There must be a cognitive bias that explains why it is so hard for us to learn that correlation does not mean causation. Okay, we can learn it fine. Applying it consistently is the hard part. Last week here in the Pacific Northwest we had a few days of our typical late fall weather: highs in the low 60s (upper teens Celsius) and rainy. And that’s when I discovered that I’m not ready for late fall. Fortunately for me, it’s early fall, and we’re now looking at a 10-day stretch of mid-70s (low 20s Celsius) and sunny. This morning, I opened my news feed to see this article: “Thinking like a Norwegian may help you cope with a winter lockdown.” Oslo's average temperature in January is 32 degrees (0 Celsius), and they get about 6 hours of daylight, so I thought, “Perfect! Let’s see what the experimental evidence says. I could use some tips!” Researchers gave a sample of Norwegians a questionnaire asking about their attitudes about winter, their mental health, and their life satisfaction. Those who had better mental health and higher ratings of life satisfaction had better attitudes about winter. Those who had poorer mental health and higher ratings of life satisfaction had poorer attitudes about winter. This correlational—not experimental—research doesn’t help me at all. After covering correlations and experiments in Intro Psych, in a synchronous or asynchronous discussion, provide students with this discussion prompt: Read “Thinking like a Norwegian may help you cope with a winter lockdown.” Is this article describing a correlational study or an experimental study? How do you know? The article suggests that if you change how you think about winter, you will feel better. In other words, they’re saying that how you think about winter will cause you to feel better. Based on this research study alone, is that conclusion warranted? Why or why not? Monitor the group discussions. If they’re falling into the trap of thinking “it makes sense that how one thinks about winter would affect one’s attitude toward winter,” prompt students with this: This was a correlational study. They measured attitudes toward winter and measured levels of mental health and levels of life satisfaction. They found positive correlations. When attitudes toward winter were high, mental health was better (and vice versa). When attitudes toward winter were high, life satisfaction was high (and vice versa). It is possible that those who have better mental health and higher life satisfaction already would see winter more positively. It may not be that attitudes toward winter cause life satisfaction/mental health. It may be that life satisfaction/mental health cause attitudes toward winter. Or maybe there are third factors. Can you think of any third factors that could cause people to have positive attitudes toward winter and have better mental health and higher life satisfaction? Given that this research was correlational, what would have been a better article title? If you’d like to extend this discussion or spin it off into an assignment, give students this prompt. While correlations cannot tell us which variable is the cause and which is the effect, experimental research can. Here are two hypotheses. Design an experiment that would test each of these hypotheses. Hypothesis 1: Seeing winter in a more positive way can cause people to feel more satisfied about their lives. Design an experiment that would test this hypothesis. Be sure to identify the independent variable and dependent variable. Hypothesis 2: Feeling more positive about our lives can cause us to see winter in a more positive light. Design an experiment that would test this hypothesis. Be sure to identify the independent variable and dependent variable. ... View more

Between 2001 and 2003, the Program for Research on Black Americans—founded and led by the late James S. Jackson—conducted “the most comprehensive and detailed study of mental disorders and the mental health of Americans of African descent ever completed.” The discussion below would be appropriate when covering surveys in the Intro Psych research methods chapter, when covering the psychological disorders chapter, or when covering stress and coping. While the instructions are written for an asynchronous (online) discussion, these instructions may be adapted for a synchronous (face-to-face/virtual) discussion. Initial post Dr. James S. Jackson, University of Michigan social psychologist, passed away on September 1, 2020. Read his New York Times obituary. [Instructors, find his obituary in your library database and link to it there as the New York Times limits the number of free articles non-subscribers may access each month.] Part A. Quote Find a quote from the obituary that you found interesting and in 100+ words of reflection, explain why. Be sure to use quotation marks for your quote; the quotation is not part of the 100+ word count. Part B. Research Dr. Jackson founded the Program for Research on Black Americans. Visit the Program’s website. Review their five research themes found under the Research tab. After reading about each theme, which theme would you say is most important right now? In 100+ words of reflection, explain why. Part C. Publications On the Program for Research on Black Americans website, visit the Publications page. Much of the Program’s recent research is at least partly based on the National Survey of American Life. Please read through the journal article titles (either adolescent or adult). Based on the article titles, identify at least one article you would be interested in reading. In 100+ words of reflection, explain why. Responses Please respond to the initial discussion posts written by at least two of your classmates. Part A. In 50+ words, respond to the quote chosen with at least two of the following: A compliment, e.g., "I like how... because...," I like that... because..." A comment, e.g., "I agree that... because...," "I disagree that... because..." A connection, e.g., "I have also thought that...," "That reminds me of..." A question, e.g., "I wonder why...," "I wonder how..."  Part B. In 50+ words, respond to the research chosen with at least two of the following: A compliment, e.g., "I like how... because...," I like that... because..." A comment, e.g., "I agree that... because...," "I disagree that... because..." A connection, e.g., "I have also thought that...," "That reminds me of..." A question, e.g., "I wonder why...," "I wonder how..."  Part C. In 50+ words, respond to the publication chosen with at least two of the following: A compliment, e.g., "I like how... because...," I like that... because..." A comment, e.g., "I agree that... because...," "I disagree that... because..." A connection, e.g., "I have also thought that...," "That reminds me of..." A question, e.g., "I wonder why...," "I wonder how..."    ... View more

