Originally posted on April 6, 2014. Consider Brett Pelham, Matthew Mirenberg, and John Jones’ 2002 report of wacky associations between people’s names and vocations.  Who would have guessed?  For example, in the United States, Jerry, Dennis, and Walter are equally popular names (0.42 percent of people carry each of these names). Yet America’s dentists have been almost twice as likely to be named Dennis as Jerry or Walter. Moreover, 2.5 times as many female dentists have been named Denise as the equally popular names Beverly and Tammy. And George or Geoffrey have been overrepresented among geoscientists (geologists, geophysicists, and geochemists). I thought of that playful research recently when reading some clever research on black bears’ quantitative competence, co-authored by Michael Beran.  Next up in my reading pile was creative work on crows’ problem solving led by Chris Bird.  Today I was appreciating interventions for lifting youth out of depression, pioneered by Sally Merry. That also took my delighted mind to the important books on animal behavior by Robin Fox and Lionel Tiger, and the Birds of North America volume by Chandler Robbins.  (One needn’t live in Giggleswick, England, to find humor in our good science.) The list goes on: billionaire Marc Rich, drummer Billy Drummond, cricketer Peter Bowler, and the Ronald Reagan Whitehouse spokesman Larry Speakes.  And as a person with hearing loss whose avocational passion is hearing advocacy, I should perhaps acknowledge the irony of my own name, which approximates My-ears. Internet sources offer lots more:  dentists named Dr. E. Z. Filler, Dr. Gargle, and Dr. Toothaker; the Oregon banking firm Cheatham and Steele; and the chorister Justin Tune.  But my Twitter feed this week offered a cautionary word about these reported names: “The problem with quotes on the Internet is that you never know if they’re true.”  ~ Abraham Lincoln Perhaps you, too, have some favorite name-vocation associations?  I think of my good friend who was anxiously bemused before meeting his oncologist, Dr. Bury.  (I am happy to report that, a decade later, he is robustly unburied and has not needed the services of the nearby Posthumus Funeral Home.) For Pelham and his colleagues there is a serious point to this fun:  We all tend to like what we associate with ourselves (a phenomenon they call “implicit egotism”). We like faces that have features of our own face morphed into them.  We like—and have some tendency to live in—cities and states whose names overlap with our own—as in the disproportionate number of people named Jack living in Jacksonville,of Philips in Philadelphia, and of people whose names begin with Tor in Toronto. Uri Simonsohn isn’t entirely convinced (see here and here, with Pelham’s reply here).  He replicated the associations between people’s names, occupations, and places, but argued that “reverse causality” sometimes is at work. For example, people sometimes live in places and on streets after which their ancestors were named. Implicit egotism research continues.  In the meantime, we can delight in the occasional playful creativity of psychological science. P.S.  Speaking of dentists (actual ones), my retired Hope College chemistry colleague Don Williams—a person of sparkling wit—offers these photos, taken by his own hand: And if you need a podiatrist to advise about your foot odor, Williams has found just the person: ... View more

Originally posted on April 18, 2014. “The Internet is one big field study,” observed Adam Kramer, a social psychologist and Facebook researcher, at the recent Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) presidential symposium on big data.  Some big data factoids, gleaned from the conference: There are, according to Eric Horvitz, Managing Director of Microsoft research, 6.6 degrees of separation between any two people on the Internet. Google has now digitized 6 percent of all published books, creating a huge archive of words that can be tracked over time at https://books.google.com/ngrams.  One can use this resource to answer interesting questions . . . such as: is it true that the term “homosexuality” hardly predates the 20th century, and that “sexual orientation” is a late 20th century concept?  It took me about a second to create this figure of the proportional frequency of these terms over time: On Facebook, Kramer reported Parents and children take an average 371 days to friend one another. Mothers use 10% more nurturing words when communicating with their children. In the 2010 congressional elections, people’s posting their having voted led to 340,000 additional voters among their friends and friends of friends. Positive emotion words in people’s posts are followed, in the ensuing three days, by increased positive emotion words in friend’s posts, and vice versa for negative emotions. A research team led by Blaine Landis at the University of Cambridge analyzed all 30.49 billion international Facebook friendships formed over four years, and reported (in an SPSP poster) that people tended to “friend up.”  Those from countries with lower economic status were more likely to solicit friendship with those in higher status countries than vice versa. ... View more

