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

Originally posted on January 6, 2015. University of Warwick economist Andrew Oswald—someone who creatively bridges economics and psychological science, as in his studies of money and happiness—offers some fascinating recent findings on his website:​ A huge UK social experiment​ “offered incentives to disadvantaged people to remain and advance in work and to become self-sufficient.” Five years later the experimental group indeed had higher earnings than the control group, but lower levels of well-being (less happiness and more worries). Ouch. Income (up to a point) correlates with happiness. But is that because richer people tend to be happier, or happier people tend to be richer? By following adolescent and young adult lives through time, with controls for other factors, the data​ reveal that happiness does influence future income. After winning a lottery, do people political attitudes shift right?  Indeed yes​.  “Our findings are consistent with the view that voting is driven partly by human self-interest.  Money apparently makes people more right-wing.” This finding syncs with earlier findings​ that inequalities breed their own justification.  Upper-class people are more likely than those in poverty to see people’s fortunes as earned, thanks to their skill and effort—and not as the result of having connections, money, and good luck.  Such findings also fit U.S. political surveys showing that high income individuals​ are more likely to vote Republican...despite—here’s a curious wrinkle to ponder—high income states​ being less likely to vote Republican.  We might call this “the wealth and politics paradox”—poor states and rich individuals vote conservative. Care to speculate why this difference? ... View more

Originally posted on January 13, 2015. Last night’s national championship college football game, today’s New York Times article on America’s greatest small college rivalry (involving my own Hope College), and the upcoming Super Bowl all bring an interesting psychological question to mind:  Why do we care who wins? What psychological dynamics energize rabid fans? In a 2008 Los Angeles Times essay I offered answers to my own questions, which first crossed my mind just before tipoff at that rivalry game described in today’s Times. The pertinent dynamics include the evolutionary psychology of groups, ingroup bias, social identity, group polarization, and the unifying power of a shared threat. In a 2014 Politico essay I extended these principles in reflections on political and religious animosities between groups that, to outsiders, seem pretty similar (think Sunni and Shia, or Northern Ireland’s Catholic and Protestant).  The same social dynamics that fuel fun sports rivalries can, writ large, produce deep-rooted hostilities and social violence. ... View more

Originally posted on February 9, 2015. Northeastern University history professor Benjamin Schmidt is making waves, after harvesting 14 million student reviews from “Rate My Professor.”  He offers a simple interactive tool that can allow you—perhaps as an in-class demonstration—to compare words that students use to describe male and female professors. You can give it a try, here.  I entered some intelligence-related words (“smart,” “brilliant,” “genius”) and some emotion-related words (“sweet,” “nasty”).  Even as one who writes about gender stereotypes, I was stunned by the gender effect. ... View more

Originally posted on August 27, 2015. It seems unfair . . . that mere skin-deep beauty should predict, as it has in so many studies, people’s dating frequency, popularity, job interview impressions, and income, not to mention their perceived health, happiness, social skill, and life success. “Personal beauty is a greater recommendation than any letter of introduction,” said Aristotle. Evolutionary psychologists see biological wisdom in our positive response to bodily shapes and facial clues to others’ health and fertility. Still, how unjust, this penalty for plainness—and especially so in today’s world where first impressions sway choices in settings from speed dating to Tinder swipes. Despite some universal aspects of physical attractiveness (such as facial symmetry), those of us with no better than average looks can find some solace in the varying beauty ideals across time and place. Today’s overweight was, in another era, Ruebens’ pleasingly plump “Venus in a Mirror.” And we can find more comfort in a soon-to-be-published study by Lucy Hunt, Paul Eastwick, and Eli Finkel. Compared to romances that form without prior friendship, couples who become romantically involved long after first meeting exhibit less “assortative mating” based on similar attractiveness. For those who are friends before becoming lovers, looks matter less. With slow-cooked love, other factors such as common interests matter more. This fits with earlier findings (here and here and here).  First, attractiveness is less a predictor of well-being and social connections in rural settings (where people often know those they see) than in urban settings (where more interactions are with strangers, and looks matter more). Second, not only do people’s looks affect our feelings, our feelings affect how we perceive their looks. Those we like we find attractive. The more we love someone, the more physically attractive we find them. These comforting findings help us answer Prime Charming’s question to Cinderella (in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical): “Do I love you because you’re beautiful, or are you beautiful because I love you?” And they remind us of Shakespeare’s wisdom: “Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind.” Beauty, thank goodness, truly is in the eye of the beholder.   TOMACCO/ Getty Images ... View more

