My daughter—a socio-behavioural scientist at the University of Cape Town’s Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation—alerted me last April to a possible crisis. Cape Town’s reservoirs were perilously low. Without replenishment from June-to-August winter rains the city could, reports indicated, “really run dry.”   Alas, in this new era of climate change, the hoped-for rains never came. Cape Town, with its nearly 4 million residents, was at risk of becoming the world’s first major city to run dry.   In September, with reservoirs at one-third their capacity, residents were asked to limit their water use to 23 gallons per day per person. But in a real life demonstration of the Tragedy of the Commons, fewer than half met the goal—each reasoning that their comparatively minuscule water use didn’t noticeably affect the whole city. To heighten motivation, Cape Town Mayor Patricia de Lille attempted fear-based persuasion. “Despite our urging for months, 60 per cent of Capetonians are callously using more than 87 litres per day,” she explained at a January press briefing. “We have reached a point of no return. Day Zero is now very likely.” After the initially predicted Day Zero, April 11th, water taps would continue to flow only in the impoverished informal settlements (which use little water per person), in certain vital facilities, and via public taps in 200 designated locations where residents could line up with jugs. Yikes! What would this mean for life, work, and civic order? With fears of the looming threat aroused, conservation norms became more salient. (My daughter recycles her laundry water for her very occasional toilet flushes, adhering to the new Cape Town norm: “If it’s yellow let it mellow.”) To activate and empower conservation norms, Capetonians have used all available media to share water conservation strategies (as if mindful of Robert Cialdini’s research on the power of positive conservation modeling). On a Facebook “Water Shedding Western Cape” group, 132,000 people are sharing tips. Even in workplace and restaurant bathrooms, signs now encourage not-flushing.   And to reduce “diffusion of responsibility” (as in the famed bystander nonintervention experiments), the city has posted an online “City Water Map” that can zoom down to individual households and reveal whether their water usage is within the water restriction limit (dark green dot). The effort is not intended to “name and shame,” but rather “to publicize households that are saving water and to motivate others to do the same.” Let’s “paint the town green,” urges Cape Town’s mayor. Will this social influence campaign—combining fear arousal, social norms, and accountability—work? Time will tell. Recent declining domestic and agricultural water consumption enabled Day Zero to be pushed out to June 4 th , by which time we can hope that winter rains will be replenishing those thirsty reservoirs . . . and that, thereafter, continuing water conservation can prevent future Day Zeros. ... View more

Social psychologist Robert Cialdini has identified six principles of persuasion: scarcity, authority, consistency, reciprocity, consensus, and liking. In this post, we’ll give you examples of Cialdini’s principles of persuasion, as well as a quick classroom exercise to help you prepare for your lecture. Examples of Cialdini’s Persuasion Principles Here are some examples for your next social psychology lecture. Scarcity In 2015, Leslie, an employee at Food52, gave us a beautiful example of scarcity at work. “My mom brainwashed me as a kid. She put all of the candy out in the open and told me I could eat it whenever I wanted, but she'd hide the vegetables and tell me I could only eat them as a special treat at dinner. It worked. When I was six, I asked if I could have a bowl of brussels sprouts for my birthday instead of a cake” (Petertil, 2015). This is a good example of Cialdini’s scarcity principle, as the child’s perception of the vegetables as scarce influenced them to desire them more than they would have otherwise. This shows the power that scarcity can have in action. Authority Authority isn’t that hard to pull off if you’re a grandmother trolling your grandchildren. Reddit user pillowcurtain wrote in 2014 “My grandma told us that smelling each others [sic] farts would make us stronger. Worst Christmas ever for us, funniest Christmas for her.” Consistency Consistency is the principle that makes the foot-in-the-door technique work. A month ago I wrote a blog post explaining how airlines use foot-in-the-door to get us to pay more money to fly. Reciprocity Speaking of flying, reciprocity works with flight attendants, because, well, they’re human. Treats for flight attendants often result in reciprocated kindnesses (Strutner, 2016). I truly appreciate the work that flight attendants do, and I know that some of my fellow passengers can be challenging. I often bring baked goods to show a little love. But I don’t mind the reciprocity. On one flight, we were in the very last row. We brought Starbucks chocolate chunk muffins for the flight attendants. Not only did we get served food and adult beverages first (instead of last), we got them for free. And the flight attendants were very happy! Goodness all around. Consensus A couple of days ago I bought a new computer monitor for my home office. Do you have any idea how many different models of monitors are out there? Me neither, but the number has to be in the hundreds if not thousands. How in the world can I possibly get the best one for my price range? I started by reading reviews on sites like PCMagazine and CNET to narrow the field. And then I relied on consensus. The monitor I chose had 71% of the 232 customer reviews giving it 5 stars; another 15% gave it 4 stars. With 86% of the reviewers being pretty pleased with this particular monitor, well, that’s good enough for me. I’m looking at it now as I type. Likeable The more likable you are, the more likely you are to get what you want. Or even avoid something you don’t want. Malpractice attorney Alice Burkin said, “People just don't sue doctors they like. In all the years I've been in this business, I've never had a potential client walk in and say, ‘I really like this doctor, and I feel terrible about doing it, but I want to sue him.’ We've had people come in saying they want to sue some specialist, and we'll say ‘We don't think that doctor was negligent. We think it's your primary care doctor who was at fault:' And the client will say ‘I don't care what she did. I love her, and I'm not suing her’" (Rice, 2000). And I’m willing to bet it’s not just true for physicians. I recently heard from a department chair who had a student come by to vent about a policy her professor had that the student didn’t like. The chair asked the student if he would like to file a formal complaint against the professor. The student replied, “No! I like him!” Principles of Persuasion Classroom Exercise There you have it, six roads to persuasion. After covering these in class, ask students to work in pairs or small groups to generate their own examples. You can either assign a particular principle or two to each group or you can ask each group to generate at least one example for each principle. Afterward, ask volunteers to share their examples.  References Petertil, H. (2015, May 1). Remembering mom's best weird foods. Retrieved June 24, 2017, from https://food52.com/blog/12884-too-many-cooks-what-weird-food-was-your-mom-eating Rice, B. (2000). How plaintiff’s lawyers pick their targets. Medical Economics, 77(8), 94-110. Strutner, S. (2016, October 28). Flight attendants agree this is the easiest way to get on their good side. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/flight-attendant-treats_us_581244d8e4b0390e69ced776 ... View more

Here’s an interesting example of classical conditioning being applied to help solve a serious problem. The Military Suicide Research Consortium at Florida State University received a Department of Defense grant to find ways to prevent suicides by military members (Joiner, 2017). One avenue of research looked at ways of strengthening marriages, reasoning that those with stronger relationships are less likely to take their own lives (Improving marriages…, n.d.). Military marriages face a number of challenges, including lengthy deployments. While many factors influence decisions to divorce, spending months away from one’s partner is a likely contributing culprit. “[S]erving lengthy deployments increases the risk of divorce and that the longer the deployment, the greater the risk of divorce” (Improving marriages…, n.d.). Female military service members are almost three times as likely to divorce as their male counterparts. In 2016, for example, 7.7% of female Marines divorced compared to 2.8% of male Marines. Overall, 3.1% of military personnel divorced in 2016 (Bushatz, 2017).    Let’s make a quick digression to talk about divorce rates. “The military divorce rate is calculated by comparing the number of troops listed as married in the Pentagon's personnel system at the beginning of the fiscal year with the number who report divorces over the year” (Bushatz, 2017). These numbers cannot be compared to national data since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) calculates divorce differently. Forty-five state health departments send the number of divorces in their states to the CDC. Because researchers at the CDC don’t know how many marriages were in each of those states to begin with, they can’t calculate a percentage of divorces like the military can. Instead, because the CDC researchers know the population of those 45 states, they can calculate a divorce rate per 1,000 people. In 2015, for example, those 45 reporting states had a combined population of 258,518,265. The number of divorces that year in those 45 states? 800,909. That works out to a divorce rate of 3.1 per 1,000 people (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2017). Now, back to helping marriages succeed. Is there a low-cost way to strengthen relationships even when the marriage partners are separated by thousands of miles for months at a time? James McNulty, Michael Olson, and colleagues (2017) thought that classical conditioning could work. Couples, 144 of them, were randomly divided into an experimental group and a control group. Every three days for a total of 13 sessions, participants experienced 225 trials where images or words flashed on a computer screen either singly or paired. Participants were to hit the spacebar when something related to relationships appeared, such as a wedding cake. Embedded within those 225 trials were 25 trials where the participant’s partner’s photo was paired with another photo. Those in the experimental condition always saw the partner’s photo paired with positive stimuli, such as photos of puppies. Those in the control condition always saw the partner’s photo paired with neutral stimuli, such as photos of buttons.   Every two weeks from the start of the conditioning trials to two weeks post conditioning, participants completed a series of dependent measures. A priming task timed how quickly participants associated positive words with their partners. And researchers, well, just asked participants how they felt about their marriages. On the priming task, those in the experimental condition reacted faster when positive words were associated with their partner than those in the control condition. And the faster those reaction times, the more likely the participant was to say they were happy in their marriages.   