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

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

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

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

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

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

Will visitors to vending machines make healthier purchases if they know which purchases are healthier? After discussing experimental design, ask your students to work in small groups. First, they are to take the above question and reword it as a hypothesis. As part of their design, they should identify the independent variable and its levels and identify the dependent variable—providing operational definitions of the levels of the independent variable and the dependent variable. After discussion has waned, ask a volunteer from each group to share their group’s design. Conclude this activity by sharing the design and results from this freely available experiment conducted in Philadelphia (Gibson et al., 2024). Researchers tested four different messaging systems in 267 vending machines; 150 machines sold beverages and 117 sold snacks. The study began with a 9-month period where researchers just monitored sales at these machines. The intervention period began immediately after this baseline period and lasted 13 months. All of the materials used in this study are available with the article. Click on “supplemental content,” and select “Supplement 2.”    Message 1: Beverage-tax poster only. Next to the beverage machines, the poster read, “Philly bev tax is here. Starting January 1, 2017, a 1.5-cents-per-ounce tax will be applied to sweetened beverages.” Next to the snack machines, the poster read, “Are you drinking fewer sweetened drinks because of the cost? Keep up the healthy choices by also choosing healthy snacks.” For the remaining three conditions, a poster placed next to the vending machine explained how to interpret the labels. Message 2: Green labels. These labels were placed on items that were deemed a healthier choice. For example, seltzer water and popcorn got green labels. In the corresponding poster’s small print were the criteria the researcher’s used for the green label. This was their operational definition of “healthy.” Healthy beverages had 5g or less of sugar per 12 ounces. Healthy snacks Message 3: Traffic lights. Green, yellow, or red labels were placed on each vending machine option. Again, green labels were on healthier items like seltzer water and popcorn; the poster explained these were “choose often” options. Yellow labels were on so-so items like diet drinks and trail mix; the poster explained these were “choose sometimes” options. Lastly, red labels were on unhealthy items like sweetened teas and chocolate bars; the poster explained that these were “choose rarely” options. In the poster’s small print were the criteria used for determining what was green, yellow, and red. Message 4: Physical activity. Each item had a label noting how many minutes of brisk walking it would take to work off the calories in the beverage or snack. The accompanying poster noted that the healthier items would take less than 45 minutes to walk off. The primary dependent variable was product sales; data were provided by the vending machine company. Researchers compared sales data from the green label, traffic light, and physical activity conditions vending machines with the beverage-tax poster only vending machines. Here are some of the key results. “Traffic light machines were 25% more likely to sell a yellow (eg, taxed diet soda) compared with a red (eg, taxed soda) beverage compared with beverage tax machines.” While purchasers didn’t go green, some were willing to go from red to yellow. If you go to the machine to get a Coke, you might be willing to go Coke Zero, but declining the Coke for a seltzer water is asking a bit much.   “For snacks, green-only machines were 10% more likely to sell a green snack (eg, baked chips) compared with a red snack (eg, candy) compared with beverage tax machines.” If you want Doritos, you might be talked into popcorn. “At the machine level, physical activity compared with beverage tax decreased the expected monthly number of beverages sold by 24%.” If you go to the machine to get a Pepsi, and you see that it’s going to take 62 minutes of brisk walking to walk off the calories, you might choose to fill up your water bottle instead. “Traffic light labels significantly decreased total calories sold per customer trip compared with physical activity.” The researchers did a manipulation check. They asked the visitors to the vending machines if they noticed “any posters or labels displayed on the machines.” In the beverage-tax poster group, 26% reported seeing the poster. In the green-only group, 40% reported seeing the green labels. In the traffic light group, 65% noticed the green, yellow, red labels. In the physical activity group, 58% noticed the brisk-walking-minutes labels. Interestingly, “Reported noticing of messaging did not moderate condition effects on calories sold per trip.” Are any of your students interested in replicating this study at your institution? What would they need to do in order to conduct this experiment? Would they make any changes to the original study? Why or why not?     Reference Gibson, L. A., Stephens-Shields, A. J., Hua, S. V., Orr, J. A., Lawman, H. G., Bleich, S. N., Volpp, K. G., Bleakley, A., Thorndike, A. N., & Roberto, C. A. (2024). Comparison of sales from vending machines with 4 different food and beverage messages: A randomized trial. JAMA Network Open, 7(5), e249438. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.9438   ... View more

