After covering experiments, ask your students to work in small groups to design an experiment that would test this hypothesis: If patients are able to schedule their own mammograms, they are more likely to actually get a mammogram. For their design, ask students to identity the independent variable (experimental and control conditions) and dependent variable. They should be sure to include operational definitions. Once discussion seems to have died down, invite a volunteer from each group to share their design. In this freely available article, researchers conducted such a study using archival data (Waddell et al., 2023). Consider sharing this study with your students. Because the study was archival, it was quasi-experimental—participants were not randomly assigned to conditions. In this particular healthcare system, patients were not able to self-refer for a mammogram; a physician had to order it, say, during an office visit. The healthcare system implemented a new electronic health record portal that gave patients the ability to schedule their mammograms without having to call the clinic. Some patients were not active in the portal so they were considered the control group. Patients who were active in the portal (operationally defined as having logged into the system at least once in the twelve months prior to the visit with their physician who ordered the mammogram)—and therefore could electronically schedule their appointments—were in the experimental group. The dependent variable was an easy one to measure. Did the patient get a mammogram within six months of the doctor’s appointment when the mammogram order was issued? Approximately 73% of the experimental group got a mammogram within six months as compared to approximately 54% of the control group. There was one big confounding variable, however. Those who were active in the portal (experimental group) received a reminder email after their doctor’s visit to schedule a mammogram. Those who did not use the portal (control group) did not receive a reminder. There is no way for us to know, then, if the differences seen in the dependent variable were due to being able to electronically schedule a mammogram or due to receiving an email reminding them to schedule. If you share this study with your students, ask students to consider what other confounding variables there may be. The researchers identify a few others in the “Limitations” section of the article’s discussion. For example, might there be a difference between those who logged into the electronic health record portal and those who hadn't? Would the experiments your students designed address these confounds? Conclude this activity by reminding students that while each type of research method has its limitations, the more types of methods we use to address a hypothesis, the more confidence we have in the overall results. As an out-of-class assignment, consider asking your students to generate other hypothesis about patients and healthcare behavior. How would they design an experiment or quasi-experiment using archival data to test one of those hypotheses?   Reference Waddell, K. J., Goel, K., Park, S.-H., Linn, K. A., Navathe, A. S., Liao, J. M., McDonald, C., Reitz, C., Moore, J., Hyland, S., & Mehta, S. J. (2023). Association of electronic self-scheduling and screening mammogram completion. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, S0749379723004440. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2023.11.002         ... View more

The New York Times has noted new data showing a rise in pedestrian deaths (Leonhardt, 2023). The article offers several possibilities for this increase. One reason may be that drivers are paying more attention to their phones than to the road and what’s going on around them. I’ll add built-in car displays in that category. With a physical knob or dial, adjusting music/audiobook volume or in-cabin temperature could easily be done by touch. With screens, drivers have to look away from the road to make these adjustments. The article also suggests that the greater availability of marijuana and opioids has more people driving under the influence of something. Additionally, more people are living in areas where sidewalks and crosswalks are less common. When people walk on the road, it stands to reason that their chances of being hit by a driver increase. Lastly, the article notes that with more people living on the streets, there are more opportunities for people and cars to collide. I’d add one more possibility. It seems like cars are quieter than they used to be—electric vehicles certainly are. If pedestrians rely on sight and sound to help with vehicle awareness, quiet cars reduce those sensory modalities by half. The New York Times article makes excellent points. What is missing from this discussion, however, is pedestrian behavior. In my informal observations of pedestrians—both as a driver and as a fellow pedestrian, some pedestrians seem pretty cavalier about occupying the same space as cars. Here are a few examples I’ve experienced in the last two weeks. There is a fairly busy rural road near my home that has a few rolling hills. There is no sidewalk. It’s possible to walk on the side of the road, but with the rocks, it looks like it would be tough trekking. I’ve seen one person on two different occasions walking on the road, walking with traffic, and wearing over-the-ear headphones. It’s not difficult for me to imagine a car cresting one of those hills and not seeing this person in time to avoid them—especially if there is oncoming traffic. The person would have no chance since they can neither see nor hear oncoming traffic. Just yesterday I was leaving our local post office when a person crossed the street in front of me. They did not look either direction before crossing. They were wearing a big hood that functioned just like blinders. If I had been any closer, they would have walked into the side of my car. Actually, a couple weeks ago, I was the passenger in a car when a person who had not looked for oncoming cars, stepped off the curb and came very close to walking into the side of our car. The car was a red Camaro. It was not easy to miss. Not paying attention to surroundings is as much of a problem for pedestrians as it is for drivers. While a pedestrian who steps into a crosswalk when the lighted guy turns green is in the right and the inattentive driver who hits them is in the wrong, being right does not make the pedestrian any less dead. Have pedestrians become less attentive? I don’t know. If we are, I can imagine several reasons why. Just like drivers, phones have pedestrians’ attention. I also wonder if today’s pedestrians have less experience being pedestrians than pedestrians of the past. For example, stranger danger pushed kids indoors, giving them less experience on streets. Furthermore, more of my students today do not know how to drive as compared to my students in the past. Does less experience behind the wheel make it harder for pedestrians to see the world through a driver’s eyes? This could be the basis of an interesting observational study for your students. Can your students devise measurements that would quantify pedestrian or driver attentiveness? For example, does a randomly selected pedestrian look both ways before stepping into the street? Or does a randomly selected driver stopped in an intersection, look both directions before proceeding into the crosswalk? How would your students select the intersections to conduct their observations? Does your city have data on the busiest intersections? Does your local police department have data on where the car/pedestrian crashes occur? What days or times of day would your students choose? As a way to expand student engagement with psychology or as alternative activity, consider asking students to use the persuasive strategies they learned about in their Intro Psych social chapter to design a public ad campaign While the primary goal of the observational study activity is to give students practice designing and conducting an observational study and the primary goal of the public ad campaign is to give students practice putting their knowledge of social psychology to work, the secondary goal for both activities is to increase student traffic safety awareness—both as drivers and as pedestrians.   Reference Leonhardt, D. (2023, December 11). The rise in U.S. traffic deaths. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/11/briefing/us-traffic-deaths.html   ... View more