Classical conditioning in the experimental condition                                 positive photos (UCS) --> positive feelings (UCR) partner photos --> positive photos (UCS) --> positive feelings (UCR) partner photos (CS) -----------------------------> positive feelings (CR) The researchers are careful to note that while looking at photos of puppies, sunsets, and other positive imagery paired with images of our partners boosts positive feelings toward our partners, this classical conditioning will not make us have positive feelings towards someone we really dislike. In other words, classical conditioning is not a panacea for fixing badly damaged relationships.  Consider using this experiment as another example in your classical conditioning lecture. Or provide students a summary of the research and ask them to work in pairs or small groups to identify the UCS, UCR, CS, and CR.     References Bushatz, A. (2017, April 28). Female troop divorce up slightly, male rate largely unchanged. Retrieved from http://www.military.com/daily-news/2017/04/28/female-troop-divorce-up-slightly-male-rate-largely-unchanged.html Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2017, January 13). Marriages and Divorces. Retrieved June 23, 2017, from https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/marriage-divorce.htm Improving marriages to decrease suicide risk. (n.d.). Retrieved June 23, 2017, from https://msrc.fsu.edu/funded-research/improving-marriages-decrease-suicide-risk Joiner, T. (2015, October). Military Suicide Research Consortium (Rep. No. W81XWH-10-2-0181). Retrieved http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a622687.pdf McNulty, J. K., Olson, M. A., Jones, R. E., & Acosta, L. M. (2017). Automatic associations between one’s partner and one’s affect as the proximal mechanism of change in relationship satisfaction: Evidence from evaluative conditioning. Psychological Science. doi:10.1177/0956797617702014 ... View more

On June 3, 2017, late at night, an unnamed 58-year-old homeless man was shoved onto the tracks in a Manhattan subway station. Gray Davis, a 31-year-old ballet dancer, leapt down onto the tracks and lifted the unconscious man to safety. And then lifted himself up before the next train arrived (Cooper & Southall, 2017). Thanks to research on the bystander effect, we know the conditions under which we are less likely to help and under which we are more likely to help (Myers, 2015). Let’s see how these play out with Gray Davis on that night. We are more likely to help when: We are feeling good. He was with his wife and mother after having watched his wife, also a ballet dancer, perform. While they certainly could have been arguing for the last 6 hours, I’m going to choose to believe they had an enjoyable day. We are not in a rush. Their evening out had just come to a close, and they were making their way home. The victim needs help. An unconscious man on train tracks clearly needs help. We know that there were a number of bystanders present. Davis reports that “People were screaming to get help,” and, well, it’s a Saturday night in Manhattan so there must have been others present. Why did the number of bystanders seem to have little impact on Davis? At the time of the incident, Davis was already committed to helping. When his wife, Cassandra Trenary, saw the man and a woman arguing, she sent Davis to get help. He ran up to the token booth, but it was unoccupied. He had returned to the platform to learn that the man had been shoved onto the tracks. And, as a dancer, Gray Davis also knew he had the physical skill to help. Factors that were not present? The victim did not appear to be similar to his rescuer and the incident did not take place in a small town. Other factors that could have been present that we don’t know about? We don’t know if Davis was feeling guilty about something, if he is a religious man, or if he had recently seen someone else being helpful. I have an assignment where I ask students to take the conditions that are more likely to lead to helping and create a scenario in which someone is more likely to help. And then I ask students to reverse them to create a scenario in which someone is less likely to help. If you decide to offer a similar writing assignment, ask students to identify how each condition related to helping behavior is illustrated in their scenario. It will make scoring them much easier.  References Cooper, M., & Southall, A. (2017, June 04). Ballet dancer leaps onto subway tracks and lifts man to safety. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/04/arts/dance/ballet-dancer-gray-davis-subway-rescue.html Myers, D. G. (2015). Exploring social psychology (7th ed.). Boston: McGraw-Hill. ... View more

“American and United are rolling out a stripped-down new [fare] class called Basic Economy” (Schwartz, 2017). And it’s providing foot-in-the-door examples for psychology instructors who are ready to talk about something other than safe-driving signs (Freedman & Fraser, 1966).   With American Airlines’ Basic Economy ticket class, I’m not allowed to use the overhead bins, I can’t choose a seat until I check-in (guaranteeing I’ll be in middle-seat-landia and probably not sitting with my travel companions), I have no possibility of a free upgrade, I can’t change my flight, and I board in the last group (big deal; I can’t put a bag in the overhead bin anyway). “’That’s the experience on a ultra-low-cost carrier,’ said Rajeev Lalwani, an airline industry analyst with Morgan Stanley. As the legacy airlines introduce similar no-frills offerings to hold off upstarts like Spirit, he said, ‘part of the idea is to get folks to upgrade to premium economy and collect fees’” (Schwartz, 2017). That’s the foot-in-the-door: get customers to commit to the lower fare first, and then dangle the next highest fare as a better alternative.   