It’s not very often we get to watch the birth of a social norm. Or at least not on this scale, nor at this speed. Mask-wearing was practically non-existent in the U.S. in March 2020. In late July, while certainly not universal, mask-wearing has become more common. As I’ve watched the norm shift in my community over these last few months, I’ve wondered about how other norms came into being. For example, seat belt use. In 1968, the U.S. law went into effect requiring all vehicles to have seat belts—except buses, such as the ones that carry children to and from school. It wasn’t until the mid-1980s that many states enacted seatbelt laws—wear a seatbelt or get fined. Now 90% of people in the U.S. wear seatbelts, with just about every state showing increased percentages since 2004, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (data for 2004 to 2011; data for 2012-2019). In looking at the data, my first thought was, how did they get these data? Self-report surveys? Nope. The data come from observational studies conducted by each state using a uniform set of observational criteria, called “Uniform Criteria for State Observational Surveys of Seat Belt Use.” I kid you not. After covering observational research, present this scenario to your students (in a synchronous or asynchronous discussion): Congratulations! You received a federal grant to conduct research on seat belt use in our state/territory. Your task is to estimate seat belt use. How would you select where you are going to do your observations? Are there particular places you would exclude? Explain your rationale. What time of day would you do your observations? Are there particular times you would exclude? Explain your rationale. Who would you observe? Just the driver or also passengers? Explain your rationale. If you’re observing at an intersection, would you observe all cars at the intersection? Or just those traveling, say, north/south or east/west? How would you decide? Explain your rationale. If you’re observing a two-lane road, would you observe cars traveling in both directions, or just one direction? How would you decide? Explain your rationale. Because of the scope of this study, you will need to hire and train people to do the observations. How would you ensure that the observations they make are accurate? Explain your rationale. After students have made their responses to these questions: Visit the Uniform Criteria for State Observational Surveys of Seat Belt Use. These are the criteria the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) gives to states to conduct their annual seat belt studies. The reports are then compiled and sent to the NHTSA. You can see the compiled data for 2012-2019. For A through F, compare your criteria with those of the NHTSA, particularly sections 1340.5 through 1340.8. Would you be in compliance? If not, what would you need to change? In reflecting on everyone’s initial observations plans, who came closest to the NHTSA criteria? Explain your choice. If you’d like to expand this discussion, consider asking students to take what they learned from the NHTSA criteria and use it to answer these questions about the prevalence of mask-wearing in your state/territory. How would you select where you are going to do your observations? Are there particular places you would exclude? Explain your rationale. What time of day would you do your observations? Are there particular times you would exclude? Explain your rationale. Who would you observe? Adults only or children, too? Explain your rationale. Where would you do your observations? How would you decide? Explain your rationale. Because of the scope of this study, you will need to hire and train people to do the observations. How would you ensure that the observations they make are accurate? Explain your rationale. How would define “mask-wearing”? Would any facial covering count? Does it need to be covering the nose? Explain your rationale. ... View more

Students appreciate examples that are meaningful to them. How about a little selfie research? After covering experiments in the Intro Psych research methods chapter, ask students to think about how they would do an experiment to find out if people perceived those who post a lot of selfies to Instagram differently than those who post a lot of “posies”—photos of themselves taken by other people. Emphasize that the question is not how the people actually are, but how others think they are. Give students the independent variable: the last 30 Instagram photos—mostly selfies or mostly posies. Next, ask students to jot down some dependent variables. What might those different perceptions be? For example, would your students expect those with lots of selfies to be perceived as being more self-absorbed? After students have had a couple minutes to think about these, ask students to work in pairs or small groups to come up with their list of dependent variables. Once discussion has died down, ask each group to volunteer one dependent variable that has not already been identified by a previous group. Write the dependent variables where the class can see them. After each group has given one, ask students for any other dependent variables they came up with that haven’t already been named. Explain that in an experimental study, researchers could create fake Instagram accounts and manipulate how many selfies and how many posies to show participants who would then rate the owners of those fake accounts on each of the dependent variables.  In a recent correlational study, researchers wanted to know exactly that. Do people perceived Instagram users differently depending on how many selfies or posies the users posted (Barry et al., 2019)? Participants in this study rated 30 individuals based on the last 30 photos posted to their Instagram accounts. Researchers measured 13 dependent variables. Remember, these are all perceptions people had of the Instagram users based on their last 30 photos: self-esteem, liking adventure, loneliness, extraversion, trying new things, success, likeability, dependability, would be a good friend, self-absorption, worried about being left out, emotionality, and considerate of others. Those who had more selfies were perceived to: Have low self-esteem Not like adventure Be lonely Not be outgoing Not like trying new things Not be successful Not be likeable Those who had more posies were perceived to: Have high self-esteem Like adventure Not be lonely Be outgoing Be dependable Like trying new things Be successful Be likeable Be a good friend There were no significant correlations between number of selfies or number of posies and perceptions of being self-absorbed, worried about being left out, being emotional, or being considerate of others. After sharing these results, ask students what follow-up research questions should be addressed next. Or, if students were to replicate this study, what changes would they make?   Reference Barry, C. T., McDougall, K. H., Anderson, A. C., Perkins, M. D., Lee-Rowland, L. M., Bender, I., & Charles, N. E. (2019). ‘Check your selfie before you wreck your selfie’: Personality ratings of Instagram users as a function of self-image posts. Journal of Research in Personality, 82, 103843. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2019.07.001 ... View more

