Friends and colleagues, In 2015 Macmillan invited me to write about teaching Intro Psych for their Communities site. While it was an easy request to say yes to, I had no idea it would be so much fun! This is my 345th blog post (!). I estimate that the posts, collectively, have had around 500,000 views (also, !). Now I have some good news and bad news. Bad news first. This will be my last Macmillan Communities blog post. Now the good news. I will still be writing these kind of blog posts about teaching psychology. You can find the new posts at SueFrantz.com. This website—which I’ve had since 2009—had been Technology for Academics. In the last few years, my focus has shifted from writing about technology to writing about teaching psychology. It just made sense to transition SueFrantz.com from tech posts to teaching psychology posts. If you decide to follow me to the new site, in the right-most column, you can subscribe by entering your email address. When a new post goes up, you will get an email. This is the only thing I will use your email address for. I do not sell my list of subscribers—not that anyone has ever asked me to buy it. I plan to follow the same writing schedule—four blog posts a month. In closing, I want to thank Katherine Nurre at Macmillan for her years of support, and I want to thank all of you intrepid readers for your years of support. Let’s begin the next chapter! In gratitude, Sue Frantz ... View more

Introduction to Psychology is the hardest course we teach because we are unfamiliar with so much of the course content (Frantz, 2024). We rely heavily on our textbooks to tell us what we—and our students—need to know about the field. This creates an unfortunate feedback loop that is difficult to break. Let’s take the personality chapter as an example. I am not a personality researcher nor did I take a personality course as an undergrad for my major. Yet, here I am teaching Intro Psych, and it seems like personality is a pretty important topic, so I’m game for teaching it. Step 1. I read the personality chapter in the Intro Psych textbook I have adopted. “This must be what Intro Psych students should know about personality.” Step 2. The personality chapter spends a lot of time on the history of personality theory, so I spend a lot of time lecturing on the history of personality theory. Repeat Step 2. Every term. For years. One day, the personality researchers were asked, “What should we teach Intro Psych students about personality?” They said, “Please focus on today’s personality research, and stop teaching the history of personality theory.” (See pages 8 to 16 of the 2017 Division 1/Division 2 Joint Task Force Report on Introductory Psychology.) Step 3. Authors of Intro Psych textbooks listen to the personality researchers. The authors greatly pare back the coverage of the history of personality theory in the personality chapter. Step 4. The publishers of those Intro Psych textbooks send the personality chapters out for review. They ask people who use the textbook—or who might one day use the textbook—what they think of the chapter. Step 5. The reviews come back. The personality researchers who review the chapter are thrilled! “Finally,” they say, “Intro Psych students are going to be learning about what we are really doing in the field.” Everyone else, though, is ticked off. “Wait! Where is the coverage of Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis?! Where is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs?! You can’t take that content out! I teach that!!” Let’s stop here for a minute to reflect. Why am I teaching the history of personality? Because many, many years ago when I first started teaching Intro Psych, the personality chapter in the textbook I used devoted many, many pages to the history of personality. That’s it. I don’t have any independent knowledge of personality. Because this is what I have always taught, this is what I think should be taught. Step 6. The publishers read the reviews. There is a very short stack of reviews saying, “Yay! Thanks for taking the history out of the personality chapter!” Those are primarily the reviews from the personality researchers. There is a very tall stack of reviews saying, “WTH?! Put the history back into the personality chapter, because I teach that!” Those are reviews from everyone else, including the neuroscientists, developmental psychologists, and cognitive psychologists. Step 7. The publishers tell the Intro Psych textbook authors, “Look at all of these instructors who won’t adopt our book, because this chapter doesn’t cover what people want. You have to put the history back in.” Step 8. The Intro Psych textbook authors respond with, “But… But…” And the content goes back in. As someone who has reviewed plenty of Intro Psych textbook chapters, I own that I was part of the problem. In retrospect, I should have said, “I know you want me to review five chapters, but I’m really only expert in two of these: research methods and social.” If they insisted that I pick three others, I should have said, “Okay, I will also review neuroscience, sensation and perception, and personality, but understand that I will defer to what the experts in those areas think should be in the chapter. For example, yes, I cover dark adaptation in the S&P chapter, but if the S&P researchers don’t think that’s important, I’m fine not covering it.” (And, indeed, S&P researchers do not think coverage of dark adaptation is particularly important. See page 7 of the 2017 Division 1/Division 2 Joint Task Force Report on Introductory Psychology. If you ever heard Scott Lilienfeld’s talk on Intro Psych, you’ll remember he had a great story about a reviewer’s thoughts on his dark adaptation coverage in his textbook.) “Yes, I teach that, because… well… I guess because I have always taught that.” Psychology is a dynamic field. Is having taught particular content a good enough reason to keep teaching it?  Or should what we teach be just as dynamic as our science?   Reference Frantz, S. (2024, April 4). Intro Psych: The hardest course we teach. Macmillan and BFW Teaching Community. https://community.macmillanlearning.com/t5/psychology-blog/intro-psych-the-hardest-course-we-teach/ba-p/20067   ... View more