I went to the American Airlines website to see how this played out in real time. I chose a Dallas to Tampa roundtrip scheduled for three weeks from now. American gave me my ticket class options. Clicking on the “Basic Economy” link generated a helpful pop-up. I love the red Xs on the blah-grey background. I don’t think American really wants me to choose this fare.   Once I select the $317 “basic economy” fare – and getting pretty close to being mentally committed to flying American for this trip – I get another helpful pop-up. I can keep my red-fonted “Lowest fare.” Or For just an extra $20, I can have the green-fonted “Good value with benefits” fare and all of these green-checkmarked perks! I need to either “accept restrictions” for that lowest fare (and be treated like a teenager on “restriction”?) or “move to main cabin” (where I can be treated like an adult?). After I “Accept restrictions,” it’s still not too late for me to move to the main cabin! I can keep my red Xs or I can upgrade to bullet points. It’s just another $20… I might not have been willing to pay $337 to fly roundtrip Dallas to Tampa, but once I’ve said okay to that $317 foot in the door, it’s not that hard to say okay to an extra $20. The “ultra-low-cost” carriers have structured their fees to take advantage of foot-in-the-door, too. Where do you think American and United got the idea? That same trip from Dallas to Tampa would cost $177.18 on Spirit Airlines. That means no overhead bin use, no seat assignment until I get to the airport, and Spirit puts me in whatever seat they’d like, and I can’t print a boarding pass at the airport without paying a fee – pretty much the same deal I got with red-X Basic Economy fare on American, minus the boarding pass print fee. After my next click toward purchasing a ticket, Spirit, in a pop-up, says it is willing to give me all of those perks for $152. If I accept it, my total cost for this trip is now $329.18. For those who have not been paying attention, that’s just $7.22 less than American’s “good value with benefits” fare. If I don’t accept it, I can still go “à la carte” on the fees. I have already decided to buy the ticket. I’m ready to purchase it. All I have to do is click the huge red “ADD TO CART” button to get all of those things that make air travel a little more humane. Or I can click the small print link and choose my options later. Once I’ve mentally committed to purchasing a ticket and the airline has their foot in my door, the door is cracked to let in the for-a-fee add-ons. And as a psychologist there isn’t much I can do but say, “I see what you did there.”    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. doi:10.1037/h0023552 Schwartz, N. D. (2017, May 28). Route to air travel discomfort starts on Wall Street. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/28/business/corporate-profit-margins-airlines.html ... View more

After covering experiments or as a research methods boost when covering attractiveness, pose this hypothesis to your students: Tattoos on men influence how others perceive the men’s health and attractiveness. Ask students to design an experiment to test this hypothesis, identifying the independent variable (including experimental and control conditions) and the dependent variables. In the design of the experiment, how would students eliminate any potential confounding variables? Circulate among groups as students work through the design. As discussion dies down, ask volunteers to share their experimental designs. Now share with students the experiment conducted by Andrzej Galbarczyk and Anna Ziomkiewicz (2017) using over 2,500 Polish participants recruited through Facebook; all participants self-identified as heterosexual. Researchers used nine non-tattooed male models, photographed from the waist up and without shirts for the control condition. “A professional photographer digitally modified the pictures by adding a black arm tattoo with an abstract, neutral design” for the experimental condition. This means that the only difference in the conditions was the tattoo. Participants were randomly assigned to see one photo for each model pair, and in the nine photos seen, each participant saw at least one tattooed model and one non-tattooed model. The dependent variables were ratings of attractiveness, health, dominance, aggression, fitness as a partner, and fitness as a father. Data were analyzed separately for male and female research participants. Before revealing the results, ask students to predict how the participants responded. Using clickers or a show of hands, ask students: Who did women rate as healthier? Tattooed men Non-tattooed men No difference [Women rated the tattooed men as healthier] Who did men rate as healthier? Tattooed men Non-tattooed men No difference [Men didn’t see a health difference between tattooed and non-tattooed men.] Who did women rate as more attractive? Tattooed men Non-tattooed men No difference [Women didn’t see a difference in attractiveness between tattooed and non-tattooed men.] Who did men rate as more attractive? Tattooed men Non-tattooed men No difference [Men rated the tattooed men as more attractive.] Who did men and women rate as more masculine, dominant, and aggressive? Tattooed men Non-tattooed men No difference [Tattooed men.] Who did women rate “as worse potential partners and parents”? Tattooed men Non-tattooed men No difference [Tattooed men.] Who did men rate “as worse potential partners and parents”? Tattooed men Non-tattooed men No difference [No difference.] Ask students to volunteer guesses as to why women would see tattooed men as healthier than non-tattooed men. And why men would see tattooed men as more attractive than non-tattooed men. The article’s authors offer a number of possible explanations, all worthy of further research.    REFERENCE Galbarczyk, A., & Ziomkiewicz, A. (2017). Tattooed men: Healthy bad boys and good-looking competitors. Personality and Individual Differences, 106, 122-125. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2016.10.051 ... View more