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

In a May 2023 Scientific American article, I was introduced to the concept of recreational fear (Martinez-Conde & Macknik, 2023). Of course, we’re all familiar with it. It was the term that was news to me. People who are into recreational fear do things that are scary—for fun: roller coasters, bungee jumping, haunted houses, horror movies. You get the idea. I’ve been on a bobsled (twice) and have been zip lining over some pretty impressive gorges (twice), but horror movies and haunted houses are not my bag. Researchers wondered if being with friends would lessen the intensity of the fear in these recreational settings (Tashjian et al., 2022). Sometimes when we are with others in fear-inducing situations, social buffering occurs. The presence of others reduces our fear. But sometimes we experience social contagion. The presence of others increases our fear. In instances of recreational fear, which is it? Here’s a little experimental design practice for the social psych chapter in Intro Psych. Ask students to work in small groups to design an exploratory study. Since we don’t know (or at least your students don’t know yet) whether the presence of others increases or decreases fear—and we can make a good case for either one, we won’t have an hypothesis. The question is “Does the presence of others in a recreational fear situation increase or decrease fear?” Your students will have a few problems to solve in designing this study. First, the independent variable. Will they focus on the effect of the presence of friends, strangers, or both? Will they investigate the impact of group size? Does the presence of five others have more of an impact than, say, one other person? There is also the challenge of the recreational fear situation itself. Even though your students are not actually going to conduct this study, potential IRB ethical concerns should be considered. I doubt that your IRB would approve of you scaring the bejesus out of your participants. Is there someplace in your community or nearby environs where people pay to be scared? Ask your students to design a study where they would solicit volunteers from those paying customers. And now the dependent variable. How would your students operationally define fear? Invite groups to share their designs with the class. To close this activity, tell students about the Tashjian et.al study (Tashjian et al., 2022). The researchers elicited the help of the good folks at The 17th Door, a haunted house experience now located in Buena Vista, CA. The research article includes a summary of what happens in each of the 17 scenes. I read through them. Here is the researchers’ concise summary. “Each of the 17 contiguous rooms involved distinct threats, including the inability to escape an oncoming car, mimicked suffocation, actual electric shocks, and being shot with pellets by a firing squad while blindfolded” (Tashjian et al., 2022, p. 238). In an understatement for the win, they write, “[T]his type of immersive threat manipulation is not replicable in the lab” (Tashjian et al., 2022, p. 238). The “immersive threat manipulation” lasted 30 minutes. I’ve been on a bobsled and been ziplining over deep gorges. As far as recreational fear goes, I’m pretty sure The 17th Door is not for me. The researchers recruited participants after they paid the admission fee and signed the waiver required by The 17th Door. Participants went through in groups of eight to ten. The researchers asked the volunteers how many friends were in their group. Everyone went through with at least one friend. Some groups were comprised entirely of friends. As a measure of fear intensity, each volunteer wore a wrist sensor that measured skin conductance. The groups of participants are led through the experience by an employee of the The 17th Door on a precisely timed schedule. That allowed the recorded sensor activity to be aligned precisely with the events. Now for the results. Social contagion won out over social buffering. The more friends people had with them, the greater the fear they experienced as measured by skin conductance. The authors acknowledge that because changes in skin conductance are due to sympathetic nervous system arousal, the increase in skin conductance could be caused by factors other than fear, such as excitement or nervousness. To close out this activity, tell students that there is a Recreational Fear Lab at Aarhus University in Denmark run by Mathias Clasen and Marc Malmdorf Andersen. If the photo on their “people” page is accurate, their research assistants get lab coats that read on the back “Horror Research Team.” I’m a little jealous. These are the Recreational Fear Lab’s research questions for 2020-2023:     What is recreational fear, and what can it be used for?     What characterizes engagement with recreational fear across the lifespan?     What psychological and physiological characteristics are associated with recreational fear?     When does recreational fear turn into real fear? I’m particularly intrigued by the last question. There is a boundary, but how do we identify it—both as researchers and as a terrified person? In The 17th Door, participants can yell “Mercy” to signal that they want to opt of a scene or opt out of the entire event. What factors contribute to a person making that decision? Is that caused by crossing the line between recreational fear and real fear? Which research question do your students find the most interesting and why?   References Martinez-Conde, S., & Macknik, S. (2023, May). Friends can make things very scary. Scientific American, 328(5), 80. Tashjian, S. M., Fedrigo, V., Molapour, T., Mobbs, D., & Camerer, C. F. (2022). Physiological responses to a haunted-house threat experience: Distinct tonic and phasic effects. Psychological Science, 33(2), 236–248. https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976211032231   ... View more

In the (freely available) editorial that opened the June 2, 2023 edition of Science, H. Holden Thorp, Editor-in-Chief of Science, reminds us that “it matters who does science” (Thorp, 2023, p. 873). His point is that scientists are human, humans make mistakes, therefore scientists make mistakes. And we should just own that. Science is riddled with mistakes. Thorp urges us to use the phrase “trust the scientific process,” because it suggests that “science is what we know now, the product of the work of many people over time, and principles that have reached consensus in the scientific community through established processes of peer review and transparent disclosure” (Thorp, 2023, p. 873). Science is the process, not just a collection of known facts—or a collection of theories that tie the known facts together into a (semi-)coherent whole.   Thorp also notes that when a working group of scientists all have the same preconceived notions, their biases may affect the research questions they ask, how they try to the answer those research questions, and how they may interpret the results. However, when people with different lived experiences and cultural backgrounds are part of the research process, “scientific consensus can be reached faster and with greater reliability” (Thorp, 2023, p. 873).  