As telehealth visits skyrocketed during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers wondered if the physician’s background mattered to their patients (Houchens et al., 2024). (The article is freely available.) The researchers asked volunteers to look at seven photos of the same physician with different backgrounds: bedroom, kitchen, bookcase, exam room, physician office (counter with office-type things on it), a wall of diplomas, and a solid color (control condition).  The researchers also asked about the type of physician (primary care or specialty care) and whether the patient’s length of relationship with the physician (new or established). This experiment is a 7 (type of background) x 2 (type of physician) x 2 (length of relationship) within-participants design, although they analyzed it as a 7 x 4 (lumping type of physician and length of relationship into one variable). In the results, neither type of physician nor length of relationship mattered. The only statistical difference was for type of background. There were two dependent variables. First, researchers asked volunteers which of the seven backgrounds they preferred. As compared to the solid color background, volunteers preferred the wall of diplomas followed by the physician office. The least preferred—again as compared to the solid color background—were the bedroom and the kitchen. There were no statistical differences between the solid color and the bookcase or the exam room. For the second dependent variable, researchers calculated a composite score after asking volunteers to rate the physicians with each background on six factors on a scale of one to ten: “how knowledgeable, trustworthy, caring, approachable, and professional the physician appeared, and how comfortable the physician made the respondent feel.” As compared to the solid background (7.7), the only two backgrounds where the physician was rated statistically lower were the bedroom (7.2) and the kitchen (7.0). Because this was a within-participant design and volunteers saw the same physician against every background, I could imagine that once volunteers rated one, it may have been more difficult to rate the others much differently.   After sharing this study with your students, give small groups this hypothesis: If students see an instructor in a virtual classroom with a professional background, they will rate the instructor as being more knowledgeable and trustworthy. Ask students to design an experiment to test this hypothesis. Students should be sure to identify the independent variable and its levels and the two dependent variables, providing operational definitions for all variables. Invite a spokesperson for each group to share their experimental design.   Reference Houchens, N., Saint, S., Kuhn, L., Ratz, D., Engle, J. M., & Meddings, J. (2024). Patient preferences for telemedicine video backgrounds. JAMA Network Open, 7(5), e2411512. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.11512   ... View more

“In the U.S., 42% of people are now myopic [nearsighted] – up from 25% back in the 1970s. In some East Asian countries, as many as 90% of people are myopic by the time they're young adults” (Godoy, 2024). That’s a lot of people who need corrective lenses. But the news is worse than that. “Once a kid gets myopia, their eyeball will keep stretching and the condition will get progressively worse. If they develop high myopia, it can increase the risk of serious eye problems down the road, such as retinal detachments, glaucoma and cataracts. It can even lead to blindness” (Godoy, 2024). That, I did not know. I also did not know “that light stimulates the eye to release the neurotransmitter dopamine, which can slow the eyeball from stretching” (Godoy, 2024). Researchers thought this would make for a good correlational study. In a study of 4,000 children, researchers found that the more time the children spent outside, the lower levels of myopia they had, even after “adjusting for near work, parental myopia, and ethnicity” (Rose et al., 2008). Here's an opportunity to give your students some experimental design practice in the sensation and perception chapter. After sharing the above information with students, give small groups this hypothesis: If children spend at least two hours a day outdoors, they will develop less myopia (nearsightedness). Ask students to address the following: Design an experiment that will test the hypothesis. Identify your independent variable, including the experimental group and the control group. Identify your dependent variable. All variables should include operational definitions. Your experiment should include random assignment to conditions. Briefly explain the importance of random assignment. Review the five general principles from the Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct of the American Psychological Association. By these standards, would it be ethical to conduct your study? Why or why not? Invite a spokesperson from each group to share their group’s research design and their assessment of the ethics of conducting that study. To conclude this activity, share this information with your students. A Taiwanese ophthalmologist, Pei-Chang Wu, whose son was entering first grade convinced his son’s school to allow the children to spend more time outside. At the same time, he convinced another school to allow him to test their school children for myopia. “A year later, his son's school had half as many new myopia cases as the other school” (Godoy, 2024).  After these preliminary results, Wu did similar studies at other schools and found similar results. Pause here to ask your students to assess whether Wu’s research meets American Psychological Association’s ethical guidelines. Why or why not. Wu obviously has some pretty mean persuasive skills, but check out what he did next. With the data in hand, he convinced Taiwan’s Minister of Education to make a policy change that required schools to get children outside for two hours a day. “The program launched in September 2010. And after decades of trending upward, the rate of myopia among Taiwan's elementary school students began falling – from an all-time high of 50% in 2011 down to 45.1% by 2015” (Godoy, 2024). If time allows, ask students what schools and parents can do to help ensure children are getting two hours outside each day per the recommendation of ophthalmologists. Are your students ready to start a letter-writing campaign to their local school boards?   References Godoy, M. (2024, May 13). Want to protect your kids’ eyes from myopia? Get them to play outside. NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/05/13/1250555639/kids-eyesight-myopia-near-sighted-nearsightedness-outdoor-play Rose, K. A., Morgan, I. G., Ip, J., Kifley, A., Huynh, S., Smith, W., & Mitchell, P. (2008). Outdoor activity reduces the prevalence of myopia in children. Ophthalmology, 115(8), 1279–1285. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ophtha.2007.12.019   ... View more

