In 2013, Thibault Le Texier, a French academic, accidentally tripped over Philip Zimbardo’s 2008 “The Psychology of Evil” TED Talk. Le Texier became so fascinated by Zimbardo’s prison study, he devoured everything he could find about it. Like others, he thought it would make an excellent documentary. A couple film producers received a grant to send Le Texier to Stanford to take a deep dive into the prison study’s archives.(Le Texier, 2018). About what he learned, Le Texier wrote: C'est là, en juillet 2014, que mon enthousiasme a fait place au scepticisme, puis mon scepticisme à l'indignation, à mesure que je découvrais les dessous de l'expérience et l'évidence de sa manipulation. It was there, in July 2014, that my enthusiasm gave way to skepticism, then my skepticism to indignation, as I discovered the underside of the experiment and the evidence of its manipulation. [Google translation, with the translation stamp of approval from this blog post author based on her limited French] Le Texier published what he learned in his well-researched 2018 book, Histoire d’un mensonge: Enquête sur l’expérience de Stanford (available from Amazon). While the book has not yet been published in English, a not-too-bad Google translation is freely available. In 2019, Le Texier provided us with a summary of his findings in an American Psychologist article (Le Texier, 2019). If your library does not carry this journal, you can download a copy of the article from Le Texier’s website. I remember when the 2019 American Psychologist article came out. It was the July/August edition. I made a mental note to read the article, but never made the time to actually read it. I’m currently working on a writing project that gave me the impetus to finally read it. If you cover the prison study in any of your courses, the American Psychologist article is a must-read. The biggest surprise to me was the amount of guidance and direction the guards were given. The popular narrative is that the power of the prison situation created guards who enthusiastically took on the role of who they believed a guard is. Instead, the guards were instructed to engage in particular behaviors, such as the middle-of-the-night counts. In fact, the guards thought of themselves as fellow experimenters who were tasked with creating a stressful psychological environment for the prisoners. During the guards’ orientation, Zimbardo told them that he had a grant to study the conditions which lead to mob behavior, violence, loss of identity, feelings of anonymity. [. . .] [E]ssentially we’re setting up a physical prison here to study what that does and those are some of the variables that we’ve discovered are current in prisons, those are some of the psychological barriers. And we want to recreate in our prison that psychological environment (Le Texier, 2019, p. 827). This was indeed the original purpose of the study—to see how a stressful prison-like situation could impact mock prisoners. Zimbardo wrote in The Lucifer Effect, I should mention again that my initial interest was more in the prisoners and their adjustment to this prisonlike situation than it was in the guards. The guards were merely ensemble players who would help create a mind-set in the prisoners of the feeling of being imprisoned. […] Over time, it became evident to us that the behavior of the guards was as interesting as, or sometimes even more interesting than, that of the prisoners (Zimbardo, 2007, p. 55). What has been lost to time, however, is that the guards did not decide for themselves how to behave. Another big factor that affected what happened during the study is how much the guards and prisoners were paid: $15 per day. In 2022 dollars, that is $110/day (Webster, 2022). Both guards and prisoners said that it was in their best interest to act as Zimbardo expected in order to stretch the experience out as long as they could. The longer they stayed, the more money they would all make. As for my own writing project, I knew I could not delete the prison study wholesale. Too many people know something about it, and it is well past time for us to discuss what the historical record tells us. In the end, I framed my coverage of the study in the context of the study’s demand characteristics. Perhaps in a strange twist of fate, Zimbardo’s point about the prison study holds, but not in the way he describes it. The power of the situation can, indeed, greatly affect our behavior. The power of the situation in the prison study, however, does not come from taking on the role of guard or prisoner in a prison situation, but comes from taking on the role of experimenter (or, at least, experimenter assistant as the guards believed themselves to be) and the role of research participant (as the prisoners knew themselves to be) in a research situation. In the end, the prison study appears to be an excellent object lesson in the power of demand characteristics in a psychological research situation.   References Le Texier, T. (2018). Histoire d’un mensonge: Enquête sur l’expérience de Stanford. Éditions La Découverte. Le Texier, T. (2019). Debunking the Stanford Prison Experiment. American Psychologist, 74(7), 823–839. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000401 Webster, I. (2022, September 4). $15 in 1971 is worth $109.73 today. CPI Inflation Calculator. https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1971?amount=15      ... View more