Yes, science is riddled with mistakes, but the greater diversity of experiences we bring to science the faster we can rid ourselves of these mistakes and reduce the number of mistakes we make going forward. I’m reminded of some of my favorite psychologists whose lived experiences led them to ask the research questions they are now famous for. Mamie and Kenneth Clark asked young Black children to choose the doll they would like to play with: a Black doll or a white doll. The children chose the white doll. That research, which was presented to the U.S. Supreme Court by Thurgood Marshall, influenced the outcome of what we now know as Brown vs. Board of Education. Anyone could have done that research, but only Black psychologists thought to ask the question. Lillian Gilbreth, the mother of industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology, became interested in efficient kitchens after 1920s sexism resulted in dropped business contracts after her husband’s death. Again, anyone could have done research into how to create an efficient kitchen, but only a female psychologist thought to ask the question. In a more recent example, researchers have been uncovering the factors that contribute to racial disparities in sleep quality, such as racial disparities in shift work, exposure to light and air pollution, and acculturation stress. Sure, we can tell people to get better sleep, they need to sleep in a quiet, dark, cool room, but what if they live in an urban environment with plenty of middle-of-the-sirens, ambient street lighting, and no air conditioning? And what if they work the night shift? What if what’s keeping them awake is worrying about whether their boss’s racism is keeping them from getting raise or promotion? Researchers who are asking these questions include Girardin Jean-Louis, Dayna Johnson, Carmela Alcántara, and Alberto Ramos (Pérez Ortega, 2021). After covering research methods in Intro Psych, ask your students to read Thorp’s editorial. Next, invite your students to consider their own lived experiences. What research questions would they ask?   References Pérez Ortega, R. (2021). Divided we sleep. Science, 374(6567), 552–555. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.acx9445 Thorp, H. H. (2023). It matters who does science. Science, 380(6648), 873. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adi9021   ... View more

Last month (August 2023) I wrote a blog post with suggestions on how we can embed financial literacy education into the Intro Psych course (Frantz, 2023). If I had not been behind on my science periodicals reading, I would have seen the excellent interview piece with financial psychologist Wendy De La Rosa in the Monitor on Psychology (Fairbank, 2023). De La Rosa and her colleague Stephanie Tully have been researching subjective wealth perceptions. “A person’s perception of their financial situation is often more important than their objective financial status” (p.33) (Fairbank, 2023). If you believe that you’re in dire financial straits—whether you actually are or not—the stress of that belief will interfere with your sleep, your concentration, and your health. One study found a statistically significant .32 correlation between household income and subjective financial situation (Gasiorowska, 2014). In other words, yes, the higher one’s household income, the higher one tends to rate their subjective financial situation—defined as “perceived financial situation, ability to make ends meet and adequacy of income to fulfill needs and wants” (Gasiorowska, 2014, p. 72). But a correlation of .32 is well below a perfect 1.0 correlation. After covering correlations, ask students what other variables they think may affect how one evaluates their own financial situation such that there would be a mismatch between how much money one actually has and their perception of how much money they have. The biggest mediator the researchers found was financial control (Gasiorowska, 2014). The more control a person has over their finances, the better able they are to align their actual income with their perceptions of that income. This reminds me of a couple I knew. He handled all of the finances, because she didn’t want to. However, she had high anxiety around how much money they had. She was certain they were going to be destitute any minute. He would assure her that they had plenty of money to make ends meet and then some. He would show her the bank statements and the bills. It would allay her fears for a bit, and then the anxiety would come roaring right back. While this study was not done with children or adolescents, I have to wonder how much of a disconnect there might be between their family’s actual household income and their subjective wealth perception. I wonder how many caregivers bring their children and adolescents into financial discussions. For example, “This is how much money we have coming in every month. Here is how much everything costs: utilities, cell phones, Internet, groceries, entertainment. This is how much we’re able to save.” In the Monitor article, we learn that Wendy De La Rosa’s mother did not speak English, so as a child De La Rosa translated financial documents for her mother, such as bank notices and credit card statements. De La Rosa had a front row seat to her family’s financial situation. With such early training on the inner workings of household finances, I imagine De La Rosa entered adolescence with an understanding of household money-management that many children don’t have. De La Rosa and Tully appear to have found another variable that helps create a mismatch between actual income and subjective wealth perceptions: pay frequency. “[G]etting paid more frequently increases subjective wealth perceptions and as a result, we tend to spend more than if we got paid less frequently” (Fairbank, 2023, p. 34). This really underlines the importance of creating a household budget and sticking to it. It will be hard to pay rent if the money is going out as fast as it’s coming in.   De La Rosa has a TED series called “Your Money and Your Mind.” There are eight videos, all less than five minutes long. This could make for an interesting online discussion prompt: Watch the eight videos created by financial psychologist Wendy De La Rosa. Which video is the most important one for your friends to watch? Why? Lastly, what was the most interesting thing you learned from that video? Explain. Lastly, I wonder how many students would enroll in a Financial Psychology course. It would be a fun one to teach!   References Fairbank, R. (2023, June). 5 questions for Wendy De La Rosa. Monitor on Psychology, 54(4), 33–34. Frantz, S. (2023, August 10). Increasing financial literacy through Intro Psych: Anchoring & operant conditioning. Macmillan and BFW Teaching Community. https://community.macmillanlearning.com/t5/psychology-blog/increasing-financial-literacy-through-intro-psych-anchoring-amp/ba-p/19235 Gasiorowska, A. (2014). The relationship between objective and subjective wealth is moderated by financial control and mediated by money anxiety. Journal of Economic Psychology, 43, 64–74. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2014.04.007     ... View more

As of June 2023, recreational cannabis use is legal Canada (Department of Justice, Canada, 2021) and in 23 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands (Reuters, 2023). Not that it has to be legal for people to use it. In a 2022 national survey, researchers asked people about their marijuana use. Of full-time college students between the ages of 19 and 22, 22.1% reported that they used marijuana at least once in the last 30 days, whereas only 4.7% reported that they used it daily. Both numbers were lower than for age-matched non-college students (28.2% monthly and 14.5% daily). That 30-day percentage of 22.1% for college students is about where the numbers have been since 2013. To see these kind of numbers for marijuana use, we have to go back to the early 1980s. In 1980, a whopping one-third (34.8%) of college students reported using marijuana in the previous 30 days (Patrick et al., 2023). Why do college students use marijuana? In one qualitative study, one reason participants gave was that they used it for a boost in creativity (Kilwein et al., 2022). But does marijuana actually make users more creative? Or do they just think they are more creative? After covering experimental design, give your students this hypothesis: Cannabis use increases creativity. Ask students for the independent variable (including an experimental group and a control group) and the dependent variable(s). For all variables, ask for operational definitions. After students have had a couple minutes to consider this on their own, ask students to work in small groups to create their experimental design. If time allows, ask students how or where they would find volunteers for their study. What are the ethical concerns that they need to take into consideration? After group discussion dies down, ask a volunteer from each group to share their design. Now share with students how researchers investigated this same question (Heng et al., 2023). To recruit participants, researchers posted flyers in recreational cannabis dispensaries in Washington (a state where such use is legal) and on Craigslist. Users who smoked one joint no more than a few times a week were selected to participate. Anyone who reported being pregnant was excluded. Participants were mailed cannabis test kits and emailed the study information. Participants who successfully completed the study received a $25 gift card. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: high during the creativity test or not high during the creativity test. “High” was operationally defined as having used marijuana in the last 15 minutes. The researchers note that the participants had to supply their own cannabis. “Instead of stipulating a specific time to complete the study, participants were asked to begin the study within 15-min of their volitional cannabis use. This addressed the IRB restriction of not instructing cannabis use” (Heng et al., 2023, p. 637). Now we need an operational definition for creativity. “Participants were asked to generate as many creative uses as they could for a brick in 4 min” (Heng et al., 2023, p. 637). They also rated their brick ideas based on how creative, original, and novel they thought they were on a 5-point scale.  Then they used the saliva test kit and mailed it back to the researchers. What did the researchers find? Participants who used cannabis before doing the creativity task thought they were more creative than did those in the control group. But were they really more creative” The researchers asked a couple research assistants who were blind to conditions to evaluate the creativity of the answers, and they also asked participants on Prolific to do the same. Neither the research assistants nor the Prolific participants saw any difference in creativity between the groups. There was a bit more to the research design if you’d like to share this with your students as a way to conclude this activity. The researchers also asked the participants how happy and joyful they were. The researchers found that it was this mood state that mediated creativity evaluations. Cannabis use was more likely to result in higher creativity ratings if the person was happy while high.     References Department of Justice, Canada. (2021, July 7). Cannabis legalization and regulation. https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/cj-jp/cannabis/ Heng, Y. T., Barnes, C. M., & Yam, K. C. (2023). Cannabis use does not increase actual creativity but biases evaluations of creativity. Journal of Applied Psychology, 108(4), 635–646. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000599 Kilwein, T. M., Wedell, E., Herchenroeder, L., Bravo, A. J., & Looby, A. (2022). A qualitative examination of college students’ perceptions of cannabis: Insights into the normalization of cannabis use on a college campus. Journal of American College Health, 70(3), 733–741. https://doi.org/10.1080/07448481.2020.1762612 Patrick, M. E., Miech, R. A., Johnston, L. D., & O’Malley, P. M. (2023). Monitoring the Future Panel Study annual report: National data on substance use among adults ages 19 to 60, 1976-2022 (Monitoring the Future Monograph Series). Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan. https://monitoringthefuture.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/mtfpanel2023.pdf Reuters. (2023, June 1). U.S. states where recreational marijuana is legal. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-states-where-recreational-marijuana-is-legal-2023-05-31/     ... View more

To begin this online or face-to-face discussion, ask your students to read this brief introduction to Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) on the American Psychological Association website (APA, 2023). Next, ask students to read the section on the “criteria for IRB approval of research” in the U.S Code of Federal Regulations. (If you are outside the United States, refer to the regulations in your country.) Students are to imagine that they are the community representative serving on their institution’s IRB. Give students this information: A research proposal from a group of researchers at your institution is now up for review. Imagine that the IRB has received the following proposal. (The text comes from the introduction section of a recently published study. The bracketed text has been added to change the verb tense.) Study 1 [will test] whether couples’ financial arrangements can mitigate the corrosive effect of time on relationship quality. Using a longitudinal field experiment, we [will] randomly [assign] couples to merge their money in a joint bank account, to keep their money in separate bank accounts, or to a condition where they [will receive] no instructions about how to structure their finances. We [will recruit] only engaged or newlywed couples for this experiment, since those couples’ relationship dynamics are not yet set in stone and are presumably responsive to intervention (Huston et al. 2001; Joel and Eastwick 2018). We [will follow] these couples for 2 years, conducting six waves of data collection across the connubial crucible [the newlywed years]. We [will measure] changes in relationship quality and financial harmony (i.e., the extent to which partners are satisfied with how they handle and discuss money). We [expect to] find that couples who transition to a joint bank account [will be] buffered against the normative decline in relationship quality observed within longitudinal research on marriage, an effect due in part to positive changes in financial harmony (Olson et al., 2023, p. 3). One challenge for IRBs is how to weigh potential risks to participants against potential benefits to participants and the value of the knowledge gained from the research. What risks to participants can you envision? What benefits to participants? What is the value of the knowledge that may be gained from this study? Would you say that the potential risks are worth the potential reward? Explain. What questions do you have for the researchers about the ethics of this study? (Refer to the section on the “criteria for IRB approval of research” in the U.S Code of Federal Regulations to frame your response.) What answers to your questions would you need to see in order to give your okay for this study? Explain. If there are risks to participants, IRBs may allow a study to be conducted if the participants in the study are made aware of the risks. What information would you need to see in the informed consent form in order to allow this study to move forward? Explain. This study did indeed receive IRB approval and was conducted—as you undoubtedly guessed since it was published. Students may wonder about the results. The researchers found that their no-intervention control group and separate-money condition both experienced a similar decline in relationship quality over the 2-year period. The researchers noted, however, that 72% of the couples in the control group maintained separate accounts throughout the entire time period. Of those in the control group who did opt to merge their money did so in the second year. In other words, the no-intervention group, in practice, looked very similar to the separate-account group. In contrast, the participants in the joint-money condition experienced a boost in their relationship quality (Olson et al., 2023). If time allows, give students the opportunity to generate their own research questions regarding the connection between finances and relationship quality.   References APA. (2023, August). Frequently asked questions about institutional review boards. https://www.apa.org/advocacy/research/defending-research/review-boards Olson, J. G., Rick, S. I., Small, D. A., & Finkel, E. J. (2023). Common cents: Bank account structure and couples’ relationship dynamics. Journal of Consumer Research, ucad020. https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucad020   ... View more