After covering experiments and correlations in Intro Psych or as a research methods booster in the Stress & Health chapter, ask your students if they have heard that you should walk 10,000 steps a day. Do they know where that recommendation comes from? Did anyone guess that it seems to come from a 1964 Japanese marketing campaign for a pedometer (“Do you really need to take 10,000 steps a day to keep fit?,” 2015)? Recent correlational research with almost 17,000 women aged 62-101 (average age 72) found that those who took about 4,400 steps per day were 41% less likely to die during the study (mean study length: 4.3 years) than those who took 2,700 per day. The more steps walked per day, the lower the mortality. Benefits maxed out at 7,500 steps; walking more than that did not reduce mortality rates. Annually, researchers asked participants for “sociodemographic characteristics, health habits, and personal and family medical history,” as well as at the start of the study, “a 131-item food frequency questionnaire.” All things being equal, those who walked more (up to 7,500 steps per day), lived longer (Lee et al., 2019). When you have this many participants who are in that age range, you can use mortality as your primary dependent measure. Experimental research using other dependent measures such as blood pressure (Moreau et al., 2001) and cholesterol (Dasgupta et al., 2017; Sugiura et al., 2002) have found benefits to increasing number of steps walked per day. With students working in small groups, ask students to design an experiment to test the effects of walking on a dependent measure of their choosing. How many levels of the independent variable would they use? How would they ensure the number of steps walked by their participants? What dependent measures would they choose? How long would they run the study? What population would they choose as participants? Visit the groups answering any questions they may have. After the groups have finished their discussion, ask each group to report their independent variable and dependent variables. Complete this activity by explaining to students the importance of understanding the theory behind the research (on what dependent measures can we expect a benefit of exercise?), the importance of reading research articles on what has already been done (what have others found and how may that inform our study?), and the importance of doing research in many different ways (such as using different operational definitions).   References Dasgupta, K., Rosenberg, E., Joseph, L., Cooke, A. B., Trudeau, L., Bacon, S., … Smarter Trial Group. (2017). Physician step prescription and monitoring to improve ARTERial health (SMARTER): A randomized controlled trial in patients with type 2 diabetes and hypertension. Diabetes, Obesity, and Metabolism, 19(5), 685–704. https://doi.org/10.1111/dom.12874 Do you really need to take 10,000 steps a day to keep fit? (2015, June 17). BBC News. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33154510 Lee, I.-M., Shiroma, E. J., Kamada, M., Bassett, D. R., Matthews, C. E., & Buring, J. E. (2019). Association of step volume and intensity with all-cause mortality in older women. JAMA Internal Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2019.0899 Moreau, K. L., Degamo, R., Langley, J., McMahon, C., Howley, E. T., Bassett Jr, D. R., & Thompson, D. L. (2001). Increasing daily walking lowers blood pressure in postmenopausal women. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 33(11), 1825–1831. Sugiura, H., Suguira, H., Kajima, K., Mirbod, S. M., Iwata, H., & Matsuoka, T. (2002). Effects of long-term moderate exercise and increase in number of daily steps on serum lipids in women: Randomised controlled trial. BMC Women’s Health, 2(1). ... View more

One of the perennial challenges in teaching Intro Psych is helping students understand that knowing that two variables are, say, positively correlated does not tell us anything about what causes that relationship. Discussion of this study would work during your coverage of correlations or during your coverage of circadian rhythms as an opportunity to revisit correlations. The 6.5-year study of 433,268 British adults (Knutson & von Schantz, 2018) provides us with an illustrative example. The researchers asked each person “Do you consider yourself to be definitely a morning person [27%], more a morning than evening person [35%], more an evening than morning person [28%], definitely an evening person [9%].” “Increased eveningness, particularly definite evening type, was associated with increased prevalence of a wide variety of diseases or disorders, including dia- betes, psychological, neurological, respiratory and gastrointestinal/abdominal disorders.” If your Intro Psych students are like most people, they want to jump to the conclusion that being a night owl will cause a number of health problems that will eventually lead to an early death. The lead author of this study, Kristen Knutson, thinks the root of the problem is really that of a mismatch. Many of our societies are geared toward the morning chronotype. If you have an evening chronotype but are trying to work, say, 9am to 5pm, you’re fighting against your own internal clock (Khan, 2018).   Ask students to work in pairs or small groups to generate a list of factors that are associated with good health. Perhaps their list includes things like exercising, getting good sleep, eating well, and developing and maintaining strong social ties. Now ask students to consider why these things may be more difficult for night owls than morning larks. For example, how many recreational sports teams compete at 11pm? How many spin or yoga classes are offered at midnight? How easy is it to find a restaurant with healthy fare at 10:30pm? How hard is it to get enough sleep when you don’t get sleepy until 2am but have to be up at 7am to be a work by 9am? Maintaining social ties is difficult for night owls who want to hang out at 10pm when most of their friends are headed to bed (Clark, 2019). The cause of the correlation between chronotype and health may be due to this whole host of third factors. What if night owls were allowed to be night owls? Would a night owl yoga instructor, for example, teaching at 11pm have night owl students? Would night owls get more sleep if they worked, say, 2pm to 10pm? If time allows, ask volunteers to share their chronotypes and how they’ve adjusted their schedules to fit that chronotype. Or, if their schedules don’t fit, to share why that’s a struggle. In closing this activity, reiterate that knowing that there is a relationship between two variables tells us nothing about why two variables are related.    References Clark, B. (2019, May 23). No, night owls aren’t doomed to die early. New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/23/smarter-living/no-night-owls-arent-doomed-to-die-early.html Khan, A. (2018, April 11). Bad news for night owls. Their risk of early death is 10% higher than for early risers, study finds. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-night-owl-death-20180412-story.html Knutson, K. L., & von Schantz, M. (2018). Associations between chronotype, morbidity and mortality in the UK Biobank cohort. Chronobiology International, 35(8), 1045–1053. https://doi.org/10.1080/07420528.2018.1454458     ... View more