I just finished reading—and rereading—Freedman and Fraser’s famous 1966 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology paper, “Compliance without pressure: The foot-in-the-door technique” (Freedman & Fraser, 1966). This is the safe-driving sign study. The paper doesn’t say what I expected it to say. First, a heads up. Because this paper was published in 1966, there is some disorienting time travel involved. Freedman and Fraser’s first experiment involved making requests of “156 Palo Alto, California housewives” (p. 197) who were randomly chosen from the telephone directory. For those who aren’t familiar with the terms housewives and telephone directory, Google can help with that. The second experiment—and the more famous of the two—included in their final analysis the results from 105 women (no word on whether they were housewives) and 7 men (househusbands, presumably). In the paper’s discussion, Freedman and Fraser used the universal masculine. I did the math; 97.4% of the two experiments’ participants were women. Their writing about “his” reasoning in the discussion threw me a bit. None of that is a knock against Freedman or Fraser—nor was it unexpected. It’s just a little commentary on the year 1966. Now let’s get to the unexpected part. The second experiment they report in their paper is the safe-driving sign study. Every third or fourth home along blocks in different neighborhoods in Palo Alto, California were selected as the participants. Each block was randomly assigned to one of the five conditions of the independent variable. Residents were asked to either (1) put a 3-inch square safe-driving sign in a home or car window, (2) put a 3-inch square “Keep California Beautiful” sign in a home or car window, (3) sign a petition to encourage California’s U.S. Senators to pass legislation that would promote safe driving, (4) sign a petition to the same Senators to pass legislation that would “keep California beautiful,” and (5) a control group who did not receive any of these initial requests.  Two weeks later, a different set of researchers who were blind to conditions asked the residents if they would agree to have a large (massive, really), poorly-lettered, safe-driving sign placed in their front yard that would apparently obscure most of the front of their house for seven to ten days. So far so good. Now let’s turn to the results. They write, First, it should be noted that there were no large differences among the experimental conditions in the percentages of subjects agreeing to the first request. Although somewhat more subjects agreed to post the “Keep California Beautiful” sign and somewhat fewer to sign the beauty petition, none of these differences approach significance. The important figures are the number of subjects in each group who agreed to the large request… The figures for the four experimental groups include all subjects who were approached the first time, regardless of whether or not they agreed to the small request (p. 200). Wait. “[R]egardless of whether or not they agreed to the small request.” This is the experiment that is held up as the classic example of foot-in-the-door. In foot-in-the-door, it’s agreement to that initial request that is so important. Some secondary sources report that nearly everyone in the study agreed to the small request. I don’t see that reported in this paper. All I see is that agreement across the groups was pretty much the same. Same large? Same small? Same in between? They don’t tell us. If anyone knows where the secondary sources got that there was large agreement to the initial requests, please let me know.   In their discussion, Freedman and Fraser write at length about how receiving a small request can lead to later agreement to a larger request. For example, “It is immediately apparent that the first request tended to increase the degree of compliance with the second request” (p. 200), and “regardless of whether or not the two requests are similar in either issue or task, simply having the first request tends to increase the likelihood that the subject with comply with a subsequent, larger request” (p. 201). Nowhere do they say that agreement to that first request is important. Now the results. Of those who were asked to display the small safe-driving sign (regardless of how many actually agreed), 76% said yes to displaying the large safe-driving sign. For the other three experimental conditions (display small “Keep California Beautiful” sign or signing either of the petitions), 47% said yes to the large safe-driving sign. How many in the control group said yes to the big sign? “[F]ewer than 20%” (p. 200). While the safe-driving sign is the more famous experiment, the first experiment Freedman and Fraser report in their 1966 paper does indeed illustrate foot-in-the-door, although they don’t quite report the data that I want. In this experiment, researchers called 156 randomly-selected phone numbers from the “telephone directory.” The “housewives” who answered the phone were told that the person calling was from the “California Consumers’ Group.” The women were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: (1) the caller asked if they would answer some survey questions, then if they agreed proceeded to ask the questions (performance condition), (2) the caller asked if they would answer some survey questions, then if they agreed said that he “was just lining up respondents for the survey and would contact her if needed” (p. 197) (agree-only condition), and (3) the caller described his organization and described the survey, but did not make any request (familiarization condition). (I imagine that the women in this last group must have been more confused than anything.) Three days later, all of the participants were called again and a control group was called for the first time. The request was to allow “five or six men from our staff” into their homes to spend two hours to count and classify their household products. In the results section, Freedman and Fraser write, Apparently even the small request was not considered trivial by some of the subjects. Only about two thirds of the subjects in the Performance and Agree-Only conditions agreed to answer the questions about household soaps. It might be noted that none of those who refused the first request later agreed to the large request, although…all subjects who were contacted for the small request are included in the data for those groups. In the performance condition (answered the survey questions), 52.8% agreed to allow a group of strange men into their homes for two hours to dig through their household products. In the agree-only condition (agreed to answer questions but weren’t actually asked any), 33.3% agreed to the large request. In the familiarization condition (heard about the organization—for no apparent reason), 27.8% agreed to the large request. In the control condition, 22% agreed to the large request. Since Freedman and Fraser included everyone in their reported data, we don’t know what percentage of those who agreed to the small request also agreed to the large request. However, since they tell us that the participants