The ‘R’ in the PERMA model of happiness is relationships (Madeson, 2021). In this New York Times article Maura Kelly tells us that following a break-up, she was feeling lonely. A friend advised her to become a regular somewhere (Kelly, 2023). [Cue the theme song from the sitcom Cheers.] Her friend’s advice was solid. All relationships matter, even the casual ones. During the COVID lockdown, I wrote about the importance of weak ties (Frantz, 2021).  For students who are starting college this fall away from home, they may be away from their family and high school friends for the first time in their lives. Their weak ties are gone, and their strong ties may be more challenging to maintain. Loneliness is to be expected. In Intro Psych, we can use the research methods chapter to normalize loneliness and provide students some strategies for reducing it. After covering surveys in the research methods chapter, ask students to read this article on a survey about loneliness done with older adults (Lam et al., 2023), and then answer these questions: Explain the difference between strong and weak ties. Give examples of each. [Background section] Where did the researchers find their survey participants? [Study section] What was the response rate for this survey? [Study section] Explain what is meant by the term response rate. How many participants were included in the researchers’ subsample? What was the purpose of the subsample? [Study section] According to the results of this study, which is more important: strong ties, weak ties, or a mix of both? [Conclusion section] The researchers argue that there are three reasons weak ties are important. What are they? [Conclusion section] While this study was about older adults, would you expect similar findings for first-year college students? Why or why not? Give an example of at least one weak tie that you have. How do you know this person? How often do you see them? Identify at least one thing you can do to increase the likelihood of developing more weak ties. A couple of years ago, we moved across the country. In our new community, we’ve been building our network of weak ties. From that network we’ve created some strong ties, too. For example, we visit our favorite local coffee shop once or twice a week. Over time, we have gotten to know the owners, the baristas, and many of the regular patrons. At our favorite restaurant, the servers now greet us with hugs. Weak ties, yes, but powerful weak ties. It is difficult to not feel a sense of community when you’re hugged just for going out to dinner. Assure your students that to develop weak ties, they do not need to be an extravert. Encourage your students to find a place where they like the atmosphere—a coffee shop, a comfy spot in the student union, a corner of the public library. Tell them to visit their chosen spot frequently. Assure them that the mere exposure effect will work in their favor. As your students begin to see faces that are now familiar, encourage your students to nod or smile in recognition of these others who are also regulars, and, over time, chat about something innocuous, like the weather. Face-to-face classes can be another source of weak ties, but since time in the classroom is limited, students may need to work a little faster to develop those ties. However, weak ties may be easier to develop with other students who are in the same major because they may see the same students in multiple courses. Loneliness is very real. Using this survey example in the Intro Psych research methods chapter is one way to encourage students to expand their network of weak ties.   References Frantz, S. (2021, February 2). Watercooler conversations: Weak-ties matter. Macmillan and BFW Teaching Community. https://community.macmillanlearning.com/t5/psychology-blog/watercooler-conversations-weak-ties-matter/ba-p/13702 Kelly, M. (2023, August 11). Where everybody knows your name. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/11/well/become-a-regular-loneliness.html Lam, J., Broccatelli, C., & Baxter, J. (2023). Diversity of strong and weak ties and loneliness in older adults. Journal of Aging Studies, 64, 101097. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2022.101097 Madeson, M. (2021, June 12). Seligman’s PERMA+ model explained: A theory of wellbeing. https://positivepsychology.com/perma-model/       ... View more

Omega-3 fatty acids are important for brain health (Barnes et al., 2021; Lange, 2020; Thomas et al., 2021). Nuts—particularly walnuts—are high in omega-3 fatty acids (The Nutrition Source, n.d.). After covering experimental design or as a experimental design booster in the lifespan chapter, give students this hypothesis, and then ask them to work in small groups to design an experiment that would test it. Hypothesis: Eating walnuts will enhance the neuropsychological and behavioral development of adolescents. Ask the groups to identify the independent variable—both experimental and control conditions—and the dependent variables. Students should also provide operational definitions of all variables. Before deciding on operational definitions, encourage students to consider what information they may be lacking. For example, has previous research revealed how many grams of walnuts a day may be needed? How many days or weeks may the walnuts need to be eaten to see any effects? What kinds of dependent measures might reveal effects? This is a good opportunity to explain the importance of a lit review. Knowing what other researchers have done and have discovered can inform how we design our study. After groups have had an opportunity to design their studies, invite a representative from each group to share their design. As an out-of-class assignment, ask students to read this freely available Lancet article on an experiment conducted in a dozen high schools in Barcelona (Pinar-Martí et al., 2023) and to answer these questions: What was the independent variable? Identify both the experimental and control conditions. What was the operational definition used for the experimental condition? What were the dependent variables? Hint: there were four neuropsychological variables and two behavioral variables. When the researchers removed from their data analysis those in the experimental group who did not eat the amount of walnuts as requested, what results did they find?   References Barnes, S., Chowdhury, S., Gatto, N. M., Fraser, G. E., & Lee, G. J. (2021). Omega‐3 fatty acids are associated with blood–brain barrier integrity in a healthy aging population. Brain and Behavior, 11(8), e2273. https://doi.org/10.1002/brb3.2273 Lange, K. W. (2020). Omega-3 fatty acids and mental health. Global Health Journal, 4(1), 18–30. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.glohj.2020.01.004 Pinar-Martí, A., Gignac, F., Fernández-Barrés, S., Romaguera, D., Sala-Vila, A., Lázaro, I., Ranzani, O. T., Persavento, C., Delgado, A., Carol, A., Torrent, J., Gonzalez, J., Roso, E., Barrera-Gómez, J., López-Vicente, M., Boucher, O., Nieuwenhuijsen, M., Turner, M. C., Burgaleta, M., … Julvez, J. (2023). Effect of walnut consumption on neuropsychological development in healthy adolescents: A multi-school randomised controlled trial. EClinicalMedicine, 59, 101954. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eclinm.2023.101954 The Nutrition Source. (n.d.). Omega-3 fatty acids: An essential contribution. Harvard School of Public Health. Retrieved August 10, 2023, from https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you-eat/fats-and-cholesterol/types-of-fat/omega-3-fats/ Thomas, A., Baillet, M., Proust‐Lima, C., Féart, C., Foubert‐Samier, A., Helmer, C., Catheline, G., & Samieri, C. (2021). Blood polyunsaturated omega‐3 fatty acids, brain atrophy, cognitive decline, and dementia risk. Alzheimer’s & Dementia, 17(3), 407–416. https://doi.org/10.1002/alz.12195   ... View more