My first full-time job was at a small college. I was both the psychology and the sociology department—although after a year or two I convinced them to hire a sociologist. In college, I minored in sociology and my graduate degree was in social psychology, but the two disciplines look at the human condition very differently. Anyway, that’s just to explain why the head of the social sciences division (the closest thing we had to a department chair) was from accounting. One day while we chatting, she told me that she believed that anyone can teach an intro course in anything. All they need is a good intro textbook. In my memory, my first thought was, “Please don’t ask me to teach Introduction to Accounting.” My second thought was, “What a weird way to insult my expertise.”  But now, 30 years later, I’m thinking she may have been right. To a point. Introduction to Psychology is the hardest course in the psychology curriculum we have to teach. That’s only because, as instructors, we don’t know most of the content of the course. The first time I taught Intro Psych, I was a third-year social psych grad student. I had a solid handle on three chapters: “Welcome to Psychology,” research methods, and social psychology. Now, what about those other 11 chapters? As an undergrad (three to seven years earlier), I had taken biopsych, development, learning, memory and cognition, and abnormal psych. With those five chapters, I had a fighting chance. I was familiar enough with most of the concepts, that I could relearn them without too much trouble. Although, admittedly with some concepts, I only fully grasped them when I had to teach them to my students. And, also admittedly, not always the first, second, or even third time around. (To all of the students I had in my first few years of teaching, I’m sorry!) If you have been keeping track at home, you know that I felt competent—or reasonably competent—in eight of 14 chapters. That leaves sensation and perception, consciousness, intelligence and language, emotion and motivation, personality, and therapy. Here’s an idea. What if I just don’t cover some of those? In a survey of 814 Intro Psych instructors (Richmond et al., 2021), the chapters taught by over 90% of the respondents were learning, neuroscience, personality, abnormal, memory, social psych, and development. Six of those seven I felt pretty good about teaching. What about the chapters I was less comfortable with? What percentage of my fellow Intro Psych instructors taught those? Perception: 78.1%; therapy: 77.2%; sensation: 75.6%; consciousness: 71%; intelligence: 64.2%; emotion: 64.1%; motivation: 60.3%; language: 41.4%. I encourage you to look at the survey’s results for each Intro Psych content area. The chapters most of us teach are courses that are typically part of the core for the major. The chapters in the second tier are typically second tier courses for the major. The chapters we’re commonly excluding are typically electives for the major, if they are offered at all. Maybe I wasn’t the only one teaching Intro Psych content that I was most familiar with. As a newly-minted Intro Psych instructor, I relied heavily on the textbook I adopted to teach me what I needed to know in all of those chapters where I felt, frankly, incompetent. The textbook wasn’t my only source, though. A grad student ahead of me in my program was headed off to a job in industry, so she gave me her hand-written Intro Psych lecture notes to get me started. Someone also gave me this nugget of advice: get a high-level Intro Psych textbook, and use that for your lecture material. During the recording of a Psych Sessions podcast (Landrum & Nolan, Feb 29, 2024), I learned that I wasn’t the only one who got that advice. In some ways, my first division chair was right. When we teach Intro Psych, we are learning the course content from our textbooks as we go. For high school teachers who teach Intro Psych—especially AP Psych—they may not have a background in psychology at all, so they are absolutely learning as they go. And the AP Psych instructors don’t have the luxury of not teaching chapters they’re not comfortable with. The students need all of the chapters in preparation for the AP exam. Some of the best Intro Psych instructors I know teach AP Psych. In a recent conversation with one of those best AP Psych instructors, she said that she feels like she has just the surface of the field, not the depth. I countered that college instructors have just the surface, too, except for their area of expertise. The more education we get, the narrower our knowledge becomes. There is one exception to the narrowing of knowledge: research methods. That is one way where my division chair was wrong. Through my BA and graduate training, I became well-versed in the research methods we use in psychology. Research methods underpins everything we do; it is our way of knowing. While an accountant would struggle to wrap their head around how psychological researchers do science, a scientist from a different field might have an easier time. Science is science. Our methods may differ, but the basics—and the values—are the same. To everyone who is teaching Intro Psych for the first time, if you feel incompetent in most of what you are teaching, it is because you are. But you are not alone in that experience. And it will get better. Every time you teach the course, you will learn more.   References Landrum, E., & Nolan, S. A. (Feb 29, 2024). STP and new challenges, with guest Sue Frantz (Beyond Teaching S6E4) [MP3]. https://psychsessionspodcast.libsyn.com/beyond-teaching-s6e4-stp-and-new-challenges-with-guest-sue-frantz Richmond, A. S., Boysen, G. A., Hudson, D. L., Gurung, R. A. R., Naufel, K. Z., Neufeld, G., Landrum, R. E., Dunn, D. S., & Beers, M. (2021). The Introductory Psychology census: A national study. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 7(3), 163–180. https://doi.org/10.1037/stl0000277   ... View more