Last week, I gave five examples of experiments you can use to give students practice at identifying independent and dependent variables. Here are five more. After covering these concepts, ask students to work in pairs or small groups to identify both the independent variable(s) and the dependent variable(s) in each example. Hypothesis: If people use third person pronouns to describe an event that caused anxiety, they will be more likely to report visualizing the scene as a distant observer would. Researchers asked study participants to recall a time when they were “worried about something happening to” them. Participants were then randomly assigned to either the first person condition or the third person condition. In the first person condition, participants reflected on their experience through answering questions with an I/my focus, like “Why did I feel this way?” and “What were the underlying causes and reasons for my feelings?” In third person condition, participants reflected on their experience through answering questions with an outsider’s focus by using their own name in their reflection, like “Why did Jane feel this way?” and “What were the underlying causes and reasons for Jane’s feelings?” When asked, participants in the third-person group reported seeing the imagined event unfold further away from them than reported by participants in the first-person group. In this experiment, identify the independent variable and the dependent variable.  Kross, E., Bruehlman-Senecal, E., Park, J., Burson, A., Dougherty, A., Shablack, H., … Ayduk, O. (2014). Self-talk as a regulatory mechanism: How you do it matters. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106(2), 304–324. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0035173   Hypothesis: If people hear how many others who stayed in their hotel room chose to reuse their hotel room towels, they will be more likely to reuse their towels, too.   The hotel room attendant supervisor placed one of five signs in the bathrooms of randomly-assigned hotel rooms. Each sign carried a different message: (1) a general “save the environment” message, (2) a “join your fellow guests” message explaining that 75% of guests who stayed at the hotel reused their towels, (3) another “join your fellow guests” message but this one explained that 75% of people who stayed in that very hotel room reused their towels, (4) a “join your fellow citizens” message that shifted the in-group from hotel guests to the broader citizens, and (5) a “join the men and women” message that shifted the in-group to one’s own gender group. Hotel guests who received message 3 about others who stayed in their hotel room were much more likely to reuse their towels (49.3%) as compared to all of the other groups (average re-use 42.8%). In this experiment, identify the independent variable and the dependent variable.  Goldstein, N. J., Cialdini, R. B., & Griskevicius, V. (2008). A room with a viewpoint: Using social norms to motivate environmental conservation in hotels. Journal of Consumer Research, 35(3), 472–482. https://doi.org/10.1086/586910   Hypothesis: If people are given unwrapped pieces of chocolate, they will consume them more quickly than those given wrapped pieces of chocolate. Participants received six pieces of chocolate. Random assignment determined which participants received separately wrapped pieces and which received unwrapped pieces. Participants were asked to record when they ate the chocolate. Those who received the unwrapped pieces ate most of them within two days. Those with wrapped pieces took longer. In this experiment, identify the independent variable and the dependent variable.  Cheema, A., & Soman, D. (2008). The effect of partitions on controlling consumption. Journal of Marketing Research, 45(6), 665–675. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkr.45.6.665Use the "Insert Citation" button to add citations to this document.   Hypothesis: If people receive information about available health services, they will use those services more. Researchers sampled several communities in India on their use of available health services. They randomly assigned half of the communities to receive pamphlets and community meetings that informed them of services. A year later, these residents had more prenatal examinations, more tetanus vaccinations, more prenatal supplements, and more infant vaccinations than people in the communities that did not receive the pamphlets or hold the community meetings. In this experiment, identify the independent variable and the dependent variables. Pandey, P., Sehgal, A. R., Riboud, M., Levine, D., & Goyal, M. (2007). Informing resource-poor populations and the delivery of entitled health and social services in rural India: A cluster randomized controlled trial. Journal of the American Medical Association, 298(16), 1867–1875. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.298.16.1867   Hypothesis: If we invite girls to “do science” as compared to “be a scientist,” they will persist longer in playing a science game. Researchers randomly assigned young girls to hear that “Today we’re going to do science” or hear that “Today we’re going to be scientists” before playing a science game where the children had to make guesses based on observation. After failing at their guesses, the experimenter the child if she wanted to keep playing or do something else. The girls in the “do science” condition were more likely to persist in playing the game than those in the “be a scientist” condition. In this experiment, identify the independent variable and the dependent variable. Rhodes, M., Leslie, S. J., Yee, K. M., & Saunders, K. (2019). Subtle linguistic cues increase girls’ engagement in science. Psychological Science. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797618823670 ... View more

Psychology students often struggle with the difference between the independent and dependent variables. After covering these concepts, ask students to work in pairs or small groups to identify both the independent variable(s) and the dependent variable(s) in each example. Hypothesis: Creating concrete examples will improve recall. "Students read a short text that introduced eight concepts. Some students were then prompted to generate concrete examples of each concept followed by definition restudy, whereas others only restudied definitions for the same amount of time. Two days later, students completed final tests involving example generation and definition cued recall." (In the definition cued recall test, the cues were the names of each of the concepts; the "recall" was the student writing down the definition.) Those who created their own examples of each of the concepts did better on the test than students who just restudied the concepts.  In this experiment, identify the independent variable and the dependent variable.  Rawson, K. A., & Dunlosky, J. (2016). How effective is example generation for learning declarative concepts? Educational Psychology Review, 28(3), 649–672. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-016-9377-z   Hypothesis: Attending to a phone will decrease the likelihood of seeing a unicycling clown. People, after walking across a college square, were asked if they saw a clown unicycling around a central sculpture. Only 25% of cell phone users reported seeing the clown as compared to 60% of people who were listening to music, 51% of people who were walking alone with no technological distractions, and 71% of people who were walking with another person. This type of study is called a quasi-experiment because participants weren't randomly assigned to conditions. In this experiment, identify the independent variable and the dependent variable.  