With the NCAA women’s and men’s basketball tournaments behind us, the NBA playoffs coming up, and the WNBA season starting soon, here’s a timely research paper on free throw shooting (Büttner et al., 2024). While most basketball play involves interactions between players, the free throw is unique. Everything comes to a standstill while a player—with all eyes on them—attempts to make a basket from 15 feet away.  While waiting to make the free throw, players have time to think. That’s not a good thing in a sport that relies on a brain that automatically runs programs for particular sets of muscle movements. Of all the activities in basketball—because of the time to think—the free throw may be the most susceptible to stress-induced errors. If stress can impact free throw accuracy, Christiane Büttner (University of Basel), Christoph Kenntemich (Universität Koblenz-Landau), and Kipling D. Williams (Purdue University) wondered if social support could reduce the stress thereby increasing accuracy (Büttner et al., 2024). Read  their paper on ResearchGate. The researchers had three hypotheses, but for the purpose of this activity, let’s focus on this one: “Only after missing the first free throw (but not when the first free throw was successful), does being touched by more (vs. fewer) teammates increase the likelihood of success with the second free throw” (Büttner et al., 2024, p. 2). If basketball is not your sport, this video will help you understand what the post-free-throw touching looks like. During the third quarter of the Iowa-UConn women’s NCAA 2024 final, UConn’s Aaliyah Edwards was fouled. She went to the line for two free throws. (Watch video.) After missing the first one, One of the two teammates in front of her (#25) tap her hands. Edwards turned around, and the two teammates behind her tap her hands. When Edwards turned back toward the free throw line, the teammate who missed the tap (#10) was standing there waiting to do her tap. That’s all four teammates. Edwards stepped to the line for her second shot. (Spoiler alert!) She made it. Was Edwards’ experience typical? Do hand taps following a missed free throw predict a made free throw on the next shot? To do this study, the researchers took an archival approach. Using the recordings of 50 Division I Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) women’s basketball games, they measured several variables with the key measures being the outcome of the first and second free throws (they only looked at free throws that came in pairs) and the number of hand taps after the first free throw. They observed 699 pairs of free-throws. They found that if a player missed the first free throw, the more teammates who tapped their hand, the greater the chance that the player would make their second free throw. If a player made the first free throw, the number of hand taps did not predict the making of the second free throw. Ask your students to determine if this was a correlational study or an experiment. How do they know?  The researchers wrote: “[W]e do acknowledge that our findings are correlational and the caveats that come with that” (Büttner et al., 2024, p. 6). Teams were not, for example, randomly assigned to tap the hand of the free-throw shooting player zero to four times. Unfortunately, this doesn’t stop the researchers from making a causal statement in the next paragraph: “Physical touch by teammates boosts performance in one of the most stressful athletic tasks imaginable: Succeeding with a free throw in basketball after already missing one” (Büttner et al., 2024, p. 6). They do, however, encourage experimental research: “Future experimental research should determine whether physical touch improves performance as an active ingredient or whether more frequent touch is a symptom of better team cohesion and, consequentially, better performance under pressure” (Büttner et al., 2024, p. 6). After sharing this study with students, there are a couple of different directions you could take this. Choose your own adventure. Option 1: Experiment. Ask students to work in small groups to design an experiment that would test this hypothesis: “Only after missing the first free throw (but not when the first free throw was successful), …being touched by more (vs. fewer) teammates increase[s] the likelihood of success with the second free throw”(Büttner et al., 2024, p. 2). Participants would need to be randomly assigned to conditions. Students should identify the independent variable (including its levels) and the dependent variable. Ethics add-on: If this experiment were done with real teams—assuming it could be done without the participants being influenced by knowing the hypothesis, discuss the ethical implications of a study that may cause a team to score fewer points. Option 2: Correlation. Ask students to work in small groups to design a correlational study that would test this hypothesis: “[M]ore frequent touch is a symptom of better team cohesion” (Büttner et al., 2024, p. 6). First, create a measure of team cohesion. (Some research has been published in the context of work teams. One alternative is to ask students to do some research and adapt something that has already been created.) Next, describe how you could use that measure to test the hypothesis.     Reference Büttner, C. M., Kenntemich, C., & Williams, K. D. (2024). The power of human touch: Physical contact improves performance in basketball free throws. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 72, 102610. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2024.102610       ... View more

Walking in nature is good for us, but what if we’re looking at our phones while we’re walking in nature? Is that walk still beneficial? Researchers Randi Collin and Elizabeth Broadbent at the University of Auckland recognized that this was an empirical question (Collin & Broadbent, 2023). If you’d like to give your students some experimental design practice when you cover stress and coping, ask your students to work in small groups to design an experiment that would test one of Collin and Broadbent’s hypotheses: “phone walking would cause stooped posture, slower walking, lower arousal, and worse mood and affect than walking without a phone.” Students should identify their dependent variables and the experimental and control conditions of their independent variable, including operational definitions. Because this is an experiment, remind students that in their proposed study, participants will need to be randomly assigned to conditions. Invite each group to share their designs. As a take-home assignment, ask students to read Collin and Broadbent’s freely available research paper and answer these questions: The researchers had two hypotheses. One we discussed in class: “phone walking would cause stooped posture, slower walking, lower arousal, and worse mood and affect than walking without a phone.” What was