A political science grad student, Kevin Munger (2016a, b), decided to conduct an experiment on Twitter. His goal was to reduce the amount of hate speech posted to that media platform. To that end, he searched Twitter for a particular racial slur and sent every writer of such a tweet the same message: “@[subject] Hey man, just remember that there are real people who are hurt when you harass them with that kind of language.” But that’s not all. Munger reasoned that the impact of the message on future use of racial slurs likely depends on the communicator of that message, such as the perceived race and status of the person who is sending the reminder of the impact of language. Munger created four Twitter accounts: “High Follower/White; Low Follower/White; High Follower/Black; and Low Follower/Black.” The high followers had over 500 followers whereas the low followers had two followers. The White accounts displayed a White avatar and had a more stereotypically White-sounding name, Greg. The Black accounts displayed a Black avatar and had a more stereotypically Black-sounding name, Rasheed. Following Munger’s be-nice tweet, Munger tracked daily use of the racial slur over the next two months. The results. When Munger’s twitter account was High Follower/White, the number of racial slurs dropped .3 per day, the highest of any group. High status ingroup members do have power to influence. With about an equal, but smaller, decrease in daily use of racial slurs where the High Follower/Black and Low Follower/White avatars, although these differences disappeared within a few weeks (Munger, 2016b). Ingroup membership and high status both have an immediate, but not lasting impact, all on their own. What about Low Follower/Black? No Impact. In Intro Psych, you can give your students a little practice with experimental design by using this article at the beginning of the course when you cover research methods or as a research methods refresher later in the course when you cover social psychology. Ask students to identify the independent variables and dependent variable. The response to Munger’s missive wasn’t uniform; reponses differered by the anonymity of the Twitter user who received Munger’s message. Munger looked at the profiles of the Twitter users in his experiment. Of those users who were not anonymous, Munger reports that the High Follower/White Twitter account had no impact on the ensuing use of racial slurs. But the Low Follower/Black Twitter account “actually caused an increase (emphasis in original) in the use of racist slurs.” These were largely directed at Munger’s Twitter account that sent the be-nice message. Shout out to Danae Hudson (Missouri State University) for finding this article and suggesting this activity!   References Munger, K. (2016a, November 17). This researcher programmed bots to fight racism on Twitter. It worked. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/11/17/this-researcher-programmed-bots-to-fight-racism-on-twitter-it-worked Munger, K. (2016b). Tweetment effects on the tweeted: Experimentally reducing racist harassment. Political Behavior. doi:10.1007/s11109-016-9373-5 ... View more

Originally posted on October 13, 2016. Amid the uproar over leaked audio of Donald Trump’s boasting about his sexual predation, there was a secondary story—the complicity of interviewer Billy Bush, who appears to snicker approvingly at Trump’s reprehensible comments. “Obviously I’m embarrassed and ashamed,” Bush tweeted after his enabling behavior was revealed. Surely, we can each reassure ourselves: Had we been in a small group situation in which someone injected blatant sexist or racist remarks, we would not play along. But do we underestimate the power of the situation, especially if we have motives to impress a famous or powerful person? Social psychologists Janet Swim and Laurie Hyers put this question to an experimental test. They asked Pennsylvania State University women students to imagine themselves in a small group deciding whom to select for survival on a desert island. If one of the others injected three sexist comments, such as “I think we need more women on the island to keep the men satisfied” or to do the cooking, how would they react? Only 5 percent predicted they would ignore the comments. But when the women actually experienced this very situation, 55 percent said nothing. Other researchers have found people similarly docile—despite predictions of being courageous—when hearing someone utter a racial slur. As Billy Bush now understands, it’s so easy to become complicit—to “get along by going along.” As Marian Wright Edelman observed in The Measure of Our Success (1992), “Have you ever noticed how one example—good or bad—can prompt others to follow? How one illegally parked car can give permission for others to do likewise? How one racial joke can fuel another?” If we attribute Billy Bush’s behavior only to a Trump-like sexist disposition then we can distance ourselves from it. Not us. Never. But in doing so we forget one of the big lessons of social psychology—the corrupting power of evil situations. In horror movies and suspense novels, evil is the product of the depraved bad apple. In real life (as in Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiments), evil more often results from toxic situations that make the whole barrel go bad. The drift towards evil can therefore occur without any conscious intent to do evil. As Mister Rogers used to say, “Good people sometimes do bad things.” Or as James Waller, a social psychologist who has studied evil, has written, “When we understand the ordinariness of extraordinary evil, we will be less surprised by evil, less likely to be unwitting contributors to evil, and perhaps better equipped to forestall evil.” Mindful of the power of the situation, my occasional advice to my teen children when heading out on a Friday night—and to myself when wishing for others’ approval—has been: “Remember who you are.” Perhaps Billy Bush can help us remember how easy it is to forget who we are and what we stand for. ... View more