who said no to the initial request also said no to the larger request, we know that those who said yes to the initial request were the only ones who said yes to the larger request. (Whew!) In other words, the actual percentages Freedman and Fraser give us underreport the degree of compliance to a large request after agreeing to a smaller request, but the relative differences in percentages are meaningful. I encourage you to read Freedman and Fraser’s 1966 paper. For those interested in replication, take a look at an attempt to replicate the household products study in Poland and Ukraine (Gamian-Wilk & Dolinski, 2020). This could be a fun class discussion on how 1960s California differs from 2003 Poland and 2013 Ukraine—some of which the authors of this paper discuss. For that matter, discussing how 1960s California differs from 2022 anywhere would be worthwhile. This can help students better understand why some studies may not replicate when done exactly the same way. What woman in the world today would agree to allow five or six strange men into her home for two hours to count household products?! Let alone based solely on a phone call from a stranger?!?! Conceptual replications, in this case, may be more illuminating.   References Freedman, J. L., & Fraser, S. C. (1966). Compliance without pressure: The foot-in-the-door technique. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 4(2), 195–202. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0023552 Gamian-Wilk, M., & Dolinski, D. (2020). The foot-in-the-door phenomenon 40 and 50 years later: A direct replication of the original Freedman and Fraser study in Poland and in Ukraine. Psychological Reports, 123(6), 2582–2596. https://doi.org/10.1177/0033294119872208     ... View more

The American Heart Association (AHA) developed a list of the seven top predictors of cardiovascular health, dubbed “Life’s Simple 7” (American Heart Association, n.d.). A longitudinal study of 11,568 volunteers spanning a median of 28 years found that when volunteers had high “Life’s Simple 7” scores, their risk of stroke decreased, even when they had a higher genetic risk (Thomas et al., 2022). All of the “Life’s Simple 7” factors have behavioral components. Don’t smoke. Quitting counts. Former smokers who have not smoked in over a year earn a green checkmark. Body mass index (BMI) between 18.5 and 25 is optimal. For someone who is 5’6”, AHA’s ideal weight is between 115 and 154. A reverse BMI calculator, such as this one, makes it easier to identify a target weight. Moderate exercise (e.g., brisk walk) for at least 150 minutes each week. Healthy diet. The AHA defines this as 4.5 cups of fruits and vegetables per day, 3 servings of whole grains per day, and 2 servings of fish per week. Additionally, we should consume less than 36 ounces of sugary beverages (e.g., sweet tea, sugar-sweetened coffee and soda) per week and less than 1,500 mg of sodium per day. The Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) eating plan has more specifics. Total cholesterol under 200. Blood pressure lower than 120 over 80. Fasting blood glucose lower than 100. As a concluding activity for the Intro Psych course, ask students—either as a solo or group project—to choose one of AHA’s seven factors. Some factors will overlap. For example, blood pressure is related to high BMI, low exercise, and too much dietary sodium. For their chosen factor, students are to identify at least one concept from at least three different chapters that are relevant to their factor. Operant conditioning, stress, and conformity, for instance, may all arguably play a role in each of the seven factors. To end this section, students are to suggest one concrete behavioral change plan that an individual can implement. Point out to students that their suggested plan needs to be more than “exercise more” or “eat better.” Pretty much everyone already knows that. Explain that there is often a difference between knowing what we should do and actually doing it. Most students know that they should start working on research papers early in the term, yet how many students actually do? Telling students to get to work on their research papers as soon as the papers are assigned is unlikely to change behavior. What, then, might actually change behavior? Encourage students to use what they learned in the course to inform their suggestion. Our health is not just an issue for individuals. It is also a social justice issue. If we do not have access to quality healthcare, we don’t know what our blood pressure, cholesterol, and fasting blood glucose numbers are, let alone have someone who can help us move those numbers into heart healthy territory. If we live in a community with only a corner store and no grocery store, our ability to purchase fruits, vegetables, and whole grains may be limited or too expensive for us to purchase, whereas processed foods that tend to be high in sodium may be easier to get. For an overview of issues in health equity, invite students to read Jennifer Kelly’s presidential paper in the American Psychologist (Kelly, 2022). For their project, ask students to describe racial, ethnic, socio-economic, or other societal disparities for their chosen factor and provide possible explanations for those differences. As an example, people who have less money are more likely to live in neighborhoods where they feel unsafe. If it feels unsafe to be outside our home, we are unlikely to walk 150 minutes each week. We could use a treadmill indoors, however if we had the money to buy a treadmill and the space to set it up—or the money for a gym membership, we probably would not be living in a neighborhood that feels unsafe. Students are to suggest one concrete plan that can be enacted at the community level that would help reduce health disparities for their chosen factor. For example, are there things community leaders can do to make communities safer or ways they can create safe exercise spaces? Through doing this project, students will have more of an appreciation for the role that psychology and communities can play in improving the health of everyone.   References American Heart Association. (n.d.). Life’s simple 7. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://playbook.heart.org/lifes-simple-7/ Kelly, J. F. (2022). Building a more equitable society: Psychology’s role in achieving health equity. American Psychologist, 77(5), 633–645. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0001019 Thomas, E. A., Enduru, N., Tin, A., Boerwinkle, E., Griswold, M. E., Mosley, T. H., Gottesman, R. F., & Fornage, M. (2022). Polygenic risk, midlife life’s simple 7, and lifetime risk of stroke. Journal of the American Heart Association, e025703. https://doi.org/10.1161/JAHA.122.025703   ... View more

