, 2020. We know both Taylor’s behavior and her grandfather’s behavior. What behavior has likely been positively reinforced? And what behavior has likely been negatively reinforced? Explain. And now for the hard one. Drabble, February 23, 2021. In operant conditioning, a discriminative stimulus is a signal that a specific behavior is likely to be reinforced. What is the discriminative stimulus in this strip? What behavior has this discriminative stimulus signaled will be reinforced? ... View more

Have a few minutes? Listen to this APA podcast episode discussing why human infants have such long periods of growth and what this means for the development of our society! https://www.apa.org/research/action/speaking-of-psychology/childrens-amazing-brains ... View more

We are two weeks into the new year! Are your resolutions feeling a little...flat? Here's how to keep them going, psychology style! New podcast from APA: https://www.apa.org/research/action/speaking-of-psychology/behavioral-habits ... View more