Hyman, I. E., Boss, S. M., Wise, B. M., McKenzie, K. E., & Caggiano, J. M. (2010). Did you see the unicycling clown? Inattentional blindness while walking and talking on a cell phone.  Applied Cognitive Psychology, 24, 597–607. https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.1638   Hypothesis: Being sleep-deprived will increase the desire for high-calorie foods. After either get a full night’s sleep or staying awake all night, participants were asked how desirable each of 80 different foods were.  When participants were sleep-deprived, they found high-calorie foods more desirable than when they had a full night’s sleep. This type study is called a within-subjects design because the same participants got both the full night’s sleep and, on another night, stayed awake all night. In this experiment, identify the independent variable and the dependent variable.  Greer, S. M., Goldstein, A. N., & Walker, M. P. (2013). The impact of sleep deprivation on food desire in the human brain. Nature Communications, 4, 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms3259   Hypothesis: “Inflated praise [will] decrease challenge-seeking in children with low self-esteem but [will] increase challenge-seeking in children with high self-esteem.” Children (ages 8 to 12), after having their self-esteem measured, “drew a famous painting… and were told that that a professional painter, who in reality did not exist, would examine their drawing.”  Each child then received a handwritten note that they were told was written by the painter. The note said either, “You made an incredibly beautiful drawing!,” “You made a beautiful drawing!,” or did not address the drawing. Children then could choose to replicate two easy drawings (“If you choose to draw these easy pictures, you won’t make many mistakes, but you won’t learn much either.”) or two difficult drawings (“If you choose to draw thsese difficult pictures, you might make many mistakes, but you’ll definitely learn a lot, too.”). Children with low self-esteem who received the incredibly beautiful praise were more likely to choose the easy drawings. Children with low self-esteem who received the beautiful praise were likely to choose the difficult drawings. Those results were reversed for children with low self-esteem. In this experiment, identify the two independent variables and the dependent variable. Brummelman, E., Thomaes, S., Orobio de Castro, B., Overbeek, G., & Bushman, B. J. (2014). “That’s not just beautiful-that’s incredibly beautiful!”: The adverse impact of inflated praise on children with low self-esteem. Psychological Science, 25(3), 728–735. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797613514251   Hypothesis: Tasters will rate vinegar-laced beer as better than regular beer if they are not first told that vinegar has been added to the beer. Participants were invited to taste two different beers and express their preference for one over the other. Participants were told that the beer was laced with vinegar either before or after tasting or were told nothing. Participants who weren’t told that the beer was laced with vinegar or were told after they tasted it preferred it over the regular beer. Those who were told it was laced with vinegar before tasting it preferred the regular beer. In this experiment, identify the independent variable and the dependent variable. Lee, L., Frederick, S., & Ariely, D. (2006). Try it, you’ll like it: The influence of expectation, consumption, and revelation on preferences for beer. Psychological Science, 17(12), 1054–1058. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01829.x ... View more

Cartoonists have pretty good insight into the workings of the human mind. How many of them took Intro Psych? These comics will jazz up your next research methods, cognition, personality, learning, and social psych lectures. Dilbert's boss does not have an operational definition of "employee engagement," and, thus, no way to measure it. Also, on the ethics side, no, it's not okay to make up data. Lio, having no trouble with functional fixedness, repurposes an object into a sled. Lio’s friends aren’t typical. His ingroups include monsters, aliens, and death himself. When everyone else sees those creatures as part of a threatening outgroup, to Lio, they are just his friends. Also, you don’t have to read through too many strips to see Lio’s strong internal locus of control. Rat in Pearls Before Swine can be counted on for a solid outgroup homogeneity bias. Jeremy’s mom in Zits provides a nice example of positive punishment. No, I don’t think he’ll forget his textbook at home again. Or, perhaps more likely, if he does forget it at home, he won’t ask his mom to bring it to school. After all, punishment makes us better at avoiding the punishment. Caulfield, the boy in Frazz, wonders if Santa has fallen victim to the just-world phenomenon. Pig in Pearls Before Swine, whose sweetness and innocence may be unparalleled in the comics universe, does not fall for the fundamental attribution error. Looking for more example from the comics? Here are some previous comic-focused blog posts: Spotlight effect Door-in-the-Face, classical conditioning, and operant conditioning Change blindness, priming, and positive reinforcement ... View more

Do you cover survey research in your Intro Psych course? Given the prevalence of bad surveys, I’m starting to think I should spend more time on it. For a seemingly unlimited supply of bad survey questions, check out the @BadSurveyQ Twitter account. (Thank you to Rachel Soicher at Oregon State University for directing me to this.) Point out to students that not all surveys are written by researchers who have been trained to conduct surveys. In fact, some survey questions are designed to persuade, not to actually gather data. Other survey questions are written by people with good intentions who may not have thought them all the way through. Can you students spot the difference? More importantly, can your students fix the problems? @KenFernandezPHD shared this slanted poll question. In small groups, ask students to take a crack at rewriting this question in neutral language. Do you believe the corrupt leadership of the FBI and DOJ [Department of Justice] now realize President Trump means to end their efforts to subvert his presidency? Yes No @magnatom found another slanted poll question. How would your students fix this one? Do you think the Government will ever seriously look into proven, practical and effective methods to lower vehicle emissions instead of resorting to raising yet more cash from drivers? Yes No No idea @t_mabon found this limited option question. Can students identify the problem? And then fix it? How do you read your books? Papers e-reader/tablet I don’t read Audio books @sachinsomaiya found a question that left the interpretation of the rating scale up to the reader. How do your students interpret this? How would they make it better? What priority would you assign to the candidate for this program? Choose a number between 1 to 10 for the person. @BadSurveyQ wonders about the “other” option in this question. Other what? What would your students do with this “other” option to fix the question? Which of the following have you done in the last 2 years? Rented a house Rented an apartment Rented a car Bought a house Bought an apartment Bought a car Other None of the above @t_mabon shared a poll question that had responses only a company could love. What additional options would your students add? Which of the following statements do you agree with? SELECT ALL THAT APPLY Uber is a company I’m proud to say I use Uber is a brand/service for me Uber sends me relevant communications And one last question from @BadSurveyQ, another question that only a company could love. Please select three other statements that according to you also apply to a Tassimo machine [coffee maker]. Freedom Togetherness Power Entertaining Liberating Fun Open-minded Now, with this blog post completed, I’m going to have a long over-due chat with my coffee maker. If it’s not entertaining and open-minded, it’s out of here. ... View more