One variable that consistently arises as important to student success in college or graduate school is perseverance (Hwang et al., 2018; Ramey et al., 2019; Tynan et al., 2020), a component of grit (Duckworth et al., 2021). Anecdotally, when I ask colleagues who have earned graduate degrees the key to their success, their narratives frequently include stories of perseverance. I want to pause here to be crystal clear. While perseverance is important, it is not the only important factor. For example, it does not matter how much I persevere, my 54-year-old self will not become an Olympic athlete. (I might have a shot at the Senior Olympics, though—if I were so inclined. I’m not, but I could be.) We can help students find their own inner drive to persevere, but we have to be careful to not blame a student’s lack of success on their unwillingness or inability to persevere. In other words, when you don’t see me competing in the Super G at the next Winter Olympics, don’t put my failure to be there solely on my lack of perseverance. For starters, I could use some financial support to help me live near a resort with world class ski runs. Oh. And to take ski lessons.  In college, I was accustomed to earning good grades. And then I ran into a Theories of Sociology course that gave me fits. On the first essay exam, I earned a D. I thought I had included all of the necessary information on which theorist said what, but evidently not. The second exam replicated the results of the first. I talked to my professor. My answers were bullet points, which was the style preferred by a previous professor. This one wanted sentences assembled into paragraphs. A fair request. And, in retrospect, that style of writing should have been my default. However, as a first-generation college student creating college-student schemas by the tried and true methods of trial/error and observation, I had created a schema for college essay writing. “Professors want bullet points.” I had to make some significant changes to that schema if I were going to recover my grade in Theories of Sociology. I studied my butt off for the final. During the final, I filled my blue book and was the last one to finish. My score on the final was enough to bring my overall course grade up to at least B. To get through Theories of Sociology, I needed perseverance. I could have given up, taken an F, and sacrificed my minor in sociology. In the greater scheme of things, that wouldn’t have been a tragedy. But, no, I persevered. But I also brought other resources to the table. I had strong study skills (thanks largely to a challenging high school chemistry class that forced me to up my study game), I had decent enough writing skills (thanks to some excellent K-12 teachers and a love of reading modeled by my mother and older sister), and I had solid social support in the form of college friends who were there to encourage and study with me. Perseverance wasn’t the only thing I needed to succeed in that course, but it was necessary. In Science, each issue ends with a feature called “Working Life.” Readers of Science are encouraged to submit essays about their careers. Here are three very different stories that, at their root, are about perseverance. Students may find inspiration in reading these freely-accessible essays. For each, I suggest a few discussion questions. (Each article appeared in print under different titles and different dates. I’ve provided the online references rather than the print references.) A horribly embarrassing interview landed me a Ph.D. position—and taught me a valuable lesson (Holzer, 2022) Senka Holzer had several opportunities to give up, yet she persevered. Which challenge—either when interviewing for the Ph.D. program or in her life—do you think was the most difficult for her? Why? Identify at least two other skills or resources Holzer may have beyond perseverance that contributed to her success. Explain. Describe an academic challenge you have experienced that required perseverance to overcome. Identify at least two other skills or resources you drew upon to overcome that challenge. Doing research abroad felt lonely. Here’s how I made friends (Bonnesen, 2022) Kasper Bonnesen had reason to believe that his six months abroad would not go well, yet he chose to go anyway. In his time in Atlanta, he persevered. Why do you think it was important to him to succeed in staying this time? Identify at least two other skills or resources Bonnesen may have beyond perseverance that contributed to his successful stay in Atlanta. Explain. Describe a social challenge you have experienced that required perseverance to overcome. Identify at least two other skills or resources you drew upon to overcome that challenge. I worried my cerebral palsy would halt my progress in science—but I found a path forward (Smolensky, 2022) Ilya Smolensky had several opportunities to give up having a science career, yet she persevered. Which challenge do you think was the most difficult for her? Why? Identify as least two other skills or resources Smolensky may have beyond perseverance that contributed to her success in a science field. Explain. Describe a physical challenge you have experienced that required perseverance to overcome. Identify at least two other skills or resources you drew upon to overcome that challenge.   References Bonnesen, K. (2022, June 30). Doing research abroad felt lonely. Here’s how I made friends. Science, 377(6601). https://www.science.org/content/article/doing-research-abroad-felt-lonely-heres-how-i-made-friends Duckworth, A. L., Quinn, P. D., & Tsukayama, E. (2021). Revisiting the factor structure of grit: A commentary on Duckworth and Quinn (2009). Journal of Personality Assessment, 103(5), 573–575. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223891.2021.1942022 Holzer, S. (2022, May 19). A horribly embarrassing interview landed me a Ph.D. position—And taught me a valuable lesson. Science, 376(6595). https://www.science.org/content/article/horribly-embarrassing-interview-landed-me-ph-d-position-and-taught-me-valuable-lesson Hwang, M. H., Lim, H. J., & Ha, H. S. (2018). Effects of grit on the academic success of adult female students at Korean Open University. Psychological Reports, 121(4), 705–725. https://doi.org/10.1177/0033294117734834 Ramey, H. L., Lawford, H. L., Chalmers, H., & Lakman, Y. (2019). Predictors of student success in Canadian polytechnics and CEGEPs. Canadian Journal of Higher Education, 48(2), 74–91. https://doi.org/10.7202/1057104ar Smolensky, I. (2022, June 16). I worried my cerebral palsy would halt my progress in science—But I found a path forward. Science, 376(6599). https://www.science.org/content/article/worried-my-cerebral-palsy-would-halt-my-progress-science-found-path-forward Tynan, M. C., Credé, M., & Harms, P. D. (2020). Are individual characteristics and behaviors necessary-but-not-sufficient conditions for academic success?: A demonstration of Dul’s (2016) necessary condition analysis. Learning and Individual Differences, 77, 101815. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2019.101815   ... View more

Thurgood Marshall in his argument before the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown vs. Board of Education cited the research of Drs. Mamie and Kenneth Clark. Those were the now-famous doll studies demonstrating that segregation affects how Black children feel about themselves. That 1954 ruling started a cascade of changes. While racism is still prevalent almost 70 years later, some of the state-sponsored systemic barriers have come done. Some of them. Step into the shoes of a Black man charged with a crime. Your case goes to a jury trial. The jury is comprised of all white people. And the jury room, maintained by a chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, prominently features a Confederate flag. Would you feel that your jury was impartial? Tim Gilbert and his attorneys did not. For a summary of this case, read the freely available APA Div 9: Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues column in the June 2022 issue of the Monitor on Psychology, “Legacies of racism in our halls of justice” (Anderson & Najdowski, 2022). Gilbert’s trial was held in 2020 at the Giles County courthouse in Pulaski, TN. “[T]he jury retired to the jury room during every recess, for every meal, and for its deliberations” (p. 29 of appeals court ruling.) While there were other Confederacy memorabilia in the jury room—including a portrait of Confederate president Jefferson Davis, the defense team took primary issue with the Confederate flag. (See a photo.) “In its amicus brief, the Tennessee Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (‘TACDL’), noting that ‘[m]ultiple courts have recognized the racially hostile and disruptive nature of the Confederate flag,’ argues that ‘a jury’s exposure to Confederate Icons denies the defendant a fair trial free of extraneous prejudicial information and improper outside influence’” (p. 19 of appeals court ruling). In the TACDL amicus brief, they cited a 2011 Political Psychology article (Ehrlinger et al., 2011). The article features two experiments conducted in 2008. In the first, volunteers who were subliminally shown images of a Confederate flag were less likely to express interest in voting for Obama. In the second experiment—the one that I found more compelling—volunteers who were exposed to a folder with a Confederate flag sticker ostensibly left by someone else who had been in the room were more likely to evaluate a description of a Black man more negatively. (Read this section of the amicus brief.) Quoted in the amicus brief was the researchers’ conclusion: “Our studies show that, whether or not the Confederate flag includes other nonracist meanings, exposure to this flag evokes responses that are prejudicial. Thus, displays of the Confederate flag may do more than inspire heated debate, they may actually provoke discrimination.” Excluded from that quote was the end of the researchers’ sentence: “even among those who are low in prejudice.” In August 2021, the appeals court ruled that Gilbert was deserving of a new trial. In Intro Psych, we can discuss this case in the first few days of class, when we discuss the importance of psychological research. It would also work to discuss the Ehringer et al. second study as an example of experimental design—and then add how that experiment was used to support a new trial for Gilbert.   References Anderson, M., & Najdowski, C. J. (2022, June). Legacies of racism in our halls of justice. Monitor on Psychology, 53(4), 39. Ehrlinger, J., Plant, E. A., Eibach, R. P., Columb, C. J., Goplen, J. L., Kunstman, J. W., & Butz, D. A. (2011). How exposure to the Confederate flag affects willingness to vote for Barack Obama. Political Psychology, 32(1), 131–146. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2010.00797.x             ... View more

I’ve been thinking a lot about identity and how our identity—whether it’s an accurate reflection reality—influences our behavior. Most recently I’ve been thinking about this after reading Jeff Holmes’ article in the Teaching of Psychology journal on students who have identified themselves as bad test-takers (Holmes, 2021). Holmes opens the article with this statement: “One of the best ways to be bad at something is to tell yourself you are bad at it” (p. 291). In Holmes’s study of 311 college students, a whopping 91% believed that students who otherwise know the course material can be bad test-takers with 56% of the students identifying themselves as bad test-takers. A third of the students said that someone else told them that they were bad test-takers. Importantly, those who identified as a bad test-taker were more likely to disagree with “I know how to study effectively.” Additionally, “Students who see themselves as bad test-takers…tend to—relative to students who do not possess such an identity—have lower confidence in their broader academic abilities, expend less effort on cognitive activities, and feel entitled to positive academic outcomes