Originally posted on September 16, 2015. Social psychology’s progressivism has been no secret. Our values inform our interests in topics such as prejudice, sexism, violence, altruism, and inequality. Still, I was a bit stunned, while attending the January, 2011, Society of Personality and Social Psychology convention, when our colleague Jonathan Haidt—as part of his plea for more ideological diversity—asked for a show of hands. How many of us considered ourselves “liberals”? A sea of hands arose—80 to 90 percent of the thousand or so attendees, Haidt estimated (here). And how many considered themselves “centrists” or “moderates”? About 20 hands rose. “Libertarians?” A dozen. “Conservatives?” Across that ballroom, three hands were visible. As one of the respondents, I remember thinking: If the media are here, we’re going to read about this. And, indeed: see here and here. And now comes another survey that makes the same point. For an upcoming chapter for a volume on politics in psychology, social psychologist Bill von Hippel surveyed fellow members of the invitation-only Society of Experimental Social Psychology. Among his findings (reported in an e-mail to participants): “When asked your preference in the last presidential election, Obama beat Romney 305 to 4.” To our credit, we social psychologists check our presumptions against data. We have safeguards against bias. And we aim to let the chips fall where they may (which includes research that documents the social toxicity of pornography and the benefits of covenant relationships that satisfy the human need to belong). Still, by a huge margin, social psychologists are liberal (much as certain other professions, such as medicine, the military, and law enforcement tend to be populated by conservatives). Why social psychology’s liberalism? Does our discipline’s focus on the power of social situations make liberalize us? Are psychology departments less open to admitting and hiring conservatives? Or do liberals self-select into academia, including the behavioral sciences? Such are among the answers proposed. ... View more

Originally posted on September 29, 2015. My last blog essay reported surveys that show social psychologists are mostly political liberals. But I also noted that “To our credit, we social psychologists check our presumptions against data. We have safeguards against bias. And we aim to let the chips fall where they may.” Fresh examples of such evidence-based reasoning come from two recent analyses. The first Analysis has been welcomed by some conservatives (who doubt that sexism is rife in academic hiring).  The second has been welcomed by liberals (who see economic inequality as psychologically and socially toxic). (1) Using both actuarial and experimental studies, Cornell psychologists Stephen Ceci and Wendy Williams looked for possible sexism in academic hiring, but found that “in tenure-track hiring, faculty prefer female job candidates over identically qualified male [candidates].” Their Chronicle of Higher Education defense of their work reminded me of a long-ago experience. Hoping to demonstrate sexism in action, I attempted a class replication of Philip Goldberg’s famous finding that people give higher ratings to an article attributed to a male (John McKay) than to a female (Joan McKay). Finding no such difference, my student, Janet Swim (now a Penn State social psychologist) and I searched for other attempts to replicate the finding. Our published meta-analysis, with Eugene Borgida and Geoffrey Maruyama, confirmed Ceci/ Williams’ negligible finding. Neither Ceci/ Williams today, nor us yesterday, question other manifestations of cultural sexism. Rather, in both cases, “Our guiding principle,” to use Ceci/ Williams’ words, “has been to follow the data wherever it takes us.” (2) Following the data also has led social psychologists to see the costs of extreme inequality. As I noted in an earlier TalkPsych essay, “psychologists have found that places with great inequality tend to be less happy places...with greater health and social problems, and higher rates of mental illness.” In soon-to-be-published research, Shigehiro Oishi and Selin Kesebir observe that inequality also explains why economic growth often does not improve human happiness. My most oft-reprinted figure, below, shows that Americans today are no happier than they were in 1957 despite having triple the average income. But average income is not real income for most Americans. If the top 1 percent experience massive income increases, that could raise the average but not the actual income for most.   Indeed, real (inflation-adjusted) median U.S. wages have in fact been flat for some years now. With the rising economic tide lifting the yachts but not the rowboats, might we be paying a psychological price for today’s greater inequality? By comparing economic growth in 34 countries, Oishi and Kesebir show that economic growth does improve human morale when it is widely distributed, but not when “accompanied by growing income inequality...Uneven growth is unhappy growth.” Ergo, it’s neither conservative nor liberal to follow the data, and—as text authors and essayists—to give the data a voice. ... View more