You and your spouse are in a grocery store. You see a man in his mid-40s walking with a 5-year-old girl. He has the girl’s hair wrapped around the handle of the grocery cart. The girl is “crying: ‘Please stop! I won’t do it again’” (Mele, 2016). Before covering the bystander effect, describe that scenario to your students. Ask your students to jot down what they would do, and then share their responses with one or two students near them. Ask for volunteers to share their responses (or collect anonymous responses by paper or using a classroom response system). Note the responses. Do they fall into the bystander intervention decision tree? We first have to notice that something is happening. Since the scenario is presented, students have no choice but to notice. But do some students respond by saying that they would act like they hadn’t noticed? After noticing, we have to interpret what we are seeing as something that needs our attention. Did some of your students decide that it was okay for this man to treat this child this way? Do your students differ on what appropriate parenting looks like? Lastly, we have to decide that we have a responsibility to help. That help can take many forms, from confronting the man to contacting store security to calling the police. The type of help given may depend on how threatened the students believe they would be by the man. Introduce this decision tree to students using their responses. This incident took place in Cleveland, Texas in mid-September, 2016. A woman, Erika Burch, who was shopping with her husband did respond. She confronted the man. He did not let the girl go. The woman called 911. A police officer who happened to be in the store quickly appeared, and at that point, the man – the girl’s father – let go of the child’s hair. If time allows, ask students who chose not to intervene in the hypothetical situation how the scenario would have needed to be different for them to intervene. For students who chose to intervene, ask what kinds of parenting discipline would be okay enough for them not to intervene.   References Mele, C. (2016, September 28). Should you intervene when a parent harshly disciplines a child in public? Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/29/us/should-you-intervene-when-a-parent-harshly-disciplines-a-child-in-public.html ... View more

At the Stanford Psych One Conference, Bridgette Hard (Stanford University) suggested clips from the British game show Golden Balls. Before covering the prisoners dilemma, show students the first 2.5 minutes of this 4-minute video. Stop the video at the 2:40 mark. Walk students through the prisoners dilemma, and then make sure students understand how this British game show presents contestants with a version of this dilemma. Note that in the original prisoners dilemma, the “prisoners” can’t communicate with each other before making their decision. Allowing contestants to discuss adds a level of drama that makes for good TV, but certainly changes the nature of the dilemma itself. Before playing the rest of clip, ask students to consider what they would do if they were Golden Balls contestant Steven. If you use a clicker system, ask students to click in with their vote for split or steal. Ask students to consider what they would do if they were contestant Sara. Again, ask students to click in with their vote. Now play the rest of the clip. After the contestants give their soundbites at the end, give students a few minutes to discuss with each other their reactions to the contestants’ comments. Next, show a contestant who chose a different strategy in this 4-minute clip. (This clip starts with the contestants’ discussion.) At that same Stanford Psych One Conference, Garth Neufeld (Highline College, but soon to be at Cascadia Community College), reported that the good folks at Radiolab interviewed these contestants in a 20-minute episode. In the first few minutes the Radiolab hosts lay out the premise of the game, then segue into discussing the clip from first episode above before launching into discussing the clip from the second episode. At about the 11-minute mark, the Radiolab hosts get Nick, of the different strategy, on the phone. During that interview we learn that even though the edited version of Nick and Ibrahim’s discussion that eventually aired was about 4 minutes, the actual, unedited – and apparently heated – discussion was 45 minutes. At the 18-minute mark of the Radiolab interview, we hear exactly how brilliant Nick’s strategy was. If you’re feeling a little – let’s call it adventurous – you can now do a version of what Dylan Selterman (University of Maryland) does (read more here). Selterman gives this question on his final exam: Here you have the opportunity to earn some extra credit on your final paper grade. Select whether you want 2 points or 6 points added onto your final paper grade. But there’s a small catch: if more than 10% of the class selects 6 points, then no one gets any points. Your responses will be anonymous to the rest of the class, only I will see the responses. You can add such a question to an exam or as a separate question delivered through your course management system. Or if you use some type of clicker system and you want students to publicly discuss, ask the question in class. How many times has Selterman given the extra credit between when he started offering it in 2008 and when he was interviewed about it in 2015? Once. ... View more