In season three/episode four of the Andy Griffith Show (first aired October 22, 1962), Opie advises his father, Andy, not to lick the tip of the pencil he’s about to write with. Opie says, “It’s an indelible pencil. If you lick indelible, you die in a minute and a half.” His father asks Opie who told him that. “Johnny Paul Jason.” This is after Opie has shared a few other similar ‘facts’ that Johnny Paul Jason has uttered. Andy replies, “Boy sure is a gold mine of made-up facts.” Johnny Paul Jason would be right at home with today’s Internet. I visited with a friend last week at a conference. He told me that upon someone telling his daughter, Melina Gurung, something that sounded questionable, she replied, “Is that an Internet fact or an actual fact?” What a great response! The subtext: “That sounds like a bunch of baloney. Have you checked the source to see if it’s legitimate? Or are you just repeating it?” Isn’t Gurung’s phrasing beautifully concise? It immediately puts the onus back on the speaker: “Is that an Internet fact or an actual fact?” The speaker has to stop and consider the source. Back in the 1960s, Opie’s father would have asked, “Is that a Johnny Paul Jason fact or an actual fact?” Just a couple of days ago I learned that today’s Johnny Paul Jasons are sharing tax advice on TikTok (Dietz, 2024). No, creating a limited liability company (LLC) does not mean you can deduct your groceries from your taxes. No, as a business owner, you cannot list your 4-year-old as an employee. If the person giving you tax advice is a tax attorney or an accountant, you can give what they say some credibility. But a seemingly random person? Is that really a good idea? When it comes to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS), actual facts are less likely to land you in hot water than are Internet facts. Have you seen the photo of the British Airways plane with a flock of birds in the foreground? (Shout out to Linda Woolf for sharing this with me.) The Internet fact says that smuggled exotic birds were on the plane, and that’s why the wild birds swarmed it. (Who makes this stuff up?) The good folks at Snopes.com, who have been sorting Internet facts from actual facts since 1995, discovered the actual fact (Liles, 2024). Adam Samu took the photo on June 15, 2004, and he confirmed that the birds were not near the plane. It’s an optical illusion. The birds are starlings that “range in size from 19 to 23 centimetres” (7.5 to 9 inches). The birds simply happened to be in the foreground when he took the photo. Many years ago, I had a Johnny Paul Jason in class. I’m sorry I didn’t take the time to write down the Internet facts he shared—always uttered with complete conviction. One in particular I remember. He said that dolphins can identify humans who were born underwater. We took some class time on that one to design an experiment that would test his claim. While that was a useful activity, I’m now ready for my next Johnny Paul Jason. “Is that an Internet fact or actual fact?” Thank you, Melina Gurung!   References Dietz, M. (2024, March 18). Ignore this tax advice from TikTok. Lifehacker. https://lifehacker.com/money/ignore-this-tax-advice-from-tiktok Liles, J. (2024, March 15). Pilot reacted emotionally when he realized why birds were flying alongside his airplane? Snopes. https://www.snopes.com//fact-check/pilot-emotional-birds-plane/   ... View more

My favorite conference activity is attending poster sessions. I love talking with students. They are always enthusiastic about their research. The poster topic doesn’t matter to me, although I tend to favor the topics I know very little or nothing about. The student presenters get to experience what it’s like to be the experts and in a position to teach someone else not only about their study but about the topic more generally. Last week, I attended the Southeastern Psychological Association (SEPA) conference. Whenever I had free time, I popped into the posters and wandered around until I found a poster where the presenters were not currently speaking with anyone. “Hi! Tell me about your poster,” I say. The first poster I went to, the students surprised me, though. One student looked at my name badge, and said, “Oh! Sue Frantz. We read a couple of your papers.” I haven’t published much in journals and what I have published was not related to their poster topic, so this was especially surprising. Of course, I asked what they had read. It took them a bit to remember, but they got there. One was a paper on how Intro Psych can dispel myths (McCarthy & Frantz, 2016), and the other was the Intro Psych pillars article (Gurung et al., 2016). Once we had that sorted, I asked why they read those articles. They said that their professor asked them to read one to three articles written by each of the invited speakers in preparation for coming to SEPA. Brilliant! I quickly looked at their poster to find their affiliation: Covenant College. I asked for the name of their professor: Carole Yue. Later that afternoon, I gave my talk on the need to give careful consideration to what we cover in Intro Psych. After the talk, two students came up to me. They said that they needed to interview one of the invited speakers and would I be willing to take 10 to 15 minutes to answer their questions? My first thought was, “I have no idea what questions you are going to ask, but there is no way I can answer them in 15 minutes.” And that was okay by me since I had nowhere in particular I needed to be. But what I said was, “Are you from Covenant College?” Yes, yes, they were. After our conversation—which took at least 30 minutes—I asked that if they see me and their professor, Dr. Yue, in the same room, to please introduce me. I remember my very first conference: Eastern Psychological Association (EPA), Buffalo, NY, 1989. Or at least I’m pretty sure about the location, but the year could have been 1988. That was a long time ago. Anyway, I remember seeing someone whose work I had been reading for a research project I was working on. I wanted to say hi, but I didn’t have any words for after “Hi.” Yue’s students have something to say after “Hi.” The next day, Carole Yue found me, and I learned more about what she does to ensure her students get the most out of their conference experience. I was so impressed, I asked her to email me with what she does because I wanted to share it with all of you. At Covenant College, students can enroll in Psy310: Psych Field Trip. This course was created decades ago by Yue’s predecessor, Mike Rulon. Yue reports that Rulon graciously shared everything with her when she took over the course, and she has since revised it. Here’s the catalog description. The psychology department arranges and sponsors field trips to various professional psychology conventions. The conventions attended in the past have included the Southeastern Psychology Association (SEPA), the Christian Association for Psychological Studies (CAPS) and the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR). By these means, students are able to gain a wide sampling of the range of topics, issues, controversies and personalities in psychology today. A travel fee is individually set for each field trip (based on distance, housing, etc.).   