regardless of performance” (p. 296). And, yes, those who identify as bad test-takers were also more likely to report test anxiety, even when other variables—such as overall academic performance and study skills confidence—were controlled for. I could retire early if I had a dollar for every time I had this conversation with a student: Student: “I studied hard for this test, and I still failed! I’m just a bad test-taker.” Me: “Tell me how you studied.” Student: “What do you mean?” Me: “When you sat down to study, tell me what you did.” Student: “I read the chapter, then I read it again, and again. Oh! And I highlighted stuff.” Me: “Tell me what you know about <concept covered on exam>.” Student: <awkward silence> “I don’t remember.” <More awkward silence> Since I’m a bad test-taker, can I do something for extra credit?” In Intro Psych, wherever you discuss attributions (e.g., social psych, abnormal, psychotherapy), consider using the bad test-taker attribution as an example. If a student does poorly on an exam and they say, “I’m a bad test-taker,” they are making an internal, stable, and global attribution. Internal: It’s a trait I have. Stable: It’s a trait that’s not going to change. Global: My bad test-taking applies regardless of the test. It is unlikely that a student who makes this attribution will do anything differently on the next test.   Now ask students to imagine a different attribution. After doing poorly on a test, the student says, “I didn’t know that material well enough.” This is an internal, unstable, specific attribution. Internal: The grade was because of something I did. Unstable: If I do things differently, I can get a different result. Specific: This is what happened on this specific test; that doesn’t say anything about the next test. This student has agency. “I’m going to try out some of the known-to-be-effective study strategies my instructor told me about.” Reiterate to students that in both examples, the result of the first test was the same; both students failed. But who is most likely to fail the second test, too? To make that second attribution—“I didn’t know the material well enough”—students have to have enough insight into their own knowledge or have to accept that their test score is a reasonably accurate reflection of their knowledge. When students read and reread chapters over and over and over again, the material begins to feel familiar. That familiarity can feel like knowledge. It’s not. It’s the illusion of knowledge. One of the many benefits of self-testing is that it keeps students from deluding themselves while they study. Unless they attribute their poor self-testing to being a bad test-taker. [Side note: If the student sees test-taking as a skill that can be learned (unstable attribution), then they may choose to work on upping their test-taking skills. A quick Google search of “test taking skills” produced a number of websites with a bullet-point list of strategies. The sites I saw all included some version of “be prepared.” What’s the best way to be prepared? Use solid study strategies to learn the material.]     References Holmes, J. D. (2021). The bad test-taker identity. Teaching of Psychology, 48(4), 293–299. https://doi.org/10.1177/0098628320979884 ... View more

In December 2021, snow closed the major highways in northern California, including I-80. With those routes closed, Google Maps and Waze (also owned by Google) suggested routes that sent people on rural roads through the Sierra Nevada Mountains. People ended up stranded in the middle of nowhere. One person was quoted as saying, “Blaming vulnerable people for going down the wrong road is the same as blaming some of those poor vulnerable people who drowned in their basement apartments in New York City” during September 2021 flooding (Vigdor, 2021). This is not the only instance of drivers blindly following an app’s directions and ending up in trouble, e.g., 8 Drivers Who Blindly Followed Their GPS into Disaster, and Truck Drivers Following GPS Get into Serious Trouble. I admit that I am struggling with this one. My primary reaction upon reading such stories is thinking that, as drivers, we cannot turn off our brains. If a snowstorm has dumped enough snow that the department of transportation cannot keep the biggest highways open, how could the secondary roads possibly be open? Now, being a psychological scientist, my next thought is, “Wait. Am I blaming the victim?” Are the drivers who chose to follow their phone’s GPS victims of technology? But the drivers were not forced to follow those directions, so are they really victims of their own making? I grew up with snow in a mountain-y, rural area, so I have a lot of knowledge about snow and mountains and rural roads. For drivers who do not have that experience, is it reasonable to think that they and I share the same “common sense”? In grad school at the University of Kansas, a friend who had grown up in Kansas and I took a road trip back to my home state of Pennsylvania. As I-80 (the same highway that was closed in that northern California snowstorm) started into the Allegheny Mountains, the speed limit dropped from 70mph to 55mph. My friend who had no experience driving on major highways through mountains could not comprehend why the speed limit had dropped. I, foolishly, told her that if she thought she could drive 70mph to give it a try. She quickly discovered that they had built the road according to the terrain, so sharp turns that are more judiciously taken at 55mph are part of the driving experience. All of that is to say that our experience of driving conditions is not universally shared. Instead of following their GPS, let’s imagine that the drivers had pulled over and asked a local resident for directions, and the local suggested a snow-packed rural route that the drivers then followed. To me, the drivers now feel more like victims of bad advice, and blaming the drivers does feel like blaming the victim. But is there really any difference between a driver who trusts the advice of a local and a driver who trusts the advice of their phone’s GPS? This could be an interesting discussion with your students after you have introduced the blaming the victim concept. A few years ago, The Atlantic had a pretty good article on blaming the victim if you would like your students to have a bit more information about the concept (Roberts, 2016). Describe the snowstorm incident, and then ask students if the drivers were victims of technology or victims of their own making. Ask them to explain why. If the predominant answer is blaming the victim (victim of their own making), ask students if the directions had been given to the drivers by a local resident, would it change their thinking. Why or why not?     Reference Roberts, K. (2016, October 5). The psychology of victim blaming. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/10/the-psychology-of-victim-blaming/502661/ Vigdor, N. (2021, December 31). Snow closed the highways. GPS mapped a harrowing detour in the Sierra Nevada. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/31/us/google-maps-waze-sierra-nevada-snow.html   ... View more