No, your students will not be texting or talking/listening to a phone in a crosswalk! Instead, they will be observing others who are. A recent study (Alsaleh, Sayed, & Zaki, 2018)* found that people who were on their phones – either looking at their screens or talking/listening to their phone – took longer to cross the street. This is dangerous for a number of reasons. For example, distracted pedestrians are not on the lookout for distracted motorists. When distracted pedestrians and distracted motorists meet, distracted pedestrians always lose. Since distracted pedestrians spend more time in the crosswalk, they have a greater chance of being hit by a distracted motorist. How much time does it take? In urban areas, lanes should be 10 feet (3 meters) wide (National Association of City Transportation Officials, n.d.). That makes a four-lane road 40 feet (12 meters) wide. In the distraction study (Alsaleh et al., 2018), non-distracted pedestrians walked at a rate of 1.66 meters/second. That means it took them about 7 seconds to cross a four-lane road. In contrast, researchers found that phone-distracted pedestrians walked at a rate of about 1.5 meters/second, taking about 8 seconds to cross a four-lane road. The activity The researchers used observers on the ground to determine whether and how pedestrians were using their phones and used cameras to determine walking speed. For this activity, all measures will be done by observers. Divide students into groups no smaller than three students. One student will determine if the pedestrian is distracted by their phone or not. Since the researchers found no difference in walking speed between looking at the phone and talking/listening, let’s keep this simple and not ask students to make the distinction. One student will be the timer. Using a stopwatch app on their own phone, the student will time how long it takes the pedestrian to cross the street. The third student will be the recorder – recording whether the pedestrian was distracted and recording the time it took the pedestrian to cross the street. Students will need to make some decisions before heading out. If you would like to compile the data across groups, then you should have this discussion as a class. If you would like to discuss how each group’s decisions affected their results afterwards, then let each group decide these on their own. Consider these as starter questions. When students return from the activity, they may have other issues that should have been considered in advance. That is a great opportunity to talk about the importance of pilot studies and their role in helping sort out these issues before investing time in a larger study. Where are they going to do their observations? Ideally, it will be a street with a lot of pedestrian traffic. The wider the street, the easier it will be see differences in the time it takes to cross. If there is a group of people waiting to cross the street, how will students determine who to time? The first person to cross? The right-most person? How will the students identify the person to each other to make sure that the student noting the phone behavior and the student doing the timing are looking at the same pedestrian? When will the timing start? When the target pedestrian lifts a foot to step off the curb? When the foot first hits the street? When will the timing stop? When the target pedestrian lifts a foot to stop onto the curb? When the last foot leaves the pavement? How will the recorder record the data? How many columns will be in the data sheet? To how many decimal places will the stopwatch times be recorded? How long will they collect data? Or how many pedestrians should they time? What if all of the pedestrians are on a phone? When students return with their data, either that same class period or the next class period, have the recording student enter their data in a shared Google spreadsheet, for example. One column should be the first and last initials of each member of the group, one column is for non-distracted times, and one column is for distracted times. Calculate means for the non-distracted and distracted pedestrians. If you’d like, conduct a t-test if you want to talk about statistical significance. If some groups seem to have much slower or longer times than other groups, discuss the methodology they used. Give each group an opportunity to share with the class what they would do differently if they were to conduct this observational research study again. Conclusion To conclude the activity, explain that if the class were to submit this study for publication, the authors would summarize the research related to this topic, explain in detail how the study was conducted, reveal the results, and finally explain what the findings mean, how they add to the body of research on this topic, and identify what could be done differently or better next time. Now is also a good time to explain the peer review process and the importance of replication.   References Alsaleh, R., Sayed, T., & Zaki, M. H. (2018). Assessing the effect of pedestrians’ use of cell phones on their walking behavior. Transportation Research Record , Advance online publication. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1177/0361198118780708 National Association of City Transportation Officials. (n.d.). Lane width. Retrieved August 17, 2018, from https://nacto.org/publication/urban-street-design-guide/street-design-elements/lane-width/   *Note: The full article by Alsaleh et al. is available through ResearchGate. ... View more