their second hypothesis? What was the study’s independent variable? Identify the experimental and control conditions. What operational definitions for each did the researchers use? When identifying participants for their study, researchers had two requirements that participants had to meet. What were they? When identifying participants for their study, researchers had two things that would exclude a volunteer from their study. What were they? From the “measures” section of the article, identify all of the dependent variables the researchers measured. What operational definitions for each did the researchers use? For each dependent variable, describe whether the researchers found any statistically significant differences between the two conditions. (The article refers to significant differences, but it is understood that they mean statistically significant differences.) Near the end of the discussion section, the researchers identify several limitations in this study. Each limitation is effectively a hypothesis and an invitation to other researchers to test these hypotheses. Choose one of their identified limitations, create a hypothesis based on that limitation, and then design an experiment to test that hypothesis. Identify your dependent variables and the experimental and control conditions of your independent variable. Be sure to include operational definitions.     Reference Collin, R., & Broadbent, E. (2023). Walking with a mobile phone: A randomised controlled trial of effects on mood. Psych, 5(3), 715–723. https://doi.org/10.3390/psych5030046     ... View more

My favorite conference activity is attending poster sessions. I love talking with students. They are always enthusiastic about their research. The poster topic doesn’t matter to me, although I tend to favor the topics I know very little or nothing about. The student presenters get to experience what it’s like to be the experts and in a position to teach someone else not only about their study but about the topic more generally. Last week, I attended the Southeastern Psychological Association (SEPA) conference. Whenever I had free time, I popped into the posters and wandered around until I found a poster where the presenters were not currently speaking with anyone. “Hi! Tell me about your poster,” I say. The first poster I went to, the students surprised me, though. One student looked at my name badge, and said, “Oh! Sue Frantz. We read a couple of your papers.” I haven’t published much in journals and what I have published was not related to their poster topic, so this was especially surprising. Of course, I asked what they had read. It took them a bit to remember, but they got there. One was a paper on how Intro Psych can dispel myths (McCarthy & Frantz, 2016), and the other was the Intro Psych pillars article (Gurung et al., 2016). Once we had that sorted, I asked why they read those articles. They said that their professor asked them to read one to three articles written by each of the invited speakers in preparation for coming to SEPA. Brilliant! I quickly looked at their poster to find their affiliation: Covenant College. I asked for the name of their professor: Carole Yue. Later that afternoon, I gave my talk on the need to give careful consideration to what we cover in Intro Psych. After the talk, two students came up to me. They said that they needed to interview one of the invited speakers and would I be willing to take 10 to 15 minutes to answer their questions? My first thought was, “I have no idea what questions you are going to ask, but there is no way I can answer them in 15 minutes.” And that was okay by me since I had nowhere in particular I needed to be. But what I said was, “Are you from Covenant College?” Yes, yes, they were. After our conversation—which took at least 30 minutes—I asked that if they see me and their professor, Dr. Yue, in the same room, to please introduce me. I remember my very first conference: Eastern Psychological Association (EPA), Buffalo, NY, 1989. Or at least I’m pretty sure about the location, but the year could have been 1988. That was a long time ago. Anyway, I remember seeing someone whose work I had been reading for a research project I was working on. I wanted to say hi, but I didn’t have any words for after “Hi.” Yue’s students have something to say after “Hi.” The next day, Carole Yue found me, and I learned more about what she does to ensure her students get the most out of their conference experience. I was so impressed, I asked her to email me with what she does because I wanted to share it with all of you. At Covenant College, students can enroll in Psy310: Psych Field Trip. This course was created decades ago by Yue’s predecessor, Mike Rulon. Yue reports that Rulon graciously shared everything with her when she took over the course, and she has since revised it. Here’s the catalog description. The psychology department arranges and sponsors field trips to various professional psychology conventions. The conventions attended in the past have included the Southeastern Psychology Association (SEPA), the Christian Association for Psychological Studies (CAPS) and the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR). By these means, students are able to gain a wide sampling of the range of topics, issues, controversies and personalities in psychology today. A travel fee is individually set for each field trip (based on distance, housing, etc.).   This year’s trip fee was $600, “but presenters get a 50% scholarship. We've been fortunate that the administration has been willing to largely subsidize the trip for students (over half the total cost)” (C. Yue, personal communication, March 18, 2024). For context, Covenant College is near Chattanooga, an 8.5-drive to Orlando where this year’s SEPA conference was held.   