Winston Moseley died on March 28, 2016 at the age of 81. His obituary appeared in the New York Times on April 4 th . Moseley was the catalyst for an event that everyone who has taken Intro Psych since the mid-1960s remembers, but I’m not surprised if you don’t recognize his name. The event is known for the victim, not the killer. In 1964, Winston Moseley murdered Kitty Genovese. “His life behind bars had been relatively eventful. Mr. Moseley was condemned to die in the electric chair, but in 1967, two years after New York State abolished most capital punishments, he won an appeal that reduced his sentence to an indeterminate life term. While at Attica Correctional Facility, in 1968, he escaped while on a hospital visit to Buffalo, raped a woman and held hostages at gunpoint before being recaptured. He joined in the 1971 Attica uprising; earned a college degree [bachelor’s in sociology] in 1977; and was rejected 18 times at parole hearings, the last time in 2015.” The obituary explains that this would have been just another murder among the 635 others that year in New York City had it not been for a front-page New York Times article published two weeks later. The story’s angle was apathy – that 38 people witnessed the whole thing yet did nothing. But that’s not quite what happened. “None saw the attack in its entirety. Only a few had glimpsed parts of it, or recognized the cries for help. Many thought they had heard lovers or drunks quarreling. There were two attacks, not three. And afterward, two people did call the police. A 70-year-old woman ventured out and cradled the dying victim in her arms until they arrived. Ms. Genovese died on the way to a hospital.” For more, see last month's blog post on Kitty Genovese. ... View more

Those who write/draw comic strips are often astute observers of human behavior. That makes the funny pages a gold mine for psychology examples. (Here’s another blog post I wrote about a comic strip illustrating the spotlight effect.) Last week (February 16, 2016), Scott Adams of Dilbert fame gave us a wonderful example of the door-in-the-face technique. When a coworker’s babysitter cancels, she asks Dilbert if he likes kids. He assures her that he is not interested in watching her kids. She replies, “I was going to ask you to adopt them.” There’s the door-in-the face. Dilbert’s replies, “Absolutely not. The best I can is watch them tonight.” One of my favorites comes from Mark Tatulli’s Lio (November 14, 2009). Lio is known for having a different group of friends than most kids. Including in his group are ghouls, goblins, and, yes, even death. In this particular comic strip, Lio loudly rips open a bag of “Monsta Treats.” In the next panel we see a monster towering over Lio, soaking him with dripping saliva. Ask students, in pairs or small groups, to identify the unconditioned stimulus, unconditioned responses, conditioned stimulus, and conditioned response. Circulate around the room clarifying as needed. Bring the class back together and identify each. Next ask what generalization would look like. And then ask what would need to happen to bring about extinction. Hilary Price in her Rhymes with Orange comic (August 21, 2013) gave a nice side-by-side comparison of positive and negative reinforcement. In the first panel a middle schooler is working on homework, and an off-panel parent says “If you finish this homework, I will let you watch a show.” In the second panel an adult is typing on a computer, and the adult’s thought bubble reads “If I finish this paragraph, I will let myself pee.” Ask students, again in pairs or small groups, to identify the behaviors being reinforced, and then to identify which is positive reinforcement (first panel) and which is negative reinforcement (adult) and explain why. If you have a favorite comic strip that illustrates some psychological comment, please leave a link to it in the comments! ... View more

As a psychology instructor it is clear to you the myriad ways in which psychology can be used to both understand social issues and speak to solutions. In fact, the APA Guidelines for the Major (2013; see below) encourages us to help our students see the same. Debra Mashek (2016) suggests a few assignments that provide our students opportunities to connect psychology with today’s social issues. Integrative essay The instructor chooses three articles (interesting, nifty methodology, and not too difficult for students to understand – but on the surface may not have anything obviously to do with each other), and assigns one of those articles to each student, i.e. 1/3 of the class gets article A, 1/3 gets article B, and 1/3 gets article C. Each student writes a one-page summary of their assigned article and brings that with them to class. The class breaks up into groups of three, where the groups are composed of students who have all read different articles. In a jigsaw classroom format, the students tell the others in their three-person group about their article. Students then “articulate an applied question that invites application of ideas from all the articles.” Each 3-person group then co-authors a short paper (two to three pages) that identifies their applied question and how each of the three articles speak to that question. Persuasion research activity Right