The September 2021 issue of the APA Monitor featured an article suggesting strategies bystanders can use when they observe the use of microaggressions against others (“How bystanders can shut down microaggressions”). In Intro Psych, we often talk about bystander intervention in the context of witnessing, say, a potential medical emergency, so it is refreshing to think about bystander intervention in terms of something we may more commonly witness. After covering bystander intervention in your course, consider providing your students with these discussion instructions and questions. **** Read How Bystanders Can Shut Down Microaggressions. Give an example of a microaggression you witnessed, you experienced, or you heard of happening to a friend or family member. (See this document for some examples of microaggressions.) Briefly explain what made it a microaggression. As bystanders, we are more likely to intervene if we recognize what we’re seeing as a problem, assume responsibility for doing something to help, have some ideas about what to do to help, and then actually do something. Let’s assume that you recognize a microaggression happening to a friend, and, as an ally, you want to do something. You will need to have some ideas of what to do. What six suggestions does the article suggest for “how to effectively intervene as a bystander.” For each suggestion, describe what a bystander could have done to intervene in the example you gave. Respond to two classmate's initial posts with at least two of the following types of comments. A compliment, e.g., "I like how... because...," I like that... because..." A comment, e.g., "I agree that... because...," "I disagree that... because..." A connection, e.g., "I have also read that...," "I have also thought that...," "That reminds me of..." A question, e.g., "I wonder why...," "I wonder how..."  **** During this discussion, students may discover that they have engaged in microaggressions and may be struggling with that knowledge. The following may be a helpful additional discussion. **** Most of us do not want to offend anyone else. In reading the examples of microaggressions in the earlier discussion, you may have been surprised to learn that you have said one or more of those things yourself. That does not make you a bad person. It means that you’ve done an excellent job learning from others. But now that you know, it is time to work on reducing those microaggressions. We are human, though. While we may try very hard, old lessons die hard. We will make mistakes. Imagine that you have uttered a statement that caused a good friend to say, “I’m uncomfortable with what you just said.” Read You’ve Committed a Microaggression—Now What? Use what you learned in this article to respond to your friend. Respond to two classmate's initial posts with at least two of the following types of comments. A compliment, e.g., "I like how... because...," I like that... because..." A comment, e.g., "I agree that... because...," "I disagree that... because..." A connection, e.g., "I have also read that...," "I have also thought that...," "That reminds me of..." A question, e.g., "I wonder why...," "I wonder how..."  ... View more

While the prisoner’s dilemma and the tragedy of the commons are our Intro Psych go-to social dilemmas, Covid-19 has us all mixing in a soup of social dilemmas. Stewing, even. At root, social dilemmas are about weighing our own self-interest against the good of the group. Zhijun Wu (Wu, 2021) suggests we look at social distancing as a social dilemma played between individuals and the population at large. To keep things simple, Wu suggests that there are two kinds of activities: (1) staying home (and going out only for essential errands, like getting groceries) and (2) having a free-for-all social life (including going to a workplace or school, restaurants, and bars). Now, which should we do? That depends on the risk. If most everyone is out and about, then if we go out and about, our chances of contracting Covid are higher. In that case, staying home would be the safer bet. Restaurants are packed; let’s order a pizza. However, if most everyone else is staying home, then being out and about would be less risky. Restaurants are empty; let’s go to Chachi’s for dinner. Of course, everyone else is making these same calculations. Restaurants are empty, let’s go! And now restaurants are packed. Restaurants are packed, let’s stay home! And now restaurants are empty. Repeat. In Wu’s mathematical model, everyone’s best option is to split our time. Sometimes we eat in, and sometimes we eat out. If everyone made that same decision, we would balance out our risk. For example, at any give time then, restaurants would be half full. Wu’s model takes many more events into consideration and assigns a value to each depending on the amount of social contact. For example, the amount of contact you have with others at a grocery store may be minimal, but the amount of contact in a dance club would be much higher. To make things more complicated, we can think about subpopulations. People who live in one neighborhood would frequent a particular grocery store. If the grocery store borders two neighborhoods, then two subpopulations would mix at that grocery store. However, there is a bar at the distant end of the first neighborhood that those in the second neighborhood rarely go to. To illustrate how complicated things can get, Wu identified in Ames, Iowa, six subpopulations and 85 activities, where each activity has its own social contact value. I’ll add that when making decisions about whether we are going to go someplace, we also take into consideration our own vaccination status, our own underlying health conditions, the vaccinations status and health conditions of others we live with or are in close contact with, the number of people testing positive in our area, and our own risk tolerance. What used to be a set of simple decisions (e.g., “Let’s go out to dinner,” “Let’s get coffee,”) now requires complex calculations best handled by a computer model to spit out the best decision. No wonder so many of us feel exhausted much more than we did before 2020. And we haven’t talked about the social dilemmas presented by mask-wearing and vaccines.   