Originally posted on May 14, 2014. Tyler Vigen, a Harvard Law student, has a new website (here) that offers “a fun way to look at correlations and to think about data.”  Among the whimsical spurious (chance) correlations he offers is one that offers a rare 1.0 correlation example.  I’ve reconstructed it into a form familiar to psychology teachers and students: ... View more

Originally posted on May 28, 2014. Climate change is upon us.  The recent National Climate Assessment, assembled by a large scientific panel, confirms that greenhouse gases continue to accumulate.  The planet is warming. The West Antarctic ice sheet is doomed. The seas have begun rising.  And more extreme weather will plague our future. Alas, most of the American public is not yet alarmed about this weapon of mass destruction.  The 31 percent who in 1998 thought “the seriousness of global warming is generally exaggerated” increased to 42 percent in 2014.  And the 34 percent of Americans who in 2014 told Gallup they worry “a great deal” about global warming was essentially the same as in 1989. Part of the problem is what psychologists and their students know as the availability heuristic. Our judgments get colored by mentally available events and images. And what’s more cognitively available than slow cli­mate change is our recently experienced local weather (see here and here).  Local recent temperature fluctuations tell us nothing about long-term planetary trends. (Our current weather is just weather.) Yet, given unusually hot local weather, people become more accepting of global climate warming, while a recent cold day reduces people’s concern about climate warming and overwhelms less memorable scientific data.  Snow in March?  “So much for global warming!” After Hurricane Sandy devastated New Jersey, its resi­dents’ vivid experience of extreme weather increased their environmentalism.  This suggests that a silver lining to the tragedy of more droughts, floods, heat waves, and other extreme weather may, in time, be increased public concern for climate change.  In the meantime, to offer a vivid depiction of climate change, Cal Tech scientists have created an interactive map of global temperatures over the last 120 years. ... View more

Originally posted on June 5, 2014. An amazingly comprehensive new Lancet study, with nearly 150 authors, tracks overweight and obesity rates across 188 countries from 1980 to 2013.  Some highlights: Worldwide, the proportion of overweight adults (BMI ≥ 25) increased from 29 to 37 percent among men and 30 to 38 percent among women. Over the last 33 years, no country has reduced its obesity rate. In 2010, “overweight and obesity were estimated to cause 3.4 million deaths.” National variations are huge, with the percentage overweight ranging 85 percent among adults in Tonga to 3 percent in Timor-Leste. The study is amazing not only in its global comprehensiveness, across time, but also in its public, interactive data archive available from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. As a screen shot example, I compared the U.S. increase in the overweight percentage (upper dark line) with the global increase (lower dark line).  All other countries are in light blue. ... View more

Originally posted on June 12, 2014. My last post—noting the new worldwide estimate that 37 percent of men and 38 percent of women are overweight—got me to wondering if we have other examples of all-humanity data. One is our species’ life expectancy, which has risen from 46.5 years in the early 1950s to 70 years today. What a gift—two dozen more years of life! And then we have new data from the Gallup World Poll which is surveying countries with more than 98 percent of the world’s population. Aggregating data from this resource, Ed Diener, Louis Tay, and I were able to answer (here) this simple question: Asked, “Is religion important in your daily life?,” what percent of humanity will respond “yes”? The answer: 68 percent. Two in three humans. When mentioning this answer in talks, I offer, with a smirk, the usual caveat on reporting survey data: We should be cautious about generalizing beyond the population sampled. (These data represent but one species on one planet, and may not represent the views of other life forms elsewhere in the universe.) What’s striking about each of these all-humanity measures is the extraordinary variation across countries—from 3 percent overweight adults in Timor-Leste to 85 percent in Tonga; from 49 year life expectancy in Chad to 89 in Monaco; from 16 percent for whom religion is important in Estonia to 100 percent in Bangladesh and Niger. We humans are all kin beneath the skin. Yet how we differ. [A note to our valued readers:  Nathan DeWall and I anticipate a more relaxed two-a-week pace of blogging this summer, and returning to our weekday postings at the summer’s end.] ... View more