This year’s trip fee was $600, “but presenters get a 50% scholarship. We've been fortunate that the administration has been willing to largely subsidize the trip for students (over half the total cost)” (C. Yue, personal communication, March 18, 2024). For context, Covenant College is near Chattanooga, an 8.5-drive to Orlando where this year’s SEPA conference was held.   Students needed to prepare for SEPA by doing the assigned readings (one to three articles by each invited speaker) and discussing some of those articles with one to three other SEPA attendees. Yue ensures students get exposure to what’s new in a breadth of topics. She divides psychology into eight broad areas (e.g., clinical/counseling/addiction/therapies, neuroscience/cognitive neuroscience/neurology, industrial-organizational/human factors/forensic). Students need to identify one session in at least five of those eight categories that they plan on attending. Yue writes, While at the conference, students check in with me around 8am and receive their per diem for food…They conference all day, and we meet for dinner each night…We then have debriefing meetings after dinner where each student shares about their day. Even though it makes the days very long, students also generally appreciate having the debriefing because they get to reconnect and hear about talks they didn't get to, unusual experiences, or interview/presentation tips. At some point during those two days, students need to find and interview (or have a substantial conversation with) a psychologist. I give them some interview guidelines and suggested questions/topics, but I do encourage them to think of it as a professional fact-finding mission and tailor questions to their own interests (C. Yue, personal communication, March 18, 2024). After the conference, students write about their experiences. Yue writes, Their post-SEPA writings are reflections/summaries of their experiences…I've divided it up into one for each day (Thursday and Friday), as well as a summary of their concentration…They do a summary of their interview, and they do a final reflection of the trip in the style of a letter to a future student who might be considering attending SEPA… Students also submit a list of "Five 5's" in which they tell me 5 things they thought were unusual or surprising (behavioral or content-based), 5 applications they want to implement, 5 memorable events, 5 ideas/concepts they want to remember, and 5 suggestions to me.  Since we have the evening debriefs and the long bus ride home, we won't meet again this week. I think one of the appealing aspects of the course is that after the trip is done, they're done with the class (C. Yue, personal communication, March 18, 2024).  Based on the interactions I had with four of Yue’s students, there is no doubt in mind that they were well-prepared for attending SEPA. After Yue shared with me how she prepared them, I understood why. Conferences can be overwhelming, especially for first-time attendees. Yue’s students are familiar with the conference program and the invited speakers, and they have goals they want to accomplish. What an amazing experience it must be for them—and for their professor. Yue adds, “[T]his course is only possible because the students really jump into the work, and they're amazing. It's such a privilege to see them stretch themselves and grow into themselves as psychologists” (C. Yue, personal communication, March 19, 2024) If you are interested in exploring similar assignments or a similar course for your students, please download Yue’s Psy310 syllabus, pre-SEPA requirements checklist, concentration plan, and breadth requirements.   References Gurung, R. A. R., Hackathorn, J., Enns, C., Frantz, S., Cacioppo, J. T., Loop, T., & Freeman, J. E. (2016). Strengthening Introductory Psychology: A new model for teaching the introductory course. American Psychologist, 71(2), 112–124. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0040012 McCarthy, M. A., & Frantz, S. (2016). Challenging the status quo: Evidence that Introductory Psychology can dispel myths. Teaching of Psychology, 43(3), 211–214. https://doi.org/10.1177/0098628316649470 Yue, C. (2024, March 18). Re: SEPA student assignment [Personal communication]. Yue, C. (2024, March 19). Re: SEPA student assignment [Personal communication].   ... View more

In an Optimist Daily article this morning, I learned that there are 54 Taylor Swift songs that have a beat that matches the recommended number of beats per minute for giving CPR (Optimist Daily, 2024). The healthcare professionals who identified the songs think that these songs may be more relevant to younger generations than the Bee Gees Stayin’ Alive. I’m going to digress a bit before getting to the student activity. <DIGRESSION> First digression thread. I cannot think of Stayin’ Alive without first thinking of Saturday Night Fever followed immediately by Airplane!. If you’re desperate for examples of retrieval cues, you’re welcome to use those. I wonder how many of your students know that the “man dancing” emoji (🕺🏻) is John Travolta from Saturday Night Fever. If you’re looking for a light but very entertaining read, check out Surely You Can't Be Serious: The True Story of Airplane!. If you want to give Stanley Milgram’s six degrees of separation some love, I know someone who knew the actor who played the character to first vomit. He obviously knew Leslie Nielsen and Kareem Abdul Jabbar. If you know me, then you are five degrees from them, making you six degrees from just about everybody in the acting world and the sports world. If you and I haven’t met yet, then let’s meet the next time we’re at a conference together. Just say, “Hi, I want to get closer to Leslie Nielsen.” Second digression thread. Ambulances used to be operated by police departments. No treatment was