Originally posted on November 4, 2015. Writing in the August, 2015, Scottish Banner, University of Dundee historian Murray Watson puzzled over having “failed to find a satisfactory answer” for why Scots’ Scottish identity is so much stronger than their English identity. It’s a phenomenon I, too, have noticed, not only in the current dominance of the Scottish Nationalist Party, but also in more mundane ways. When recording their nationality in B&B guest books, I’ve observed people from England responding “British,” while people from Scotland often respond “Scottish” (though the two groups are equally British). Paul Mansfield Photography/Moment Open/Getty Images And Watson notes another example: England’s 53 million people outnumber Scotland’s 5+ million by 10 to 1. Yet the U.S. and Canada have, between them, only 9 English clubs (Royal Societies of St. George) and 111 Scottish clubs (St. Andrews Societies). What gives? Social psychologists have an answer. As the late William McGuire and his Yale University colleagues demonstrated, people’s “spontaneous self-concepts” focus on how they differ from the majority around them. When invited to “tell us about yourself,” children mostly mention their distinctive attributes: Foreign-born children mention their birthplace. Redheads mention their hair color. Minority children mention their race. This insight—that we are conscious of how we differ from others—explains why gay people are more conscious of their sexual identity than are straight people (except when straight folks are among gays), and why any numerical minority group tends to be conscious of its distinctiveness from the larger, surrounding culture. When occasionally living in Scotland, where my American accent marks me as a foreigner, I am conscious of my national identity and sensitive to how others may react. Being a numerical British minority, Scots are conscious of their identity and of their rivalries with the English. Thus, rabid fans of Scottish football (soccer) may rejoice in either a Scotland victory or an English defeat. “Phew! They Lost!,” headlined one Scottish tabloid after England’s 1996 Euro Cup defeat—by Germany, no less. Likewise, report a New Zealand-Australian research team, the 4 million New Zealanders are more conscious of their New Zealand identity vis-à-vis the 23 million Australians than vice-versa, and they are more likely to root for Australia’s sports opponents. “Self-conciousness,” noted C. S. Lewis in The Problem of Pain, exists only in “contrast with an ‘other,’ a something which is not the self.” So, why do the Scots have a stronger social identity than the English? They have their more numerous and powerful neighbors, the English, to thank for that. ... View more

Originally posted on April 7, 2016. I cut my eye teeth in social psychology with a dissertation followed by a decade of research exploring group polarization. Our repeated finding: When like minds interact, their views often become more extreme. For example, when high-prejudice students discussed racial issues, they became more prejudiced, and vice versa when we grouped low-prejudice students with one another. When doing that research half a lifetime ago, I never imagined the benefits, and the dangers, of virtual like-minded groups... with both peacemakers and conspiracy theorists reinforcing their kindred spirits. In a recent New York Times essay, University of North Carolina professor Zeynep Tufekci studied the Twitter feeds of Donald Trump supporters, and observed cascading self-affirmation. People naturally thrive by finding like-minded others, and I watch as Trump supporters affirm one another in their belief that white America is being sold out by secretly Muslim lawmakers, and that every unpleasant claim about Donald Trump is a fabrication by a cabal that includes the Republican leadership and the mass media. I watch as their networks expand, and as followers find one another as they voice ever more extreme opinions. In the echo cham­ber of the virtual world, as in the real world, separation + conversation = polarization. The Internet has such wonderful potential to create Mark Zuckerburg’s vision of “a more connected world.” But it also offers a powerful mechanism for deepening social divisions and promoting extremist views and actions. On my list of the future’s great challenges, somewhere not far below restraining climate change, is learning how to harness the great benefits of the digital future without exacerbating group polarization. ... View more