Originally posted on September 3, 2014. Skimming Paul Taylor’s, The Next America: Boomers, Millennials, and the Looming Generational Showdown, a 2014 report of Pew Research Center data on U.S. social trends, brought to mind one of my pet peeves: the favoritism shown to seniors over today’s more economically challenged Millennials and their children. Since passing into AARP-eligible territory, I have often purchased fares or tickets at discounted prices, while the single parent in line behind me got hit with a higher price. One website offers 250,000+ discounts for folks over 50. A half-century and more ago it made sense to give price breaks to often-impoverished seniors wanting a night out at the movies, hungry for a restaurant meal, or needing to travel on buses and trains. Many seniors still struggle to make ends meet and afford housing.  But thanks to improved Social Security and retirement income and to decreased expenses for dependents and mortgages, their median net worth has been increasing—37 percent since 1984, Taylor shows, while those under 35 have seen their net worth plummet 44 percent. And consider who are today’s poor (from this figure available here as well as in Taylor’s excellent book). Among the predictors is not only race but age.  Compared to four decades ago, today’s under-35 generation experiences a nearly doubled risk of poverty, while their senior counterparts suffer one-third the poverty rate of their 1960s counterparts Ergo, in view of this historical change in poverty risk, should we adjust our social priorities? Might a more child-affirming culture consider discounts for card-carrying custodial parents? And could we not offer inflation adjustments not only to senior citizen Social Security stipends but also to minimum wages, tax exemptions for dependents, and family and food assistance? ... View more

Originally posted on September 15, 2014. Every once in a while I reread something that I've reported across editions of my texts, scratch my head, and ask myself: Is this really true? Such was the case as I reread my reporting that “With the help of 382 female and 312 male volunteers. . . Masters and Johnson monitored or filmed more than 10,000 ‘sexual cycles.’” Really? I wasn't just makin’ stuff up.  Masters and Johnson do report (on page 15 of Human Sexual Response) their “conservative estimate of 10,000 complete sexual response cycles” in their laboratory (some involving multiple female orgasms). But let’s do the numbers.  If they observed 10,000 complete sexual cycles over eight years[1] (from 1957 to 1965), then they averaged 1,250 sexual cycles observed per year.  Could we assume about an hour dedicated to each observation—including welcoming the participant(s), explaining the day’s tasks, attaching instruments, observing their behavior, debriefing them, and recording their observations?  And could we assume about 40 weeks a year of observation?  (Meanwhile, they were also running a sexual therapy clinic, writing, managing a lab, etc.) So . . . doing the numbers . . . that’s roughly 31 weekly hours observing sex . . . for eight years. It boggles the mind.  And one wonders: Wasn't there some point of diminishing returns from observing yet another 1000 hours of sex . . . assuming Masters and Johnson reported truthfully? I have no basis for doubting the accuracy and integrity of Masters and Johnson’s reporting.  But I do, in a spirit of curiosity, scratch my head. [1] In Human Sexual Response, they report gathering data over “eleven years” (pp. 9, 20).  But Johnson didn't join Masters until 1957, and Johnson biographer Genoa Ferguson reports that Johnson “began doing sexual function research 6 months into her research position.” Also, Masters and Johnson report (p. 10) that the first 20 months of the observations—presumably by Masters without Johnson—involved medical histories of 118 prostitutes, eleven of whom “were selected for anatomic and physiologic study.”  Ergo, although Masters and Johnson’s reporting leaves the exact study period ambiguous, it appears that the great majority, if not all, of the reported 10,000+ “complete sexual responses cycles” were observed during the seven or eight years after Johnson began her work with Masters. They also do not document the lab layout, or precisely how they observed their subjects. (As a point of contrast, Stanley Milgram’s similarly classic Obedience to Authority did precisely report on the participants, methods, and results of his various experiments, including drawings of the lab layout and equipment.) ... View more

Originally posted on December 23, 2014. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, drawing from its own continuing household interviews, offers new data​ on who in the U.S. is most likely to suffer depression, and how often.   Some noteworthy findings: Overall rate of depression: Some 3 percent of people age 12 and over were experiencing “severe depressive symptoms.” More people—7.6 percent—were experiencing “moderate or severe” symptoms, with people age 40 to 59 at greatest risk. Many more—78 percent—“had no depressive symptoms.” Gender and depression. Women experience nearly double (1.7 times) men’s rate of depression. Poverty and depression. People living below the poverty line are 2½ times more likely to be experiencing depression. (Does poverty increase depression? Does depression increases poverty? Or—mindful of both the stress of poverty and the CDC-documented impact of depression on work and home life—is it both?) Depression and treatment.  Only 35 percent of people with severe symptoms reported contact with a mental health professional in the prior year. ... View more