after Hurricane Katrina, Mashek decided she wanted her Intro Psych students to experience psychological research firsthand while also contributing to the relief effort. Mashek gave a brief lecture on foot-in-the-door, door-in-the-face, and reciprocity. She randomly assigned ¼ of students to foot-in-the-door, ¼ to door-in-the-face, ¼ reciprocity (she gave these students lollipops to hand to people before asking for a donation), and ¼ to a command condition (“give money”). During that same class period students were sent out in pairs to different areas of campus to return an hour later. Thirty-five students collected $600. Students reported a greater connection to the victims of Katrina after they returned than they reported before they left. Mashek used this experience as a leaping off point for discussing research methodology in the next class session. Current headline classroom discussion Pick a current headline. Break students into small groups, perhaps as an end of class activity, and give them one or two discussion questions based on the current chapter you are covering that are relevant to the headline. For example, if you are covering the social psychology chapter in Intro Psych, give students this headline from the January 9, 2016 New York Times: “Gov. Paul LePage of Maine Says Racial Comment Was a ‘Slip-Up’.” This is a short article, so you could ask students to read the article itself. Sample discussion questions: (1) What evidence is there of ingroup bias? (2) Do Gov. LePage’s comments illustrate stereotyping, prejudice, and/or discrimination? Explain. If time allows, student groups can report out in class. Alternatively, this could be a group writing assignment or a scribe for the group could post a summary of the group’s responses to a class discussion board. Students will gain an appreciation of the scope of psychology and how it is relevant to today’s social issues. This activity throughout the course should help students, after the course, to continue to see psychology at play. The APA Guidelines for the Major (2013) include these indicators related to social issues: 1.3A Articulate how psychological principles can be used to explain social issues, address pressing societal needs, and inform public policy 3.3c Explain how psychology can promote civic, social, and global outcomes that benefit others 3.3C Pursue personal opportunities to promote civic, social, and global outcomes that benefit the community. 3.3d Describe psychology-related issues of global concern (e.g., poverty, health, migration, human rights, rights of children, international conflict, sustainability) 3.3D Consider the potential effects of psychology-based interventions on issues of global concern American Psychological Association. (2013). APA guidelines for the undergraduate psychology major: Version 2.0. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/ed/precollege/undergrad/index.aspx Mashek, D. (2016, January 4). Bringing the psychology of social issues to life. Lecture presented at National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology in Tradewinds Island Grand Resort, St. Petersburg Beach. Seelye, K. Q. (2016, January 9). Gov. Paul LePage of Maine Says Racial Comment Was a 'Slip-up'. The New York Times. Retrieved January 9, 2016, from http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/01/08/gov-paul-lepage-of-maine-denies-making-racist-remarks ... View more

This question may appear on my next Intro Psych exam that includes coverage of the social psychology chapter. If you want 2 points extra credit, answer A. If you want 6 points extra credit, answer B. But wait! You will only get the points if 90% or more of the class chooses 2 points. If less than 90% of the class chooses 2 points, no one will get any extra credit. Dylan Selterman (2015) has given his University of Maryland students a similar challenge on their term papers. Since 2008, only one class has earned the extra credit. Why bring this ‘tragedy of the commons’ (aka ‘prisoner’s dilemma) to our students in such a real-life way? We face similar choices all of the time. Finding a recycling bin is a little inconvenient but it the end we all benefit by having less trash in landfills. Shortening a shower means more water for all of us. Driving a little slower means less fuel consumption resulting in a reduced need to drill more oil wells. Perhaps having this experience will make our students, the next time they are confronted with such a choice, avoid acting solely in their own best interest and instead choose to give up a little in the interest of benefitting everyone. Selterman, D. (2015, July 20). Why I give my students a 'tragedy of the commons' extra credit challenge. Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/07/20/why-i-give-my-students-a-tragedy-of-the-commons-extra-credit-challenge/ ... View more

This Between Friends comic from July 5, 2015 provides a nice example of the spotlight effect. The protagonist is convinced that the fast-food restaurant employee is noticing everything that she doesn’t like about her appearance, everything from her hair color to the stain on her shirt. In the comic, the employee’s expression doesn’t change leading the reader to conclude that the employee notices nothing. Ask students to think about a recent spotlight effect experience they had. Was there something about their appearance that they were certain everyone would notice but likely no one or very few did? After students share their experiences with one or two people near them, ask for volunteers to share a few examples with the class. Conclude this exercise by inviting students to yell out ideas about what the fast food employee is thinking about what she is certain others are noticing about her. ... View more