Originally posted on May 4, 2016. “Self-made” people underestimate their fortunate circumstances and their plain good luck. That’s the argument, in the May Atlantic​, of Robert Frank, a Cornell economist whose writings I have admired. Drawing from his new book, Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy​, Frank notes that “Wealthy people overwhelmingly attribute their own success to hard work rather than to factors like luck or being in the right place at the right time.” This brings to mind Albert Bandura’s description of the enduring significance of chance events that can deflect us down a new vocational road, or into marriage. My favorite example is his anecdote of the book editor who came to Bandura’s lecture on the “Psychology of Chance Encounters and Life Paths” and ended up marrying the woman seated next to him. Frank notes that when wealthy people discount both others’ support and plain luck (which includes not being born in an impoverished place) the result is “troubling, because a growing body of evidence suggests that seeing ourselves as self-made—rather than as talented, hardworking, and lucky—leads us to be less generous and public spirited.” “Surely,” he adds, “it’s a short hop from overlooking luck’s role in success to feeling entitled to keep the lion’s share of your income—and to being reluctant to sustain the public investments that let you succeed in the first place.” In a presumed just world, the rich get the riches they deserve, which they don’t want drained by high taxes that support the less deserving. I am keenly aware of my own good luck. My becoming a textbook author, and all that has followed from that—including trade books and other science writing and speaking—is an outgrowth of my a) being invited in 1978 to a small international retreat of social psychologists near Munich, b) being seated throughout the conference near a distinguished American colleague, who c) chanced to mention my name the following January when McGraw-Hill called him seeking an author for a new social psychologist text. I could live my life over and the combined probability of those convergent events would be essentially nil. The resulting book, and the introductory texts that followed, were not my idea. But they are an enduring reminder that chance or luck—or I might call it Providence—can channel lives in new directions. ... View more

Originally posted on May 18, 2016. In an 80-minute class for which I recently guest-lectured, the instructor (a master teacher) gave students a mid-class break to enable them to stretch and talk to classmates. What a great way to build community, I thought. Alas, two-thirds of the class never moved. Rather, they pulled out their smart phones and sat staring at their screens. There was no face-to-face conversation, just solemn silence. SYDA Productions/Shuttershock When I recounted that story to tech expert psychologist Larry Rosen (co-author of The Distracted Brain: Ancient Brains in a High Tech World and author of iDisorder: Understanding Our Obsession with Technology and Overcoming Its Hold on Us) he replied that “I see this all the time EVERYWHERE.” The students I observed don’t exemplify The Onion’s recent parody (“Brain-Dead Teen, Only Capable of Rolling Eyes and Texting, To Be Euthanized”). But they did bring to mind the recent Western Psychological Association presentation by Rosen’s students, Stephanie Elias, Joshua Lozano, and Jonathan Bentley. They reported data on smartphone usage by 216 California State University, Dominguez Hills students, as recorded by a phone app. The stunning result: In an average day, the students unlocked their phones 56 times and spent 220 minutes—3.7 hours—connected. Moreover, more compulsive technology use not only drains time from eyeball-to-eyeball conversation but also predicts poorer course performance. Today’s technology is “so user-friendly that the very use fosters our obsessions, dependence, and stress reactions,” says Rosen in iDisorder. If smartphones interfere with “having social relationships, then it is a problem, and it really is what I consider an iDisorder.” As Steven Pinker has written, “The solution is not to bemoan technology but to develop strategies of self-control, as we do with every other temptation in life.” We can live intentionally—by managing our time, blocking distracting online friends, turning off or leaving behind our mobile devices, or even going on a social media fast or diet—all in pursuit of our important goals. ... View more