Originally posted on February 5, 2015. “The worst call in Super Bowl history,” read a headline in my hometown Seattle Times after Seahawks' head coach Pete Carroll seemingly threw the game away with his ill-fated decision to pass – rather than run – as the game clock expired. Actually, Carroll made two end-of-half decisions in Sunday’s Super Bowl, both questioned by the NBC announcers. The differing outcomes of the decisions – and the resulting reactions by pundits and fans – offer potent examples of a mental pitfall that has been the subject of roughly 800 psychological science publications. “Hindsight bias,” also known as the “I knew it all along phenomenon,” is the almost irresistible tendency to believe – after an experiment, a war, an election, or an investment – that the outcome was foreseeable. After the stock market drops (it “was due for a correction”) or an election is lost (by a “terrible candidate”), the outcome seems obvious – and thus blameworthy. But, as research shows, we often do not expect something to happen until it does. Only then do we clearly see the forces that triggered the event, and feel unsurprised. Because outcomes seem as if they should have been foreseeable, we are more likely to blame decision makers for what are, in retrospect, “obvious” bad choices, rather than praise them for good ones (which also seem “obvious”). As the 19th century philosopher Søren Kierkegaard said, “Life is lived forwards, but understood backwards.” With six seconds remaining in the first half, Carroll decided to throw for a touchdown – a risk that could have resulted in the clock expiring. Better to kick a safe field goal, argued the NBC announcers. But the gamble worked, and Carroll was acknowledged to have made a “gutsy” call. Then, at the game’s end, with 26 seconds left – and victory less than a yard away – Carroll and his offensive coordinator ventured a fateful, intercepted pass. Fans exploded on social media. A (less-explicit) version of most reactions: “With three downs and one timeout to go, and the league’s best powerful runner at the ready, what was he thinking?” “The stupidest coaching decision I can recall,” I vented to my wife afterwards, aided by 20/20 hindsight. But like all the football fans who made Coach Carroll an object of national ridicule, I was judging the call after knowing the outcome. The next morning I reassessed the situation. With one timeout, I now realized, Seattle could venture, at most, two running plays. The attempted pass was a free third play – which, if incomplete, would still leave them with the same two possible running plays. Moreover, the odds of an interception at the one-yard line are, I later learned, even less than the odds of a fumble. And had a touchdown pass arrived in the receiver’s hands a half-second sooner, we could use game theory to explain how the wily Seahawks won by doing what their opponent least expected. Responding to those who claimed he made “the worst call ever,” Carroll later explained to Today Show host Matt Lauer, “It was the worst result of a call ever. The call would have been a great one if we caught it. It would have been just fine and no one would have thought twice about it.” Bringing statistical analysis to the decision, FiveThirtyEight.com impeccably calculated that Carroll had indeed made a smart one – that he had slightly increased his team’s chance of a win. What’s more, the evidence-based bad coaching decision was made by New England coach Bill Belichick, who, instead of calling a timeout, opted to let the clock run down (which would have deprived quarterback Tom Brady of another scoring opportunity in the likely event of a Seattle touchdown). But probabilities are not certainties. In sports, as in life, good decisions can yield bad outcomes. Bad decisions can have lucky outcomes. And once outcomes are known we immediately retrofit our thinking. Thanks to hindsight bias, “winning erases all sins.” And losing makes a good coaching call look not gutsy but just plain stupid – even to a psychologist-fan who temporarily forgot what he teaches. (Note:  This essay was simultaneously co-published by www.TheConversation.com) ... View more

Originally posted on June 4, 2015. One curiosity of recent psychological science is what I’ve called the “religious engagement paradox”: The association between religious engagement and human flourishing is negative across places and positive across individuals. For example, in the most religious U.S. states people die sooner, commit more crime, divorce more, smoke more, and report lower emotional well-being than in the least religious states. Yet more religiously engaged individuals live longer, commit less crime, divorce less, smoke less, and are happier. (Don’t believe it? See here.) Princeton economist Angus Deaton and psychologist Arthur Stone (2013) share my puzzlement (here😞 “Why might there be this sharp contradiction between religious people being happy and healthy, and religious places being anything but?” (One possible answer, as Ed Diener, Louis Tay, and I suggested, lies in the more impoverished life circumstances of people in highly religious countries and states.) As I noted earlier, there also is a parallel “wealth and politics paradox”: In the U.S., low income states and high income individuals more often vote Republican: Now we have a report of yet another paradox: In Europe, “More liberal countries and more conservative individuals have higher levels of SWB [subjective well-being].” And another: People in highly religious states do more Google searches for sexually explicit content such as “gay sex,” as I was able to replicate using Google archives. So I couldn’t resist asking the lead researcher, Cara MacInnis at the University of Toronto, if it might nevertheless also be true that more religious individuals do less online searching for sexual content. Stay tuned, but MacInnis tells me that her latest data (paper forthcoming) do, indeed, seem to fit the religious engagement paradox pattern. The repeated lesson: how we ask the question (comparing aggregate or individual data) can sharply change the answer. So beware: partisans on both sides can pick their data to make their point. ... View more