Students needed to prepare for SEPA by doing the assigned readings (one to three articles by each invited speaker) and discussing some of those articles with one to three other SEPA attendees. Yue ensures students get exposure to what’s new in a breadth of topics. She divides psychology into eight broad areas (e.g., clinical/counseling/addiction/therapies, neuroscience/cognitive neuroscience/neurology, industrial-organizational/human factors/forensic). Students need to identify one session in at least five of those eight categories that they plan on attending. Yue writes, While at the conference, students check in with me around 8am and receive their per diem for food…They conference all day, and we meet for dinner each night…We then have debriefing meetings after dinner where each student shares about their day. Even though it makes the days very long, students also generally appreciate having the debriefing because they get to reconnect and hear about talks they didn't get to, unusual experiences, or interview/presentation tips. At some point during those two days, students need to find and interview (or have a substantial conversation with) a psychologist. I give them some interview guidelines and suggested questions/topics, but I do encourage them to think of it as a professional fact-finding mission and tailor questions to their own interests (C. Yue, personal communication, March 18, 2024). After the conference, students write about their experiences. Yue writes, Their post-SEPA writings are reflections/summaries of their experiences…I've divided it up into one for each day (Thursday and Friday), as well as a summary of their concentration…They do a summary of their interview, and they do a final reflection of the trip in the style of a letter to a future student who might be considering attending SEPA… Students also submit a list of "Five 5's" in which they tell me 5 things they thought were unusual or surprising (behavioral or content-based), 5 applications they want to implement, 5 memorable events, 5 ideas/concepts they want to remember, and 5 suggestions to me.  Since we have the evening debriefs and the long bus ride home, we won't meet again this week. I think one of the appealing aspects of the course is that after the trip is done, they're done with the class (C. Yue, personal communication, March 18, 2024).  Based on the interactions I had with four of Yue’s students, there is no doubt in mind that they were well-prepared for attending SEPA. After Yue shared with me how she prepared them, I understood why. Conferences can be overwhelming, especially for first-time attendees. Yue’s students are familiar with the conference program and the invited speakers, and they have goals they want to accomplish. What an amazing experience it must be for them—and for their professor. Yue adds, “[T]his course is only possible because the students really jump into the work, and they're amazing. It's such a privilege to see them stretch themselves and grow into themselves as psychologists” (C. Yue, personal communication, March 19, 2024) If you are interested in exploring similar assignments or a similar course for your students, please download Yue’s Psy310 syllabus, pre-SEPA requirements checklist, concentration plan, and breadth requirements.   References Gurung, R. A. R., Hackathorn, J., Enns, C., Frantz, S., Cacioppo, J. T., Loop, T., & Freeman, J. E. (2016). Strengthening Introductory Psychology: A new model for teaching the introductory course. American Psychologist, 71(2), 112–124. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0040012 McCarthy, M. A., & Frantz, S. (2016). Challenging the status quo: Evidence that Introductory Psychology can dispel myths. Teaching of Psychology, 43(3), 211–214. https://doi.org/10.1177/0098628316649470 Yue, C. (2024, March 18). Re: SEPA student assignment [Personal communication]. Yue, C. (2024, March 19). Re: SEPA student assignment [Personal communication].   ... View more

If I were a manager or business owner needing to hire someone, the number one characteristic I would want in a new employee is conscientiousness. That Big Five trait predicts job performance in, well, just about every job (Wilmot & Ones, 2021). I was reminded of this after reading a recent Ars Technica article about spreadsheet errors (Thorne, 2024). More accurately, the article is about humor errors in spreadsheets that led to, well, bad things. While the article cited several examples, the one that made me choke on my coffee happened at Crypto.com in 2021 (Taylor, 2023). Thevamanogari Manivel moved from Malaysia to Australia in 2015 to escape “controlling relationship with her husband.” By 2018, she had saved up enough money to bring her oldest of three children to Australia. In 2020, she met Jatinder Singh who became her boyfriend. He was interested in cryptocurrency. He signed up for a Crypto.com account, but used Manivel’s bank account information to transfer $100 (AUD) into his Crypto.com account. Crypto.com said—and rightfully so—because the name on the bank account does not match the name on the Crypto.com account, we can’t accept this payment. So far so good. A Crypto.com employee was tasked with issuing the refund. Before I continue, please put down your coffee or other beverage. You should also swallow that bite of biscotti. Ready? In the Excel spreadsheet, instead of entering “100” in the refund box, the employee entered Manivel’s bank account number. Now, let’s all take a minute to look at our bank account number. Starting from the right and working left, count in two numbers and enter a period. Count in three numbers, and enter a comma. Repeat. Read that number out loud.  Manivel woke up one day to find approximately $10,470,000.00 AUD in her account. This discovery triggered a number of events. When Manivel asked her Singh some version of WTH, he said he won the money in a Crypto.com contest. Singh then said let’s move this money out of this account into an account with a different bank. (Perhaps the other bank had a better interest rate?) And then they begin spending it. Well, sure. Seven months later, during a routine audit, Crypto.com discovers the error. This probably says more about how much money is flowing through Crypto.com than anything else. Over 10 million dollars goes missing, and no one notices. For. Seven. Months. So, what does Crypto.com do? They contact Manivel’s bank asking for the money back. The money’s not in that account anymore. (No, I don’t know why Manivel’s bank didn’t ask questions earlier, like when the $10 million suddenly appeared in an account that likely had no more than maybe a few thousand in it at any given time.) Manivel said she thought scammers were trying to get their mitts on the dough. (Not her wording. But maybe she enjoys a good 1940s noir detective novel like I do. Or maybe not. The sexism can make for a challenging read.) Long story short, Manivel and Singh were arrested and the money was recovered. Manivel was sentenced to 200 hours of community service for her “opportunistic crime” plus time served (209 days). She had been held in custody awaiting trial because she was deemed a flight risk. Given that she was arrested at the Melbourne airport carrying $10,000 cash and a one-way ticket to Malaysia, that