Originally posted on May 31, 2016. In 1964, I arrived in Iowa City and anxiously walked into the University of Iowa’s psychology department to meet my graduate school advisor. Among his first words: “I know, Dave, that you indicated ‘personality psychology’ as your interest area. But our only personality psychologist has just left . . . so we’ve moved you into social psychology.” Thus began my journey into social psychology. Looking back, aware of the exciting fruits of social psychology’s last half century, I view that unexpected shift as providential. And reading The Wisest One in the Room, by my esteemed colleagues Tom Gilovich and Lee Ross, fortifies my sense of the importance of social psychology’s practicality. Their new book, subtitled How You Can Benefit from Social Psychology’s Most Powerful Insights, enumerates social psychology’s biggest ideas and applies them to promoting happiness, conflict resolution, success for at-risk youth, and a sustainable climate future. The latter goal, they note, will be enabled by social norms that stigmatize the worst climate-change offenders and celebrate those who are advancing sustainability. That may sound like an impossible aim in a year when one party’s presidential candidate is a climate-change skeptic who has tweeted that “the concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive”? But consider, Gilovich and Ross remind us, of how fast social norms can change, with same-sex couples’ rights going from nonexistent to the law and will of the land, fertility rates dropping sharply worldwide in response to overpopulation, smoking transformed from being grown-up and sophisticated to being (among middle class people) dirty and just plain stupid. Yesterday’s cool—big tobacco—has become today’s corporate evil. The hopeful bottom line: transformational change can happen with surprising speed and great effect. ... View more

Originally posted on June 8, 2016. Our personal assumptions matter, often by influencing our attitudes and public policies. Here’s an example: If you see same-sex attraction as a lifestyle choice, as swayed by social influence, or as encouraged by social tolerance, then you probably are opposed to equal employment and marriage rights for gay people. Those in fact are the prevailing assumptions in the 75 countries that legally forbid homosexual behavior. If you see sexual orientation as “inborn”—as shaped by biological and prenatal environmental influences—then you likely favor “equal rights for homosexual and bisexual people.” That being so, note Michael Bailey, Paul Vasey, Lisa Diamond, Marc Breedlove, Eric Vilain, and Marc Epprecht, in their state-of-the-art review of sexual orientation research, psychological science has much to offer our public conversation about gay rights issues. Some of their conclusions: The phenomenon: Sexual attraction, arousal, behavior, and identity usually coincide, but not always. For example, some men who identify as straight may nevertheless be strongly attracted to men. Same-sex attraction has existed across time and place. Although sexual identity and behavior are culturally influenced, same-sex activity crosses human history, dating from the era of Mesolithic rock art. Bisexual identity is multifaceted. Some claim bisexual identity after previous sexual experiences with both men and women, or, even if primarily attracted to one sex, because of occasional sexual attractions to the other sex.  “Some bisexual-identified men have bisexual genital arousal patterns and some do not.” With men, bisexuality is more often a transitional identity; with women, it is more often a stable identity. Heritability. Twin studies suggest that “about a third of variation in sexual orientation is attributable to genetic influences.” The nonsocial environment matters. One striking example is the fraternal birth order effect: The odds of a man having a same-sex orientation are about: 2% for those with no older biological brothers. 2.6% given one older biological brother, 3.5% given two older biological brothers, 4.6% given three older biological brothers, and 6.0% given four older biological brothers. The social environment matters little: “There is no good evidence that either [social influence or social tolerance] increases the rate of homosexual orientation.” If only a mad scientist could pit nature against nurture by changing, at birth, boys into girls. Castrate them as newborns, surgically feminize them, and then raise them as girls. Does such rearing socialize these “girls” into becoming attracted to males? Such surgical and social gender reassignment did happen between 1960 and 2000 after a number of babies were born with penises that were malformed or severed in surgical accidents. As teaching psychologists are aware, their gender identity was not so easily transformed. As is less well known, report the expert sexuality researchers, in each of seven known cases where sexual orientation was reported, it was predominantly or exclusively an attraction to women. “This is the result we would expect if male sexual orientation were entirely due to nature, and it is the opposite of the result expected if it were due to nurture.”­­ “If one cannot reliably make a male human become attracted to other males by cutting off his penis in infancy and rearing him as a girl, then what other psychosocial intervention could plausibly have that effect?” With such scientific evidence in mind, conclude the expert researchers, “we urge governments to reconsider the wisdom of legislation that criminalizes homosexual behavior.” ... View more