offered along the way. There was one goal: get the injured to a hospital as quickly as possible. One physician—the one who invented CPR—and an all-Black ambulance crew in Pittsburgh changed ambulances into what they are today. For that history, I highly recommend the book American Sirens: The Incredible Story of the Black Men Who Became America's First Paramedics. Third digression thread, which is really a sub-digression. My wife volunteers for the box office—it’s a small table and a laptop—at our local arts theater. One patron who is a frequent attendee has an incredible mental database of actors and movies that he shares snippets from. For example, he recently shared that one actor’s niece and another actor’s daughter appeared in a movie together. Not the movie that was playing that night, mind you, but some other movie. I’m afraid that I don’t remember what cued this particularly memory for him. In my defense, I didn’t know I was going to need a few days later! My first two digressions remind me of this guy. Something cued his retrieval of that movie, and in this blog post, I seem to sharing with you every memory retrieval I am having this morning. Which leads to… …the fourth digression thread. Have you seen the 2024 Oscar-nominated film for Best Picture, American Fiction? That was the movie that was playing the night I met the affectionately named Random Movie Fact Guy. If you haven’t seen American Fiction, I highly recommend seeing it. Be sure to notice the cameo by Kenneth and Mamie Clark’s doll study. < END DIGRESSION> I also learned from the Optimist Daily article that this Taylor Swift/CPR information was delivered at Swiftposium 2024 held Feb 11-13 at the University of Melbourne. It appears that the Swiftposium was an opportunity for the University of Melbourne faculty to share with the University of Melbourne community how their fields intersect with the cultural phenomenon that is Taylor Swift. While I am not a Swiftie—nor am I an anti-Swiftie—I enjoy a good cultural phenomenon. As of December 2023, nine of her songs had over a billion listens on Spotify (Morgenstern, 2023). Whether your students are Swifties or not, a cultural phenomenon is worthy of psychological study. As an activity to wrap up Intro Psych, consider inviting your students to present at their own in-class Swiftposium—posters or presentations, individually or small groups, in-person or online. Do whatever makes the most sense given your course modality and number of students. Even if you don’t do a Swiftposium, this would work as the basis for a written assignment or discussion. Instructions: Identify one concept we covered in this course (in class or in your course readings) and explain how that concept connects to Taylor Swift. The connection could be to just about anything, such as her music, her concerts, her fans, or her relationship with Kansas City player Travis Kelce. Identify the concept, briefly explain the concept, and then draw the connection to Taylor Swift. Here are a few examples. After the Super Bowl, Kelce asked Swift who had flown in from Tokyo for the game, “How do you not have jet lag right now?” She replied, “Jet lag is a choice” (Hanson, 2024). Based on what students have learned about sleep, is jet lag a choice? From what we know about jet lag, what might Taylor Swift have done to minimize jet lag? What behaviors do Swifties engage in to signal in-group membership to other Swifties? Taylor Swift encouraged her fans in an Instagram post to register to vote by going to Vote.org. “Vote.org registered more than 35,000 voters after Swift's post, which was a 22.5% increase from the previous year, organization CEO Andrea Hailey said Wednesday. There was a 115% increase in registrations by 18-year-olds when compared to last year. The organization also helped 50,000 people verify their registration status” (Chasan, 2023). This behavior could be explained by the persuasion principle of liking.     References Chasan, A. (2023, September 21). More than 35,000 people register to vote after Taylor Swift post—CBS News. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/taylor-swift-encourages-voter-registration/ Hanson, H. (2024, February 17). Taylor Swift’s 5-word take on jet lag will have you go, “Hmmm.” Yahoo Entertainment. https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/taylor-swifts-5-word-jet-170134945.html Morgenstern, L. (2023, December 5). Taylor Swift’s 15 most popular songs, ranked (according to Spotify). TheThings. https://www.thethings.com/taylor-swift-most-popular-songs/ Optimist Daily. (2024, February 19). Fearless hearts: More than 50 Taylor Swift songs are perfect for life-saving CPR. https://www.optimistdaily.com/2024/02/fearless-hearts-more-than-50-taylor-swift-songs-are-perfect-for-life-saving-cpr/   ... View more

“Receptiveness refers to the willingness to seek out, attend to, and fairly evaluate opposing information” (Hussein & Tormala, 2024, p. 1). As a professor, I strive to be receptive. And just as importantly, I also strive to be perceived as receptive. I want my students and colleagues to see me as someone who seeks out, attends to, and fairly evaluates information that does not mesh with how I see the world. This perception of receptiveness has real-world consequences: “[P]eople…perceived to be receptive are more persuasive, elicit greater openness and interest in interaction from others, and are seen as more trustworthy and intelligent” (Hussein & Tormala, 2024, p. 1). There are a few things we can do to boost perceptions of receptiveness. First, we can use hedge words, like “probably.” When teaching psychology, that’s not difficult. Our science deals in probabilities, not certainties. Asking questions that encourage others to share their views also makes it more likely (hedge!) that they will perceive us as receptive. Just about every time (hedge!) we ask students to discuss in small groups, we are asking for their views. Another way to boost perceptions of receptiveness is to express positive emotions. I learned a long time ago that teaching face-to-face is no different from acting—or, rather, improv. When I enter the classroom, I put on my (upbeat) teaching persona. Anything else that is going on in my work life or my personal life becomes irrelevant. I didn’t create that persona so that I would be