Eating fruits and vegetables is good for all of us, including growing children. Researchers wondered what caregivers could do to increase fruit and veggie intake among the younger set. Explain to your Intro Psych students that the first thing researchers do is a literature review where we dive into the research databases to find peer-reviewed journal articles on our topic of interest. If you’d like your students to get practice using your library’s databases, contact your favorite reference librarian for database instructions you can provide your students. Ask students what search terms might yield the best results for this topic. I had success using just ‘vegetables’ and ‘children.’ Explain that researchers first read the article title. If the title sounds relevant to their topic, they’ll read the abstract. If the abstract sounds promising, they’ll read the article—or, rather, they’ll read the parts of the article of greatest interest and not necessarily in order. For example, after the abstract, they may read the discussion, and then go back to the beginning to skim the introduction paying closer attention to the last paragraphs since that’s where the hypotheses are most likely to be, and then carefully read the methods section to learn how the study was done, and, then, finally, read the results. Give students a few minutes to pop into your library’s databases to search for peer-reviewed articles that identify variables that are associated with children eating more vegetables. The studies may be correlational or experimental. When they find a strategy, ask them to share it. If you’d like to skip this lit review part, instead share with your students these variables that are associated with children eating more fruits or vegetables: repeatedly giving children a taste of a vegetable (Lakkakula et al., 2010; Wardle et al., 2003), caregivers eating more vegetables (Rasmussen et al., 2006), more shared family meals (Rasmussen et al., 2006), decreased amount of television watching (Rasmussen et al., 2006), decreased incidence of eating fast food (Rasmussen et al., 2006), increased variety of fruits and vegetables available at meals (Just et al., 2012; Roe et al., 2013). Give students this hypothesis posited by one group of researchers: “children eat more fruits and more vegetables when the regular family mealtime duration is extended” (Dallacker et al., 2023). Ask students to work in small groups to design a study that would test this hypothesis. Students should identify their independent variable—including its conditions and operational definitions for those conditions—and their dependent variable(s)—including operational definition(s). Invite groups to share their experimental designs. Highlight the strengths of each group’s design while also discussing possible shortcomings. Emphasize that there is no one right way to design an experiment. The more ways a hypothesis is studied, the more support we have for the hypothesis. As a follow-up assignment, ask your students to read the freely available journal article published by a group of researchers in Germany who tested this same hypothesis (Dallacker et al., 2023). Ask students to address these questions: The primary hypothesis was “children eat more fruits and more vegetables when the regular family mealtime duration is extended.” What was their secondary hypothesis? What committee provided ethics approval? Was consent to participate in the study given by the caregiver, the child, or both? How many parent-child pairs participated in this experiment? How did researchers figure out how long the regular meal and the intervention meal should be? What was the experiment’s independent variable? What were the two conditions of the independent variable? How were these operationally defined? What were the experiment’s dependent variables? How were these operationally defined? Were the researchers’ primary and secondary hypotheses supported by their data? Explain.   References Dallacker, M., Knobl, V., Hertwig, R., & Mata, J. (2023). Effect of longer family meals on children’s fruit and vegetable intake: A randomized clinical trial. JAMA Network Open, 6(4), e236331. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.6331 Just, D. R., Lund, J., & Price, J. (2012). The role of variety in increasing the consumption of fruits and vegetables among children. Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, 41(1), 72–81. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1068280500004196 Lakkakula, A., Geaghan, J., Zanovec, M., Pierce, S., & Tuuri, G. (2010). Repeated taste exposure increases liking for vegetables by low-income elementary school children. Appetite, 55(2), 226–231. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2010.06.003 Rasmussen, M., Krølner, R., Klepp, K.-I., Lytle, L., Brug, J., Bere, E., & Due, P. (2006). Determinants of fruit and vegetable consumption among children and adolescents: A review of the literature. Part I: quantitative studies. International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, 3(1), 22. https://doi.org/10.1186/1479-5868-3-22 Roe, L. S., Meengs, J. S., Birch, L. L., & Rolls, B. J. (2013). Serving a variety of vegetables and fruit as a snack increased intake in preschool children,,. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 98(3), 693–699. https://doi.org/10.3945/ajcn.113.062901 Wardle, J., Cooke, L. J., Gibson, E. L., Sapochnik, M., Sheiham, A., & Lawson, M. (2003). Increasing children’s acceptance of vegetables; a randomized trial of parent-led exposure. Appetite, 40(2), 155–162. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0195-6663(02)00135-6       ... View more

On the first day of class, I give my students a few get-to-know-each-other questions to discuss in small groups. While they discuss, I visit the groups and invite them to ask any questions they may have about me. This semester during one such small group visit I had a student ask me for my zodiac sign. I said, “Scorpio. But you know that doesn’t mean anything, right?” She looked at me as if I were the naïve one. In retrospect, I could have handled that better. “Why do you ask?” “Do you believe that the time of year we’re born is the sole determinant of personality? Our genes and experiences don’t matter at all?” In any case, I didn’t think any more about it. And then two days ago (April 4, 2023), Google announced that their Waze app is adding a zodiac mode (Waze, 2023). And this month, Waze is tapping into the all-knowing cosmos to find out if you navigate like a Saggitarius or a Scorpio, thanks to the latest driving experience: Zodiac. Drive with a vehicle and Mood outfitted for your sign and embody your true colors on the road. Our navigation guide is well-versed in astrology and knows how to get all types of personalities to their final destination — whether you're a fiery Aries, a balanced Libra, an independent Aquarius, an ambitious Taurus, a spontaneous Gemini, an intuitive Cancer, a detail-oriented Virgo, an intense Capricorn, a whimsical Pisces, a dramatic Leo, a free-spirited Sagitttarius or a loyal Scorpio. She does it with love, life advice and a little teasing. The first thing I did was roll my eyes. The second thing I did was uninstall Waze. You would think that as a Scorpio I’d be more loyal than that. When we lived in the Seattle area, Waze was my go-to navigation app. Now that we live where there is much less traffic, I don’t need help getting around traffic jams so I haven’t used Waze in two years. I admit that haven’t kept up with Waze’s fun features. I just reinstalled Waze to see how zodiac mode works. Unfortunately—and to my great disappointment—zodiac mode has not rolled out to my phone, yet. There are, however, several other ways for me to “customize my drive.” If I select zombie mode, the driving directions are delivered in a zombie voice—or rather, what someone imagines a zombie voice would sound like, the car icon I see is decaying green, and the icon that appears to other drivers is a stitched up gray blob. That helps me envision a bit what zodiac mode might look like. Just like the 70s/80s/90s mode or the cat/dog mode, I suppose zodiac mode is meant to be a new, fun, quirky way to get to and from wherever you need to be. While there probably aren’t many people who believe in zombies, a Pew Research Center survey found that 29% of U.S. adults believe in astrology (Gecewicz, 2018). You can assume that about a third of your students hold such a belief. Among college graduates however, the survey found that the number that believed in astrology