Originally posted on October 20, 2015. In response to the big “Reproducibility Project” news that only 36 percent of a sample of 100 psychological science studies were successfully replicated, psychologists have reassured themselves that other fields, including medicine, also have issues with reproducibility. Moreover, differing results sometimes illuminate differing circumstances that produce an effect. Others have agreed on a lesson for textbook authors. “A finding is not worth touting or inserting in the textbooks until a well-powered, pre-registered, direct replication is published,” argues Brent Roberts. “The conclusions of textbooks should be based not on single studies but on multiple replications and large-scale meta-analyses,” advise Wolfgang Stroebe and Miles Hewstone. Those are high standards that would preclude textbook authors reporting on first-time discoveries, some of which are based on big data. Ironically, it would even preclude reporting on the one-time Reproducibility Project finding (can it be replicated?). Even so, my introductory psychology co-author, Nathan DeWall, and I are cautious about reporting single-shot findings. Some intriguing new studies end up not in our texts but in our next-edition resource files, marked “needs a replication.” And we love meta-analyses, which give us the bigger picture, digested from multiple studies. So, I wondered: How did we do? How many of the nonreproducible studies ended up in Psychology, 11th Edition? Checking the list, my projects manager, Kathryn Brownson, found three of the 100 studies in our bibliography—one of which successfully replicated, one of which produced insufficient data for a replication, and one of which failed to replicate. Thus, from page 504: In several studies, giving sugar (in a naturally rather than an artificially sweetened lemonade) had a sweet effect: It strengthened people’s effortful thinking and reduced their financial impulsiveness (Masicampo & Baumeister, 2008; Wang & Dvorak, 2010). will likely become: In one study, giving sugar (in a naturally rather than an artificially sweetened lemonade) had a sweet effect: It reduced people’s financial impulsiveness (Wang & Dvorak, 2010). Ergo, out of 5174 bibliographic citations, one citation—and its five associated text words—will end up on the cutting room floor. ... View more

The Discovering the Scientist Within: Research Methods in Psychology author team—Gary Lewandowski​, Natalie Ciarocco​, and David Strohmetz​—would like to share our sincere thanks for your overwhelming interest in our recently published first edition. Since publication in December, we've been so delighted to see that our vision to create a text with a student-centric "learning by doing" approach has resonated with so many our of colleagues throughout North America. Thank you for your reviews, comments, support, and excitement. We hope that you will contact us with any questions! Best wishes in your courses in the upcoming year. Sincerely, Gary, Natalie and Dave What's so different about Discovering the Scientist Within? Each design chapter focuses on a single research question, which provides a strong foundation for students’ understanding of the actual design and the entire research process. Each design chapter repeats all steps of the research process, which puts into classroom practice the authors’ own experience-based conclusion that repetition is the key to solidifying research skills—skills that lead to success in the laboratory, in the workplace, and beyond. Book-specific Research in Action activities in LaunchPad Solo put students in the role of the researcher and ask them to make decisions in planning and executing a study from idea to results. The authors have provided the most comprehensive Instructor’s Resource Manual for the research methods course, containing nearly 300 sources to make teaching methods easier and more relatable to students. ... View more