perceived as more receptive. I did it because I want my students to have a pleasant classroom experience; I want them to want to come back. But boosting students’ perceptions of my receptiveness is a nice bonus. In an interesting experiment, researchers wondered if using the pronoun “we” instead of “you” could also increase perceptions of receptiveness. Their reasoning is that “you” can come across as adversarial and aggressive. We know that the use of “you” in the context of interpersonal conflict can make things much worse. “We,” on the other hand, implies a shared experience. (See how I used “we” two sentences ago?) Researchers asked participants about their views on lowering the legal drinking age. Participants then read what they were told were excerpts from a politician’s speech. The speech argued for what the participants did not want. For example, if a participant said they were opposed to lowering the drinking age, they were asked to read a speech that favored lowering the drinking age. For the independent variable, participants were randomly assigned to read a “you” speech or a “we” speech. For example, one of the “you” speeches started with, “If you oppose lowering the drinking age, you are essentially denying young people the opportunity to develop responsible drinking habits. Are you prepared to be responsible for stifling their personal growth and denying them the chance to learn how to consume alcohol responsibly?” (Hussein & Tormala, 2024, p. 4). That language certainly feels adversarial and aggressive to me. In contrast, the corresponding “we” speech started with, “If we oppose lowering the drinking age, we are essentially denying young people the opportunity to develop responsible drinking habits. Are we prepared to be responsible for stifling their personal growth and denying them the chance to learn how to consume alcohol responsibly?” (Hussein & Tormala, 2024, p. 4). The “we” speech feels very different. The researchers had two dependent variables: how receptive (willing to listen to new ideas) is the politician perceived to be and how persuasive was the message. The “we” messages resulted in perceiving the politician as more receptive and finding the message more persuasive. In a follow-up study (study 3), the researchers used a different message, but this time added “one” as a level of the independent variable to see if “we” increased or if “you” decreased perceptions of receptiveness. In the cover story, the researchers told the participants that they would be reading messages from a new online social issues discussion group where group members were writing about refugees from Afghanistan. Participants were told that they were moderating these messages. For example: Tucker Carlson called it the other night. Biden lied. Meanwhile none of the other news stations even criticized Biden. That’s what I am being told anyway, I stopped watching those long ago The fact that [one/we/you] never leave [one’s/our/your] little bubble of confirmation is sad… [One/We/You] never want [one’s/our/your] ideas challenged because [one/we/you] tie them so close to [one’s/our/your] emotions and personality, so anyone who challenges these ideas challenges [one’s self/us/you] (Hussein & Tormala, 2024, p. 7). On a 7-point scale, participants rated “we” as the most receptive (approximately 5.0), “one” next (approximately 4.3), and “you” as the least receptive (approximately 3.1). On perceptions of aggressiveness, “you” came across as the most aggressive (approximately 4.3) with no statistical difference between “we” (approximately 2.6) and “one (approximately 2.8) (Hussein & Tormala, 2024). In yet another follow-up study (study 4), the researchers parsed the “you” condition into an adversarial you and a supportive you. The adversarial “you” condition begins with this sentence: “You and your politics have become so polarized that you can’t even imagine living in the same state as people you disagree with” (Hussein & Tormala, 2024, p. 9). The supportive “you” condition begins with these two sentences: “Totally see what you mean and where you’re coming from. Politics have become so polarized that you can’t even imagine living in the same state as people you disagree with” (Hussein & Tormala, 2024, p. 9). They found that perceived receptiveness and aggressiveness to the supportive “you” and “we” conditions were the same. The adversarial “you” was perceived to be less receptive and more aggressive. All of that is to say that if our goal is perceived receptiveness, using “we” is the safest route. “You” works, but only if it is surrounded by supportive words to make it clear that the message is not meant to be adversarial. If a student’s first impression of us comes from our syllabus, using “we” pronouns may increase student perceptions of our receptiveness. When we do use “you,” we should surround it with supportive words. [If a student’s first impression of you comes from your syllabus, using “we” pronouns may increase student perceptions of your receptiveness. When you do use “you,” you should surround it with supportive words.]   Reference Hussein, M. A., & Tormala, Z. L. (2024). You versus we: How pronoun use shapes perceptions of receptiveness. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 110, 104555. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2023.104555   ... View more

I’ve had a few people ask me recently where I get my ideas for this blog. The short answer is everywhere and anywhere. But that’s not a very satisfying answer. Another answer: I get ideas for this blog from the same places I get ideas for new content and new examples for my classes. That’s also not a very satisfying answer, but maybe that gets closer to the underlying question. As a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), I get their flagship magazine Science every week delivered in print. H. Holden Thorp’s editorial that opens each issue and the “working life” essay that closes each issue provide interesting blog fodder. I see that Science is bringing us a special issue on sleep at the end of October 2023. I fully expect a few posts will be based on that issue alone. This blog post on who does science was prompted by a Thorp editorial in Science. As a member of the American Psychological Association (APA), I get both the American Psychologist and the Monitor on Psychology. Again, both in print. While the Monitor often has excellent feature articles, it’s the short research summaries that most frequently catch my attention. Each summary ends with a DOI that makes it comparatively easy to look up the original article. Since the font size for the DOI is quite tiny, each month, I feel like I’m taking an eye test. I’m still passing the test, but when I start failing, I’m ready with my phone’s camera or a visit to the online edition of the Monitor. This blog post on financial psychology was prompted by an interview in the Monitor. The last two publications I get in print are Smithsonian Magazine and Scientific American. The latter publishes more articles that generate blog ideas than the former. This blog post on recreational fear was prompted by a Scientific American article.   