dropped to 22% (Gecewicz, 2018). I credit the personality chapter in the Intro Psych course for that decrease. Ok. I don’t know that. It’s an empirical question, though, for someone looking for a research project. If you’d like to give your students some research practice in the personality chapter, point out that about a third of people in the U.S. believe that zodiac signs affect personality. Zodiac signs, however, were not included in our textbook’s personality chapter as a contributing factor. How could we find out if one’s zodiac sign affects personality? Give students a couple of minutes to think about this question on their own, and then ask them to discuss in small groups. The research designs will likely include some measuring of personality traits. The biggest challenge here may be finding two astrological experts who agree on the characteristics each sign is supposed to have. As another variable, students may suggest asking study participants for their sign. It’s possible that asking outright for a zodiac sign may prime the potentially one-third of participants who believe in the zodiac to skew their personality answers. There are at least two ways around this: ask for birthday and determine zodiac sign yourself or ask for the zodiac sign at the very end after all of the personality questions have been answered. Asking for birthday is probably safest as some volunteers may not know their zodiac sign. Also point out that birthdays don’t have meaning in some cultures, so members of those cultural groups don’t know the date of their birth. When a birthday is needed, they may use January 1. A good question for students to consider is how they could ask if a participant knows their birth date. If time allows, consider asking this question about ethics that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. Do we each have a responsibility to share and only share factually correct information? If we know what we’re sharing is false or suspect that it might be, do we have a responsibility to say so? As a professor of psychology, I certainly have an ethical responsibility to share evidence-based information about psychology. If the evidence is lacking, then I need to make it clear that the evidence is lacking. Does a producer or film company have a responsibility to depict accurately how drugs work, how memory works, how psychological disorders work? Especially given how many people learn about these topics through media? When a tech company uses the zodiac to make commuting more fun, are they promoting—whether intentionally or unintentionally—belief in the stars having an impact on personality?   References Gecewicz, C. (2018, October 1). ‘New Age’ beliefs common among both religious and nonreligious Americans. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/10/01/new-age-beliefs-common-among-both-religious-and-nonreligious-americans/ Waze. (2023, April 4). Customize your next drive and tap into the zodiac with Waze. Google. https://blog.google/waze/customize-your-next-drive-and-tap-into-the-zodiac-with-waze/       ... View more

It is not often that the New York Times publishes an article on operational definitions. Okay, they don’t call them operational definitions, but that’s what they are. Introduce this assignment by describing how so much of our health is influenced by our behaviors. If behavior is involved, psychology is there. How do researchers—or ourselves, for that matter—know if changes in our behavior, e.g., exercise, more nutritious eating, is positively affecting our level of fitness? The easy answer is that we randomly assign volunteers to, say, an exercise program of some sort or to a control group—maybe even a waitlist control group—and then after a predetermined amount of time, we measure their fitness. Great! Now, how do we measure fitness? Probably the most common way the average person on the street measures their fitness is by hopping on the scale. The more fat we carry, the greater the potential impact on our health. Since both fat and muscle have weight, the average scale does not differentiate. It is possible that the more we exercise, the more fat we lose but the more muscle mass we gain. Even though our fitness is increasing, our scales may tell us that we weigh the same or are actually gaining weight. Then there’s the body mass index (BMI). This is another measurement that does not differentiate between fat and muscle. The BMI is not lacking for critics. As one observer pointed out, the current BMI categories are not useful. Several longitudinal studies, they report, have found being BMI overweight (BMI 25-29.9) or in the first level of BMI obese (30-34.9) had little or no impact on mortality rates (Nuttall, 2015). What if we could just measure the amount of fat that we carry? There are scales that purport to do that. Such scales send an electrical current through your body. Water is an excellent conductor of electricity. Muscle contains more water than fat. The less resistance the electrical current encounters, the more muscle mass the scale concludes we have. The scales that have only two points of measurement—two feet—are less accurate than scales that have four points of measurement—two feet and two hands, but the two-point scales are considerably less expensive. The two-point scales tend to be reliable, but not accurate, underestimating or overestimating fat content significantly. However, if one is using such a scale to track changes, then they do fine. One more important point about these scales. If you’re dehydrated, the scale’s electrical current will meet more resistance, and the scale will say that we have more body fat than we have (McCallum, 2022). None of these measurements—overall weight, BMI, or fat composition—identify where our fat is concentrated. Abdominal fat is associated with poorer health outcomes than, say, fat stored in the lower body. The latter may actually have protective effects (de Lemos, 2020). If these measurements are not the best way to operationally define fitness, what are some alternatives? If you’d like to make this an out of class assignment, ask your students to read this New York Times article (Smith, 2023). The article identifies three different approaches to measuring fitness: heart metrics, physical performance metrics, and daily living metrics. Ask students to identify at least three operational definitions of fitness provided in the article for each approach.   References de Lemos, J. (2020, December 16). Why belly fat is dangerous and how to control it. University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. http://utswmed.org/medblog/belly-fat/ McCallum, K. (2022, April 26). How accurate are scales that measure body fat? Houston Medicine: On Health. https://www.houstonmethodist.org/blog/articles/2022/apr/are-body-composition-scales-accurate/ Nuttall, F. Q. (2015). Body mass index: Obesity, BMI, and health a critical review. Nutrition Today, 50(3), 117–128. https://doi.org/10.1097/NT.0000000000000092 Smith, D. G. (2023, March 27). 3 ways to measure how fit you are, without focusing on weight. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/27/well/move/fitness-test.html   ... View more