“The most famous psychological studies are often wrong, fraudulent, or outdated.” With this headline, Vox joins critics that question the reproducibility and integrity of psychological science’s findings.   Are many psychology findings indeed untrustworthy? In 2008, news from a mass replication study—that only 36 percent of nearly 100 psychological science studies successfully reproduced the previous findings—rattled our field. Some challenged the conclusion: “Our analysis completely invalidates the pessimistic conclusions that many have drawn from this landmark study,” said Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert.   For introductory psychology teachers, those supposed failures to replicate need not have been a huge concern. Introductory psych textbooks focus on major, well-established findings and ideas. (For example, only one of the 60+ unreplicated studies were among the 5,174 references in my text at the time, necessitating a deletion of only one-half sentence in its next edition.)   But here are more recent criticisms—about six famous and favorite studies: Philip Zimbardo stage-managed the Stanford prison study to get his wished-for results, and those who volunteer for such an experiment may be atypically aggressive and authoritarian (see here and here ). Moreover, as Stephen Reicher and Alex Haslaam showed , when they recreated a prison experiment with the BBC (albeit as reality TV rather than a replication), groups don’t necessarily corrupt—people can collectively choose to behave in varied ways. For such reasons, the Stanford prison study may in the future disappear from more intro psych texts. But for the present, some teachers still use this study as a vivid illustration of the potential corrupting power of evil situations. (Moreover, Philip Zimbardo and colleagues have released responses here .) Muzafer Sherif similarly managed his famed boys’ camp study of conflict and cooperation to produce desired results (see here ). Yet my friend Stephen Reicher, whom I met over coffee in St. Andrews two weeks ago, still considers the Sherif study a demonstration (even if somewhat staged) of the toxicity of competition and the benefits of cooperation. The facial-feedback effect—the tendency of facial muscles to trigger associated feelings—doesn’t replicate (see here ). The failure to reproduce that favorite study (which my students and I have experienced by holding a pencil with our teeth vs. our pouting lips) wiped a smile off my face. But then the original researcher, Fritz Strack , pointed us to 20 successful replications. And a new study sleuths a crucial difference (self-awareness effects due to camera proximity) between the studies that do and don’t reproduce the facial feedback phenomenon. Even without a pencil in my mouth, I am smiling again. The ego-depletion effect—that self-control is like a muscle (weakened by exercise, replenished with rest, and strengthened with exercise)—also failed a multi-lab replication ( here ). But a massive new 40-lab study, with data analyzed by an independent consultant—“innovative, rigorous” science, said Center for Open Science founder Brian Nosek—did show evidence of a small depletion phenomenon. Kitty Genovese wasn’t actually murdered in front of 38 apartment bystanders who were all nonresponsive (see here ). Indeed. Nevertheless, the unresponsive bystander narrative—initiated by police after the Genovese murder—inspired important experiments on the conditions under which bystanders will notice and respond in crisis situations. Mischel’s marshmallow study (children who delay gratification enjoy future success) got roasted by a big new failure to replicate. As I explain in last week’s www.TalkPsych.com essay, the researchers did find an association between 4½-year-olds’ ability to delay gratification and later school achievement, but it was modest and related to other factors. The take-home lesson: Psychological research does not show that a single act of behavior is a reliable predictor of a child’s life trajectory. Yet life success does grow from impulse restraint. When deciding whether to study or party, whether to spend now or save for retirement, foregoing small pleasures can lead to bigger rewards later.   One positive outcome of these challenges to psychological science has been new scientific reporting standards that enable replications, along with the establishment of the Center for Open Science that aims to increase scientific openness, integrity, and reproducibility. (I was pleased recently to recommend to fellow Templeton World Charity Foundation trustees a multi-million dollar grant which will support the Center’s mission.)   The big picture: Regardless of findings, research replications are part of good science. Science, like mountain climbing, is a process that leads us upward, but with times of feeling like we have lost ground along the way. Any single study provides initial evidence, which can inspire follow-up research that enables us to refine a phenomenon and to understand its scope. Through replication—by winnowing the chaff and refining the wheat—psychological science marches forward. ... View more

The Syrian slaughter. North Korea nuclear warheads. ISIS attacks. School shootings. Social media-fed teen depression. Thugs victimizing people of color and women. Inequality increasing. Online privacy invaded. Climate change accelerating. Democracy flagging as autocrats control Turkey, Hungary, China, and Russia, and as big money, voter suppression, and Russian influence undermine American elections. U.S. violent crime and illegal immigration soaring.   For news junkies, it’s depressing. We know that bad news predominates: If it bleeds, it leads. But we can nevertheless take heart from underreported encouraging trends. Consider, for example, the supposed increases in crime and illegal immigration.   Is it true, as President Trump has said, that “crime is rising” and in inner cities “is at levels that nobody has seen”? Seven in 10 Americans appeared to agree, when reporting to Gallup in each recent year that violent crime was higher than in the previous year. Actually, crime data aggregated by the FBI (shown below) reveals that violent (and property) crime have dramatically fallen since the early 1990s. And is the U.S. being flooded with immigrants across its Mexican border—“evil, illegal immigrants who commit violent crimes,” as a 2018 DonaldJTrump.com campaign ad declared? In reality, the influx has subsided to a point where, Politifact confirms, “more illegal Mexican immigrants are leaving the United States than entering it.” (Should we build a wall to keep them in?)   But what about immigrant crime—fact or fiction? “Americans are five times more likely to say immigrants make the [crime] situation worse rather than better (45% to 9%, respectively),” reports Gallup. Not so. Multiple studies find that, as the National Academy of Sciences reports, “immigrants are less likely than the native-born to commit crimes” and are underrepresented in American prisons.   For more good news, consider other heartening long-term trends: World hunger is retreating. Child labor is less common. Literacy is increasing. Wars are becoming less frequent. Explicit racial prejudice (as in opposition to interracial marriage) has plummeted. Gay, lesbian, and transgender folks are becoming more accepted. Infant mortality is rarer and life expectancy is increasing. Such trends are amply documented in Steven Pinker’s recent books, The Better Angels of Our Nature and Enlightenment Now, and in Johan Norber’s Progress , and Gregg Easterbrooks, It’s Better Than It Looks. As President Obama observed, if you had to choose when to live, “you’d choose now.”   Yes, in some ways, these are dark times. But these are also the times of committed Parkland teens. Mobilized citizens. Machine learning. Immune therapies. #MeToo. #BlackLivesMatter. Low inflation. Near full employment. Digital streaming. Smart cars. Wearable technologies. Year-round fresh fruit. And Post-It notes.   To paraphrase Charles Dickens, it is the worst of times, it is the best of times. It is an age of foolishness, it is an age of wisdom. It is a season of darkness, it is a season of light. It is the winter of despair, it is the spring of hope. ... View more