After introducing students to the concept of correlations, it may help students to see a scatterplot to understand what the correlation coefficient means. Give students an example of correlation. For example, Cornell, et.al. (2013) found a correlation of .32 between the number of dropouts from 289 Virginia high schools and student perceptions of teasing and bullying. At this website, enter .32 in the “r” box and enter 200 in the “n” box (289 of course would be better, but the site limits the number of data points to 200.  Press enter. In pairs or small groups, ask students to describe the graph, and then ask a volunteer to share their description. (Students may explain that the number of dropouts is plotted along the x axis and the student perceptions of teasing and bullying are plotted along the y axis. As perceptions increase, so do number of dropouts.) Explain that Cornell, et.al. (2013) also found a correlation of .46 between the percent of students who qualify for free and reduced price meals and academic failure rate. Ask students to predict what will happen to the points on the scatterplot when you enter .46 into the “r” box. Again, ask students to explain what the scatterplot means to a partner, and then ask for a volunteer to share their description. Give one last example from Cornell, et.al. (2013). They found a correlation of -.42 between the percent of students who qualify for free and reduced price meals and the size of the high school. Ask students to predict what will happen to the points on the scatterplot when you enter -.42 into the “r” box. Again, ask students to explain what the scatterplot means to a partner, and then ask for a volunteer to share their description.    Finally, ask students to predict what will happen to the data points when you enter 1 in the “r” box. Now that students have a handle on what is happening in scatterplots, invite students (perhaps as an assignment), to visit http://guessthecorrelation.com. Here, players try to guess the correlation based on the scatterplot. You get three lives. If your guess is off by more than .1, you lose a life. If your guesses are good, you earn lives and coins. The data collected are used for research; you can read about that on the “About” page. Unfortunately, the site only gives scatterplots for positive correlations. Cornell, D., Gregory, A., Huang, F., & Fan, X. (2013). Perceived prevalence of teasing and bullying predicts high school dropout rates. Journal of Educational Psychology, 105(1), 138-149. doi:10.1037/a0030416 ... View more

Last week I wrote about how it is I came to wear psychology-related t-shirts to my Intro Psych classes. That post included nine t-shirts. [Read that post.] This week I have ten to share. Vision – Childish Side of the Moon This is a pretty straight-forward illustration of how white is the presence of all wavelengths of light. And the Pink Floyd fans in your class will enjoy the reference. Sleep – Big Fan I hammer pretty hard the importance of sleep. Too many students think that staying up all night studying is a good idea, and I present the landslide of evidence that says it’s not. In case they miss my message, perhaps due to sleep deprivation, this t-shirt drives home the point. Sleep – Counting Sheep If I’m feeling more whimsical, I will go with this shirt depicting counting sheep – on a calculator, on “fingers,” on an abacus. Psychoanalysis – Devil and angel bunnies If you talk about the id, ego, and superego, this shirt is a must. Wear a shirt over top, like a denim shirt or a light fleece. As you describe the conflict between the id and the superego, if you’re lucky, a student will say something like, “Oh! Like the devil and angel on your shoulders!” That’s your cue to remove your outer layer, revealing the devil and angel bunnies on your shoulders. Research methods – Science of the Lambs When introducing research methods in Intro, I sometimes talk about how people think that what determines what is a science and what is not are the apparatuses that are used. “If there are flasks and Bunsen burners, then it is science.” If class time allows, I ask students to consider that question: What makes a science a science? This makes for a nice think (on your own for a minute or two), pair (talk with the person next to you for a minute or two), share (ask for volunteers to share their responses) activity. Personality – Introverting When covering the Big Five personality traits, I use this shirt to come out as an introvert. The best metaphor I have heard for introversion and extraversion says that which way you lean is determined by what recharges your batteries most of the time. If your batteries recharge when you are with people, you are more extraverted. If your batteries recharge when you are alone, you are more introverted (see this blog post for example). The message in this shirt is “back off; I’m recharging.” Sensation — Hello? Can anybody hear me? I use this shirt to introduce the idea that sound and color only exist in our brains. Sound waves and light waves exist outside of us, but what we describe as sound and what we describe as color don’t. They are sensations created by our brains, a conversion of those waves into something we can experience. Development – Donkey Kong and Mario  This shirt’s a nod to the gamers in your class. If you’d like to use this shirt for discussion, ask students questions like: Given that Mario is walking, how old would you guess he is? [2-ish] What reflex is Donkey Kong exhibiting with the baby bottle? [grasping] Years later, do you expect them to remember this event? Why? [nope, infantile amnesia] You can also reprise this shirt for the social psych chapter. What are some ways in which Donkey Kong and Mario could work to resolve their conflict? [e.g., superordinate goals].            Optimism/pessimism – Which glass are you? When covering optimists and pessimists, this shirt provides an opportunity to introduce students to some other -ists, such as utopists and surrealists. Be prepared to explain some of these; students will ask. Final exam day – Pencils Since students are required to bring a Number 2 pencil to take the final exam, this handy shirt depicts pencil numbers 1 through 12. ... View more