Every discipline has their zombie ideas, even library science. This could be a good discussion to have with students in the Intro Psych research methods chapter regarding the pitfalls of common sense. Ask students via clicker, Plickers, or by a show of hands this question: When touching the pages of old, valuable books, you should wear white gloves. Yes, no, or I don’t know? Most of your students will likely say yes. Now ask how do they know? This will be a harder question for them to answer. They may not remember how they learned this. They may even say that it’s common sense. Common sense may be common in that a whole lot of people think it is true, but that doesn’t make it true. And that’s the case with wearing white gloves when touching the pages of old, valuable books. In this New York Times article, librarians describe this belief of needing to wear white gloves when handling the pages of old, valuable books as an idea that will not die (Schuessler, 2023)—a zombie idea, if you will. The rationale for why wearing white gloves is a bad idea is good: “Gloves reduce your sense of touch, increasing the likelihood that you might accidentally tear a page, smear pigments, dislodge loose fragments — or worse, drop the book” (Schuessler, 2023). Gloves also tend to gather dirt and cause hands to sweat (Schuessler, 2023). Dirt and moisture are bad for books. The librarians remind us that the books have been handled with bare hands for as long as they have been around. There are a few exceptions to the no-glove rule, however. Nitrile gloves are recommended for photographic pages and certain book covers (e.g., book covers that contain metal, ivory, velvet, and certain other types of cloth). Also, wearing gloves is a good idea for handling book covers that may contain arsenic, but that’s for protecting the reader, not the book. Although one librarian added, “The moral of the story is, don’t lick the books and you will be fine” (Schuessler, 2023). Don’t lick the books. Got it. If the white glove thing isn’t actually a thing, why did Sotheby’s take a photograph of Brontë family manuscripts with white-gloved hands (Schuessler, 2021)? They are likely taking advantage of our ‘common sense’ for their monetary gain. If white gloves signal ‘valuable book,’ then we may be likely to pay more money for it (Schuessler, 2023). No white gloves? Then perhaps the book is no different than the paperback we picked up last week from our local bookseller. If you’d like to expand this discussion into one of ethics, ask your students if some of their ‘common sense’ knowledge comes from what they’ve seen in movies or television shows. Do producers and writers have an ethical obligation to present accurate information or to note when they are not? What about the creators of YouTube or TikTok videos? If the content creators do not have such an ethical obligation, does the responsibility then lie with the viewer to sort out what is fact and what is fiction? If so—and if we choose not to expend the time and energy to do so—then are we at risk for spreading misinformation? This could be a good opportunity to launch a discussion on the importance of information literacy.   References Schuessler, J. (2021, May 25). A lost Brontë library surfaces. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/25/arts/bronte-library-sothebys-auction.html Schuessler, J. (2023, March 9). For rare book librarians, it’s gloves off. Seriously. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/09/arts/rare-books-white-gloves.html     ... View more

The following would fit well with a discussion research methods, but would also work as a research methods booster in the social or emotion chapters. In a series of studies conducted under different field and lab conditions, researchers gave participants opportunities to engage in random act of kindness to evaluate the impact that kindness had on both the giver and the recipient (Kumar & Epley, 2022) (freely available). For the purpose of this blog post, I want to focus on study 2a: hot chocolate at the skating rink. After reading several of Kumar and Epley’s studies in this article, it makes me want to do random acts of kindness research. I want to spend a chunk of my day brainstorming random acts of kindness that I could encourage participants to do. I’m picturing Amit Kumar and Nicholas Epley sitting around on a cold day, and one of them saying, “You know what makes me happy? A hot beverage on a cold day.” And the other saying, “Especially if I’m really cold and the hot beverage is extra tasty.” It’s a short leap from there to an outdoor skating rink and hot chocolate. With the permission of the skating rink operators, researchers approached people, told them that they were conducting a study, and gave them a choice. Here’s a cup of hot chocolate. You can keep it for yourself or you can point out anyone here, and we’ll deliver it to the person. The researchers made deliberate use of demand characteristics to encourage giving away the hot chocolate. I’m picturing something like this spiel, “The entire reason we’re out here, bub, is to investigate the effects of random acts of kindness, so we’d really love it if you’d give this hot chocolate away. But, hey, if you want to keep it, you selfish lout, there’s nothing we can do about it.” Okay, they probably didn’t call them selfish louts, although that would have upped the demand characteristics ante. While 75 people agreed to give the hot chocolate away, nine (very cold people with low blood sugar perhaps) opted to keep it. The givers each identified one person at the outdoor skating rink to receive a hot chocolate delivery. For the dependent variables, each hot chocolate donor was asked three questions: how big do they think this act of kindness is (scale of 0 to 10), what’s your mood now having made the decision to give away the hot chocolate compared to normal (-5 to +5, where 0 is normal), and what they thought the mood of the recipient would be upon receiving the hot chocolate (same scale, -5 to +5 where 0 is normal).   Next, the researchers approached the identified recipients, explained that they were conducting a study, and that they gave people the choice to keep or give away a cup of hot chocolate. They further explained that a person chose to give away their cup of hot chocolate to them. At this point, I’m a little sorry that this was not a study of facial expressions. I would imagine that looks of confusion would dominate, at least at first. Imagine standing at an outdoor ice skating rink when a complete stranger comes up to you, says they’re conducting a study, and, here, have a cup of hot chocolate. After confusion, perhaps surprise or joy. Or perhaps skepticism. The researchers did not report how many hot chocolate recipients actually drank their beverage. Also no word on how happy the researchers were since they were the ones who were actually giving away hot chocolate. After being handed the cup of hot chocolate, each recipient was asked to rate how big this act of kindness was (0 to 10 scale) and to report their mood (scale of -5 to +5, where 0 is normal). The design of this study makes the data analysis interesting. The mood of the givers and the mood of the recipients was each treated as a within participants comparison. The reported mood (-5 to +5) was compared against 0 (normal mood). The givers, on average, reported a net positive mood of +2.4 (with +5 being the maximum). The recipients, on average, reported a net positive mood boost to +3.52. In a between participants comparison, givers and recipients were compared on the mood of recipients. When the givers were asked what the mood would be of the participants, they underestimated. They guessed an average of +2.73 as compared the actual rating the recipients gave their own mood of +3.52. As another between participants comparison, the ratings of how big the givers thought their act of kindness was (3.76 on an 11-point scale) were compared to how big the recipients thought the act of kindness was (7.0 on an 11-point scale).   Studies reported later in this article provide evidence that suggests that the difference in perspective between the givers of a random act of kindness and their recipients is that the givers attend to the act itself—such as the value of the hot chocolate—and not on the additional value of being singled out for kindness, no matter what that kindness is. To give students some practice at generating operational definitions, point out that Kumar and Epley operationally defined a random act of kindness as giving away hot chocolate. Ask students to consider some other operational definitions—some other ways Kumar and Epley could have created a random act of kindness situation but using the same basic study design. Point out that researchers could use these other operational definitions to do a conceptual replication of this study—same concepts, but different definitions. Maybe some of your students will even choose to engage in some of those random acts of kindness.   Reference Kumar, A., & Epley, N. (2022). A little good goes an unexpectedly long way: Underestimating the positive impact of kindness on recipients. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001271   ... View more