wasn’t a difficult call (Beatty, 2023a). Singh, the now-former boyfriend, pled guilty to the theft charge and as of early February, 2024 is awaiting sentencing (Beatty, 2023b). There is no word, however, on what happened to the Crypto.com employee who made the $10 million error. I bet they are no longer employed by Crypto.com. Maybe they are a highly conscientiousness employee who made this error while temporarily distracted. Mistakes happen. And there should certainly be processes in place to catch errors of this magnitude. I cannot even quit MS Word without being prompted to ask if I’d like to save my file before closing it. Having a little pop-up that says, “You’re about to refund $10 million dollars. Are you sure that’s what you want to do?” wouldn’t be hard to program. It also seems that for refunds of any size, a second person should have to approve it. Unless Crypto.com is continually shuffling millions of dollars around accounts. And they may very well be. In any case, all of this* could have been avoided if an employee with a high degree of conscientiousness had—after entering the account number in the refund amount box—reviewed their work before submitting it. Only if they had reviewed their work before submitting it—just as we ask our students to do. There is some evidence that we can up our conscientiousness game. In one study, Nathan Hudson (2021) gave participants a list of 50 challenges and asked the participants to choose up to four challenges for the week, such as “organize and clean up your desk” and “show up 5 min early for a class, appointment, or other activity” (p. 5). (For the complete list of challenges, see the appendix in Hudson et al., 2019). At the end of 16 weeks, those who completed more challenges had a greater increase in conscientiousness. Could such an intervention work with our students? Create a list of, say, 20 course-based challenges that target conscientiousness, such as “show up 5 min early for a class,” “submit a class assignment 24 hours early,” “complete the assigned reading before class,” “attend every class session this week,” “do not look at your phone during any class session this week.” If you’d like to involve your students in creating the list, give them Nathan Hudson’s list of 50, and invite students to work in small groups to choose items off his list (verbatim or revised) and create one or more of their own. Each week, ask students to choose two challenges and report those to you. At the end of the week, ask students to report if they successfully completed one or both of their challenges. Repeat each week. As a dependent measure, you could do a pre-test/post-test conscientiousness score from the Big Five Inventory. Or if you want to go for behavioral impact, choose an assignment from early in the course—before you implemented the challenges—and record when each student submitted the assignment as it relates to the assignment deadline. For example, if an assignment was due at 5pm, assignments that were submitted an hour would get a +60 (minute) score. Assignments that were submitted a half hour late would get a -30 (minute) score. For the week that your last assignment is due, do not run any challenges and calculate the “deadline score” for each of our students. Next, calculate a “deadline progress score” by subtracting the first assignment’s deadline score from the last assignment’s deadline score. A student who submitted their last assignment two hours early (+120) but submitted their first assignment 10 minutes early (+10), would have a difference score of +110, meaning they picked up 110 minutes worth of conscientiousness from the start of the challenges to the end. Similarly, a student who submitted their first assignment 15 minutes late (-15) and submitted their last assignment 15 minutes early (+15) picked up 30 min worth of conscientiousness. If you decide to do this research in your class, follow your institution’s IRB guidelines and report your findings in the Teaching of Psychology, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, or at conference, such as the Society for the Teaching of Psychology’s Annual Conference on Teaching.     References Beatty, L. (2023a, September 8). Thevamanogari Manivel: $10m landed in mum’s bank after Crypto.com bungle. News.Com.Au. https://www.news.com.au/national/victoria/courts-law/thevamanogari-manivel-10m-landed-in-mums-bank-after-cryptocom-bungle/news-story/e5900a5b0a2d89f0f2c6d2b2bad0a19d Beatty, L. (2023b, December 18). Jatinder Singh: Crypto enthusiast ‘knew’ $10m windfall was a mistake, court told. News.Com.Au. https://www.news.com.au/finance/jatinder-singh-crypto-enthusiast-knew-10m-windfall-was-a-mistake-court-told/news-story/8cc90e827e75a9119259d4ea3a7d79d3 Hudson, N. W. (2021). Does successfully changing personality traits via intervention require that participants be autonomously motivated to change? Journal of Research in Personality, 95, 104160. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2021.104160 Hudson, N. W., Briley, D. A., Chopik, W. J., & Derringer, J. (2019). You have to follow through: Attaining behavioral change goals predicts volitional personality change. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 117(4), 839–857. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000221 Taylor, J. (2023, September 24). A crypto firm sent a disability worker $10m by mistake. Months later she was arrested at an Australian airport. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/sep/24/a-crypto-firm-sent-a-disability-worker-10m-by-mistake-months-later-she-was-arrested-at-an-australian-airport Thorne, S. (2024, January 28). We keep making the same mistakes with spreadsheets, despite bad consequences. Ars Technica. https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/01/we-keep-making-the-same-mistakes-with-spreadsheets-despite-bad-consequences/ Wilmot, M. P., & Ones, D. S. (2021). Occupational characteristics moderate personality–performance relations in major occupational groups. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 131, 103655. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2021.103655   *”All of this” includes—but is not limited to—the hours spent by employees at Crypto.com and Manivel’s bank trying to recover the money, the hours spent by the police tracking down Manivel and Singh, the resources spent to keep them in jail while awaiting their time before the judge, the hours spent by the employees of the court system.   ... View more