My organization system for anything I find potentially blog-worthy in these print publications is pretty straightforward. I rip out the article and put it on top of the stack of previously ripped out articles. It took me a bit to settle on this system. Ripping out pages was hard at first. But since our local public library no longer accepted print magazines for their give-away table, my magazines are destined for the recycling bin. I don’t think our recyclers care if the magazines have missing pages. Although, maybe they’re reading them. Hmmm. I also read from a number of news sources online. The feeds from those news sources come into my news feed reader, Inoreader. Here are a few of my favorite news sources for psychology-relevant material: Science Daily, Positive News, Good News Network, Optimist Daily, New York Times Most Shared, Health, and Science, The Learning Scientists blog, Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Network Open, and NPR Shots health blog. When I see something that could be the subject of a blog post, I tag it with “Macmillan blog.” And anything I see that could go into one of my courses or one of my books, I tag it by book or course and chapter, such as “I-txt: Memory & Cognition” or “S-txt: Groups.” This blog post on pop-up charity shops was prompted by a Positive News article. This blog post on air traffic controllers and sleep and this one on decreasing loneliness with weak ties were prompted by articles from my New York Times Most Shared news feed. While I primarily use Inoreader to categorize stuff I might want to use, I also use Trello and Zotero. I have a Trello board for each of my courses. Within in each board, I have a list for each chapter, and then in each list I have a card for something I might want to change in that chapter the next time I teach the course. In Zotero, I have all of the research article pdfs and websites I reference in my writing. Each writing project has its own folder. I can also tag articles in Zotero, but I’m not quite ready to move everything there just yet. I may keep the “possibles” in Inoreader and save Zotero for the stuff that I am actually using. Or at least that’s my system today. Do you have a system that works for you? Please share in the comments. ... View more

There are lots of opportunities for professional development in the teaching of psychology no matter your budget. If you haven’t already, join the Society for the Teaching of Psychology (STP). Annual membership is $25 for psychology teachers, $15 for students and postdocs. If you live in a country that is not classified by the World Bank as a high income economy, it’s $5. As a member of STP, you get online access to our quarterly journal Teaching of Psychology, the ability to join one or more of our affinity groups and participate in their online discussions, the opportunity to join us at STP’s Annual Conference on Teaching (Louisville in 2024 and Minneapolis is 2025), the opportunity to apply for numerous grants and awards, the opportunity to participate in our mentoring program, and the ability to post to and view our list of job postings. Between September 1, 2023 and October 4, 2023, a total of 34 job postings have gone up. And by joining STP, you will have the opportunity to give back to the teaching of psychology community (and adding professional service to your CV) by getting involved in STP. If you’re on Facebook, join the Society for the Teaching of Psychology Facebook group. With over 22,000 members as of October 2023, the members can help you with any teaching of psychology related question you may have. Need new ideas for the Sensation and Perception chapter in Intro? Have a challenging student, colleague, department chair, or administration? Looking for a new kind of assignment? We’re here for you. If you’re not on Facebook, STP operates the PsychTeacher listserv. A listserv is an email subscription service. When you have a teaching of psychology related question, send an email to the listserv email address. Other subscribers will reply to your question. If you’re a fan of webinars, check out the American Psychological Association (APA) Education Directorate’s Learn 2 Learn Series.   For the podcast listeners, there are a number of excellent options. For example, there is Psych Sessions (conversations with psych instructors), Hidden Brain, Speaking of Psychology (from APA), Under the Cortex (from APS), and All in the Mind (from the BBC). The best (and only?) Intro Psych conferences are TIP Northwest (Seattle in the spring) and Psych One (Duke University in June). The two conferences have joined forces to host an online conference in January called Intro Psych: Coast-to-Coast. Psi Beta will be holding their Second Annual Psi Beta Teaching of Psychology Conference (PBTOP) online on December 1, 2023. All seven of the regional psychological associations (i.e. EPA, SEPA, MPA, NEPA, RMPA, SWPA, and WPA) have teaching of psychology programming either as a one-day preconference or embedded throughout the program. There are also local teaching of psychology conferences, such as the Southeastern Teaching of Psychology conference (SETOP) the Mid-Atlantic Teaching Psychology conference (MATOP) and the Midwest Institute for Students and Teachers of Psychology (MISTOP). If you’d like to start your own conference, this document—even though it’s a little dated now—provides some excellent advice. STP also has programming at the APA convention. When I attended my