The 1960s and early 1970s was a rough time in the United States – 1968 alone gave us the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy and riots at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Vietnam War protests were occurring on college campuses across the country – 1970 brought the Kent State University shootings. Out of this mayhem rose Bill Backer (born June 9, 1926 – died May 13, 2016). In 1971, his flight to London was forced to land in Ireland thanks to fog at his destination airport. “The next morning, Mr. Backer was stunned to see the diverse group of passengers who had been angry the night before cheerfully conversing in the coffee shop… ‘People from all over the world, forced by circumstance, were having a Coke – or a cup of coffee or tea – together.’” (Roberts, 2016). Bill Backer was the adman who brought us this commercial, introduced to a new generation in the final episode of Madmen. Video Link : 1614 In this one-minute commercial – music video, really – Backer tells us that while we all may be different in so many ways, by sharing a Coke, we are all part of a single ingroup. During such a fractious time period, what a wonderful message: Hey everyone, let’s just have a Coke and sing as one – if only just for a minute. In 2016, on the eve of a U.S. presidential election, with the country feeling as divided as ever, I would love to see someone, including an advertiser, step forward and offer a unifying message. I tell my students that what would bring about world peace is being attacked by aliens from outer space (one heck of a superordinate goal), but I much prefer the ingroupiness invoked by a serene image of all of us on a hilltop, singing together with a Coke in hand.   For a quick classroom demonstration, show the video to your students. Ask students in pairs, small groups, or as a class, to posit some possible ingroups for the people on the hilltop before they gathered there (e.g., culture, country of origin), and then identify the dominant ingroup conveyed by the commercial (e.g., Coke drinkers). Conclude the exercise by saying, “And if you’re drinking a Coke, you’re part of that ingroup.” Bonus tip: If you do buy the world a Coke, you'll probably feel happier -- "Doing good... makes us feel good" (Myers, 2014). Myers, D. G., & DeWall, C. N. (2014). Psychology in everyday life (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Worth. Roberts, S. (2016, May 16). Bill Backer, who taught the world (and Don Draper) to sing, dies at 89. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/17/business/bill-backer-who-taught-the-world-and-don-draper-to-sing-dies-at-89.html ... View more

Whatever words researchers have chosen to use to refer to people with intellectual disability have been turned into pop culture insults, such as idiot, imbecile, and moron. In more recent decades when researchers favored the term mentally retarded, “retard” became the preferred insult. In fact I heard a student utter this in my class just a couple weeks ago. The student, I am sure, did not intend to offend an entire group of people. Instead, she was using a word she learned to be a good stand-in for asinine. Personally, I’d like to see asinine make a comeback. It’s a good word. It nicely calls out asinine behavior without denigrating a group of people. In the fall of 2012, after a presidential debate, Ann Coulter tweeted “I highly approve of Romney’s decision to be kind and gentle to the retard” (https://twitter.com/AnnCoulter/status/260581147493412865). On the Special Olympics website the next day John Franklin Stephens responded. “I’m a 30 year old man with Down syndrome who has struggled with the public’s perception that an intellectual disability means that I am dumb and shallow. I am not either of those things, but I do process information more slowly than the rest of you. In fact it has taken me all day to figure out how to respond to your use of the R-word last night.” His time was well-spent; he wrote a beautiful, well-crafted response. He closed with this, “Well, Ms. Coulter, you, and society, need to learn that being compared to people like me should be considered a badge of honor. No one overcomes more than we do and still loves life so much. Come join us someday at Special Olympics. See if you can walk away with your heart unchanged.” He signed it, “A friend you haven’t made yet.” More recently, a New York Times article (May 7, 2016) reflected on the use of the term intellectual disability, the favored term for the last decade. The article provides a nice historical summary of both the language used and how people with intellectual disabilities were treated. Michael Wehmeyer (director of the University of Kansas Beach Center on Disability) notes that intellectual disability is “the first term that doesn’t refer to the condition as a defective mental process – slow, weak, feeble… Intellectual disability conveys that it is not a problem within a person, but a lack of fit between that person’s capacities and the demands of the environment in which the person is functioning.” Although he personally prefers cognitive disability (and so do I, not that I really get to have an opinion on the matter). It is difficult to imagine how “intellectual disability” could be twisted into an insult. While those who think of such things work on that, the rest of us can work on helping our students understand how offensive it is to casually toss around the word retarded as an insult. This is an easy topic to tackle when covering development, intelligence, or perhaps even better, stereotyping and prejudice. We seem to have largely moved past “that’s so gay” as an insult. We can do the same with “that’s so retarded.” Signed, The niece of a woman with an intellectual disability ... View more