My colleague, Lindsay Root Luna, has new data showing that virtues correlate. People’s scores intercorrelate on scales assessing humility, justice, wisdom, forgiveness, gratitude, hope, and patience. Show her a forgiving person and she will likely show you a humble, grateful person.   Root Luna’s observations triggered my thinking about other human dispositions that come bundled. First, there are the anti-virtues.   As the concept of ethnocentricism conveys, prejudices often coexist: anti-gay, anti-immigrant, anti-Black, anti-Muslim, and anti-women sentiments often live inside the same epidermis. People intuitively know this. Thus, as Diana Sanchez and colleagues have observed, White women often feel threatened by someone who displays racism, and men of color by sexism.   Likewise, people’s tendencies on the “dark triad”—narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy—are “substantially intercorrelated.” Show Peter Muris and colleagues a narcissist (perhaps your least favorite politician?), and they’ll show you a likely Machiavellian and amoral person.   On the brighter side, some good things, in addition to the virtues, also tend to come wrapped in the same skin. Charles Spearman recognized this long ago with the concept of general intelligence (g). Those who score high in one cognitive domain have some tendency to score higher than average in other areas such as reasoning or spatial ability, or even perceptual speed.   Athleticism offers another example of packaged gifts. The ability to run fast is distinct from muscular strength or the eye-hand coordination involved in the precise pitching of a ball. Yet there remains some tendency for athletic excellence in one domain to correlate with that in another. Good tennis players may also be better than average basketball players.   Surely this does not exhaust the list. Can you think of other examples of correlated good things and bad things? ... View more

Apophenia is seeing patterns in randomness, which may be the mechanism behind conspiracy theory generation. If it feels to me like a set of random events are connected and no one is talking about the connection, then conspiracy must be afoot (Poulsen, 2012). Psychiatrist Klaus Conrad is credited with coining this term in 1958 to describe the descent into psychosis, “Borrowing from ancient Greek, the artificial term ‘apophany’ describes this process of repetitively and monotonously experiencing abnormal meanings in the entire surrounding experiential field, eg, being observed, spoken about, the object of eavesdropping, followed by strangers” (as cited in Mishara, 2010). But this isn’t a post about conspiracy theories or psychosis. While conspiracy theories and psychosis take our ability to see patterns to whole other level, seeing patterns in randomness is just how our brains work. The visual version of apophenia is pareidolia. Have you ever seen a rabbit in a cloud formation? That’s pareidolia. Have you seen a face in a piece of toast? Also pareidolia. After covering the cerebral cortex, tell students that there is an area in the temporal lobe that is especially good at detecting faces: the fusiform face area (FFA). Show students these 20 objects where faces appear. Ask students to guess whether they think that seeing these objects would cause the FFA to be activated. How could that hypothesis be tested? Give students a minute to think about it, a minute to share with a partner, and then ask for volunteers for their suggestions. This would be a nice time to review independent variables and dependent variables. When you’re ready, tell students that researchers compared such face objects with everyday no-face objects, and found that face-objects activated the FFA (Hadjikhani, Kveraga, Naik, & Ahlfors, 2009). If time allows, describe prosopagnosia (pro-soap-ag-nose-ee-ya; face-blindness). Do students think that the FFA would be activated when people with congenital prosopagnosia look at faces? Why or why not? The FFA is activated, but it doesn’t show habituation. When people without prosopagnosia are shown faces a second time, the FFA shows decreased activation; “Not interesting; I’ve seen this before.” For those with prosopagnosia, the activation is just as great the second time around; “Hey, this is new!” (Avidan, Hasson, Malach, & Behrmann, 2005). Again if time allows, do students think the FFA would be activated in people with autism. Why or why not? For the participants in the study, the severity of their autism varied. For those who had impaired face recognition (about half of their sample, 14 out of 27) , the activation of their FFA was weaker.   For 30 years, researchers have debated whether the FFA is face-specific or whether it is for detecting any complex pattern we’re expert in (Kanwisher & Yovel, 2006). Some recent research has found that the FFA is active when expert chess players look at positions of chess pieces, positions taken from actual gameplay, but not a specific chess piece (Bilalic, 2016). And researchers have also compared expert radiologists with beginner medical students. When the experts looked at X-rays, their FFAs were active (Bilalic, Grottenthaler, Nagele, & Lindig, 2016). While the jury is still out on whether the FFA is face-specific or not, this is a wonderful example of science in action. Researchers describe a finding. All researchers start thinking about what might be the cause of that finding, and they start devising experiments to test their hypothesized causes.   References  Avidan, G., Hasson, U., Malach, R., & Behrmann, M. (2005). Detailed exploration of face-related processing in congenital prosopagnosia: 2. Functional neuroimaging findings. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 17(7), 1130–1149. https://doi.org/10.1162/0898929054475154 Bilalic, M. (2016). Revisiting the role of the fusiform face area in expertise. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 28(9), 1345–1357. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn  Bilalic, M., Grottenthaler, T., Nagele, T., & Lindig, T. (2016). The faces in radiological images: Fusiform face area supports radiological expertise. Cerebral Cortex, 26 (3), 1004–1014. https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhu272 Hadjikhani, N., Kveraga, K., Naik, P., & Ahlfors, S. P. (2009). Early (N170) activation of face-specific cortex by face-like objects. Neuroreport, 20 (4), 403–407. https://doi.org/10.1097/WNR.0b013e328325a8e1 Kanwisher, N., & Yovel, G. (2006). The fusiform face area: a cortical region specialized for the perception of faces. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 361 (1476), 2109–2128. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2006.1934 Mishara, A. L. (2010). Klaus Conrad (1905-1961): Delusional mood, psychosis, and beginning schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 36 (1), 9–13. https://doi.org/10.1093/schbul/sbp144 Poulsen, B. (2012). Being amused by apophenia. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/reality-play/201207/being-amused-apophenia ... View more