Reference Wu, Z. (2021). Social distancing is a social dilemma game played by every individual against his/her population. PLOS ONE, 16(8), e0255543. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0255543 ... View more

Poor people are perceived as being less sensitive to pain. Why? Great discussion for stereotyping and prejudice: https://www.psypost.org/2021/09/new-psychology-research-finds-that-poor-people-are-perceived-as-being-less-susceptible-to-pain-61883?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter ... View more

"US scientists found that quantity, rather than quality, of speaking determined who was perceived as a leader in small groups...regardless of the intelligence or personality traits of members within the group" https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/08/leaders-talk-more-babble-hypothesis/ ... View more

In the 2021 Netflix three-episode documentary, Murder Among the Mormons, we learn about the exploits of forger and murderer Mark Hofmann. Hofmann had a lot people snookered; people believed that the documents about the origin of the Church of Latter Day Saints he had in his possession were real. And once so decided, it was hard for them to change their minds and see Hofmann and his documents for what they were. After three bombings that took place on Oct 15 and 16, 1985 that killed two people and injured two—including Hofmann—police immediately began an investigation of Hofmann. News outlets interviewed a number of people regarding the case. One such interview was with historian Brent Metcalfe, a colleague of Hofmann’s. Metcalfe said at the time, “I have a great deal of doubt that Mark [Hofmann] is involved in any way at this point…I just have no reason to believe, despite the assertions that have been made, that Mark was involved in any kind of forgery of this kind.” In episode 3 of Murder Among the Mormons at the 14:05 mark, in addition to clips from that 1985 interview, a much older Brent Metcalfe talks with the producers of this documentary about what he said in that interview, and, more generally, what he thought at the time and why. After covering cognitive dissonance, share with your students a little background about Mark Hofmann and his forgeries. (Watch Murder Among the Mormons or read the Wikipedia entry for more information). Ask your students to put themselves into Brent Metcalfe’s shoes. “You are a colleague of Mark Hofmann’s. You believe him—you believe that the documents he had in his possession and collected over the previous five years were genuine. And now there were these bombings that killed and injured people connected to Hofmann. The third bomb injured Hofmann himself. The police are investigating Hofmann. As Hofmann’s colleague, would you continue to believe him as you have for the last five years? How easily would you be able to say, ‘Boy, was I ever wrong about him!’” Divide students into groups, and ask them to identify which two of Metcalfe’s thoughts were in conflict. How might Metcalfe reduce this dissonance? Would Metcalfe immediately say, “Well, I sure was wrong about him!” or would Metcalfe be more likely to hold onto his belief? Explain. Bring students back together, and ask groups to report their predictions. Brent Metcalfe, in an interview 36 years after the 1985 bombings, said, Part of the reason I maintained my belief in Mark Hofmann’s innocence is because, again, I felt like, what does that mean for me as a person?... I could not accept that I had no suspicion whatsoever. That was almost unacceptable to me, because it went right to the heart of who I am. And that frightened me, that I could be that deceived by someone.   Sum up your discussion of cognitive dissonance with an explanation of how Metcalfe’s comments exemplify this concept. A small, but important, concluding note: Showing this clip to your students in a real or virtual classroom setting is a violation of Netflix’s terms of use. You can describe, you can quote, you can encourage your students to watch it on their own time using their own Netflix account, but you cannot show them the clip yourself. ... View more

Research in social psychology reveals a myriad of ways that implicit biases contribute to group disparities, but teaching students about these biases can be challenging. Professor Schmader will discuss a variety of class exercises that can be used, not just to teach students about the science of implicit bias, but also to help them apply this knowledge in a way that will help them foster greater inclusion in their social world. WATCH THE RECORDING ... View more

While close friendships may never change, this article argues that our casual friendships have been seriously challenged - if not completely erased - by the pandemic. Have your friendships changed as a result of covid? https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/01/pandemic-goodbye-casual-friends/617839/ ... View more

Everyone deserves a great relationship. Have you found yours? It can be hard to know, but it’s important to ask. Relationships are important. Time is short. Mistakes are costly. In this talk I’ll discuss some of the mistakes we make in our relationship without ever realizing we’re doing it. Often, these blind spots encourage us to undervalue our relationship. No one wants to settle in order to settle down, but we can also be too harsh and overly critical. Relationship science can help. Better data leads to better decisions. WATCH RECORDING ... View more