The Freakonomics Radio podcast aired an episode on scientific fraud. While the title of the episode leans toward hyperbole, the discussion is a bit more nuanced. We don’t actually know how much fraud there is, but we know that researchers have many reasons to be tempted to cheat—just like students have many reasons to be tempted to cheat. Here are some discussion or assignment questions based on the podcast. Shout out to Ellen Carpenter for the prompting. *** Listen to or read the transcript of this Freakonomics Radio podcast, Episode 527: Why is there so much fraud in academia? (Dubner, 2024). The podcast host, Stephen J. Dubner, says: “I rarely do this, but today I’m going to start by reading a couple sentences from Freakonomics, which Steve Levitt and I published in 2005: ‘Cheating,’ we wrote, “may or may not be human nature, but it is certainly a prominent feature in just about every human endeavor … Cheating is a primordial economic act: getting more for less.’” Perhaps you have cheated at least once in school, at work, or in a relationship. You certainly know people who have. Describe one of those cheating incidents in terms of “getting more for less.” Explain cheating behavior in terms of positive reinforcement. Brian Nosek, founder of the Center for Open Science, explains why academic fraud is so problematic. One reason he gives is the impact fraudulent research can have on public policy. The reach is greater than that, however. Describe how fraudulent research can affect public views on a topic and how it can affect other researchers in their decisions on what to research. Nosek says, “Publication is the currency of advancement. I need publications to have a career, to advance my career, to get promoted…The reality here is that there is a reward system, and I have to have a career in order to do that research. And so, yes, we can talk all about those ideals of transparency and sharing and rigor, reproducibility. But if they’re not part of the reward system, you’re asking me to either behave by my ideals and not have a career or have a career and sacrifice some of those ideals.” Is the motivation any different from the one that students have to cheat? Explain. While the podcast host tries to pin Nosek down into saying that there is more fraudulent research in psychology—social psychology in particular—than other sciences. Nosek points out that this perception of greater academic fraud in social psychology may be due to two factors. What are they? The issue of academic fraud is certainly not limited to psychology. For example, the journal Science has been addressing this issue. Recent editorials include how “errors, intentional or not erode confidence in science” and how researchers should be able to correct unintentional errors in their published work without stigma (Thorp, 2023, p. 743), the use of an AI tool to detect duplications of or manipulations in images submitted for publication so that questions can be addressed before publication (Thorp, 2024), and the challenges involved in identifying scientific misconduct (Oransky & Redman, 2024).   5. Briefly describe the research that was published in the sign-at-the-top paper. What data had Max Brazerman concerned? How were his concerns about that data alleviated? How did Data Colada know to look at the sign-at-the-top paper? What in the paper concerned Data Colada? 6. What reasons does Simine Vazire give for why a researcher may falsify or misrepresent research data? 7. At state universities, legislatures have substantially cut funding (Marcus, 2019). Colleagues—especially those at R1 and R2 universities—report that they are under a lot of pressure to bring in grant money. To compete for the limited amount of grant dollars available, researchers must have an active research program that produces results. Would there be as much temptation to cheat if everyone could do their research without pressure to publish? Similarly, would students feel less temptation to cheat if their work was lower stakes? 8. The American Psychological Association’s (APA’s) Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct clearly addresses falsification of data in 8.10 “Reporting Research Results” (American Psychological Association, 2017). APA can only hold members of APA accountable for their code of ethics. Frankly, the worst that APA can do is expel members who have been found in violation of the code (American Psychological Association, 2016). Universities have their own ethics committees and wield more power in the sense that faculty found in violation of the ethics code could, ultimately, be fired. What could professional associations or universities do to ensure ethical research practices before fraudulent research is published?     References American Psychological Association. (2016). 2016 APA Ethics Committee rules and procedures. https://www.apa.org/ethics/code/committee-2016 American Psychological Association. (2017). Ethical principles of psychologists and code of conduct. https://www.apa.org/ethics/code Dubner, S. J. (2024, January 10). Why is there so much fraud in academia? Freakonomics. https://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-is-there-so-much-fraud-in-academia/ Marcus, J. (2019, February 26). Most Americans don’t realize state funding for higher ed fell by billions. PBS NewsHour. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/most-americans-dont-realize-state-funding-for-higher-ed-fell-by-billions Oransky, I., & Redman, B. (2024). Rooting out scientific misconduct. Science, 383(6679), 131–131. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adn9352 Thorp, H. H. (2023). Correction is courageous. Science, 382(6672), 743–743. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adm8205 Thorp, H. H. (2024). Genuine images in 2024. Science, 383(6678), 7–7. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adn7530       ... View more

I had a colleague who was a reading teacher. She told me the greatest teaching challenge she had was in finding articles for her students to read that her students found relevant and compelling. I feel the same way about teaching research methods, including the research methods chapter in Intro Psych. There are a lot of studies that will illustrate psychology’s different research methods, but finding studies that students will find relevant and compelling can be a challenge. If we pick the right studies, however, we can get a two-fer: students learn about research methods and they learn about the study’s content. In the In Brief section of the November/December 2023 Monitor on Psychology was a blurb on an observational study that might grab the attention of students—particularly our students from working class backgrounds. In this freely available article, researchers wondered if pre-school students from different socio-economic backgrounds would show different degrees of participation during all-class discussions (Goudeau et al., 2023). In the article’s introduction, the authors cite two reasons as to why students from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds might participate less. The first is a cultural mismatch between a low SES student’s homelife and school, a mismatch that does not exist for middle- and high- SES students. For example, working class parents are less likely to encourage their children to publicly express opinions. Cultural psychologist Alana Conner grew up in a working-class family in Memphis. When she went to Yale for college, her grandmother gave her a poster with this adage, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.”* Conner experienced culture shock her first semester as the (middle- and high-SES) students in her classes seemed to have no issues with sharing their thoughts and opinions. When I heard Conner speak about this at a conference, I had an “Aha!” moment. I, too, grew up in a working-class family, and I said very little in my classes—kindergarten through grad school. In my family, we didn’t talk about ideas. Another possible contributor to this cultural mismatch is the activities families from different SES backgrounds tend to engage in. Middle- and high- SES families are more likely to read books and go to museums than low-SES families. “As a result, these students have more ‘cultural capital’ to contribute during whole-class discussions relative to low-SES peers with similar language proficiency. Teachers may also perceive middle- and high-SES students as having more ‘relevant’ or ‘appropriate’ things to contribute to discussions, so they may provide these students with more opportunities to speak relative to low-SES students with similar language proficiency” (Goudeau et al., 2023, p. 3). In addition to cultural mismatch, stereotype threat may also contribute to decreased class discussion participation from low-SES students. The low-SES stereotype says that low-SES students are not as academically competent as middle- and high-SES students. Out of fear of confirming the stereotype, low-SES students may choose to remain silent (Goudeau et al., 2023). Unfortunately, this silence may actually contribute to the stereotype. Researchers wondered if a difference in class participation by SES status could be observed as early as preschool. If time allows, ask your students how we could approach designing a study like this. Where would we find our participants? Whose permission would we need to observe classes? How would we observe them? How many times would we observe them? How would we operationalize participation? The researchers identified preschool classes that had the highest SES diversity as determined by parental occupation. They asked the teachers for permission to video record their classes. For the teachers that said yes, the researchers then asked the caregivers of the teachers for permission for their child to participate. Three to five days of recording were done for the classes for four preschool teachers. Four video cameras were used to record each class. The students were told that their class was being recorded. The researchers wrote, “We coded each preschooler’s contributions to whole-class discussions along two dimensions: frequency and duration… [and] we coded for five different types of contributions: (a) speaking after being called on by the teacher; (b) speaking after being called on again for follow-up; (c) speaking without being called on by the teacher; (d) speaking by interrupting another child; and (e) speaking by interrupting the teacher” (Goudeau et al., 2023, p. 6). Two coders watched the recording and coded the behaviors. Coders discussed all disagreements to reach consensus. The researchers found that low-SES students were much less likely to speak during all-class discussions, and when they did, they spoke for less time than did their middle- and high-SES peers. Low-SES students were also much less likely to interrupt the teacher or their peers, and if they did, they spoke for less time as compared to the middle- and high-SES students (Goudeau et al., 2023). Lastly, does participation matter? In a follow-up study, researchers found that the preschoolers believe that students who participate more in class discussions are more intelligent, better liked, and nicer (Goudeau et al., 2023).   If time allows or as a follow-up assignment, ask your students to design a study that assessed class participation by SES and peer perceptions of those who participated more that could be conducted in a college class. How might participation be operationally defined in a face-to-face class, in an asynchronous online class, or in a class conducted in Zoom or Microsoft Teams? As a bonus research project, assess whether discussing this research in your class increases whole-class discussion participation from your low-SES students. Learning about such research may have encouraged me to up my class participation. In college, I remember hearing about a study that found that when driving a vehicle men tended to look farther into the distance than did women. That ticked me off, so when driving, I started looking farther into the distance. I, of course, had no idea how my distance-viewing compared to other women or men. I might have already been looking farther ahead than anybody else. Didn’t matter. I was going to show them. Not that anyone was actually evaluating how far into the distance I looked when driving. Does learning about this study result in real changes for your low-SES students? It’s an empirical question.     *It is unknown who first spoke these exact words, but the sentiment can be found in Proverbs 17:28 (O’Toole, 2010).   References Goudeau, S., Sanrey, C., Autin, F., Stephens, N. M., Markus, H. R., Croizet, J.-C., & Cimpian, A. (2023). Unequal opportunities from the start: Socioeconomic disparities in classroom participation in preschool. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 152(11), 3135–3152. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001437 O’Toole, G. (2010, May 17). Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt. Quote Investigator. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/17/remain-silent/   ... View more