first APA convention, I was feeling a little overwhelmed at the number of presentations. A trusted colleague said, “Just attend the STP sessions. Treat it like a teaching conference.” It was fantastic advice. You can also find STP programming at the Association for Psychological Science conference, at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) conference, and at the Society for Research in Child Development conference. The National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology (NITOP) is held every January. It is one of the best teaching of psychology conferences. If you’re interested in international collaboration on scholarship of teaching and learning activities, check out the Biennial International Seminar on the Teaching of Psychological Science (BISTOPS) held in July on even years in Paris. If you want to flip the script and be paid for professional development rather than paying for professional development, I recommend participating in the AP Psych reading. It was the best move I ever made in my career. I learned a lot about writing essay questions and about rubric development. You'll get that if you do the reading online. However, if you're able, attend in person, at least for the first few years. The best part was making friends who love teaching psychology as much as I do. I have learned--and continue to learn--so much from them. ETS (the owner of the Advanced Placement testing program) pays you, and they cover all travel expenses including hotel for the week. In 2024, the reading will be in Kansas City. Read more about the requirements and apply. I am certain I have missed some fantastic professional development options. Please share your favorites in the comments!   ... View more

In eight days, I officially retire from Highline College, where I’ve taught since 2001. For a number of months, I’ve been saying that I’m pre-semi-retired. It occurred to, however, that that’s hogwash. I’m actually differently employed. More on that in a bit. Since I announced to my colleagues that I was going to retire in fall 2023, I’ve had several people ask me about whether I had concerns about losing my professional identity. No, I don’t. In fact, I have so few concerns about it that it never occurred to me that I might no longer see myself as a professor. Years ago, my wife and I were watching some sort of sporting event. One of the broadcast analysts was once a coach, and everyone kept calling them “coach.” My wife said something like, “Oh! ‘Coach’ is an honorific. Once a coach, always ‘coach.’” Now that I’m close to no longer being a full-time professor, “professor” feels the same to me as “coach.” And, really, they’re pretty similar professions. There are other reasons that I don’t see me shedding my professor identity. For example, I can teach a class as an adjunct if I’d like. It’s hard to not see myself as a professor if I am professing to a class of students. Also in my professorial role, I am writing textbooks. I have an Intro Psych textbook on the market now and a Social Psych textbook will be published in the next year. Textbook writing feels a lot like teaching; I curate psychological science and explain it to students. As everyone who has been teaching for a while can attest, students comprise just one part of our teaching role. We also ‘teach’ colleagues. The ‘lessons’ commonly start with a colleague saying, “Hey, do you have a minute? I’d like some advice on…” I’m still doing that. While I don’t get as many questions as I did when I was full-time, I get the occasional text or have such a conversation at a conference. These blog posts are just another form of that. More generally, there are plenty of things I’m doing to maintain my happiness as I slide into the next chapter of my life. For all of my colleagues in the professoriate who are considering retiring or who have made the leap, let’s use the PERMA model of subjective well-being (Seligman, 2018) to see how things might go. P is for positive emotions One of the joys of retirement is that we get to choose to get involved in projects that are fun without having to suffer through job responsibilities that are, well, insufferable. Teaching a class as an adjunct? Fun! Chairing a search committee? Not fun! We know all of the things we should do to manage stress: eat well, exercise, sleep. With retirement we may find that we have even more time to do those things. My wife and I have more time to plan, shop for, and make meals. We have a basic home gym (dumb bells and a rowing machine), and we block out time on the calendar to use it. And sleep—I go to bed when I want (early!), and I get up when I want (early!). E is for engagement Flow. Let’s completely lose ourselves in the activities we enjoy. Writing frequently does that for me. Not always, but frequently. Most of my friends have hobbies that engage them. After retiring, they have more time to do the activities they love. R is for relationships The loss of work relationships is a real concern for most everyone who is considering retirement. That was one of the many lessons of COVID. Those of us who were sent home to work learned what it was like to no longer have hallway conversations. I know I couldn’t have told you how important those conversations were until they were gone. There are some Highline College colleagues that I occasionally exchange texts and emails with. My professional circle is much greater that, though. My wife refers to all of my non-Highline psychology colleagues in the collective as the “psychosphere.” Because I never saw them (you!) in the hallways of my college, I don’t feel like I’ve lost them (you!). As some work relationships fade with time, retirement gives us the opportunity to build new ones. I wrote a few weeks ago about how becoming a regular someplace can provide important relationships (Frantz, 2023). Online forums can provide similar opportunities. The Society for the Teaching of Psychology (STP) recently launched affinity groups that give STP members with shared identities or experiences the opportunity to meet and discuss important and not-so-important topics in an online forum. Conferences were another place where we were able to connect—confer—with colleagues. I’ll confess that well before I retired my primary purpose for attending conferences was to meet with my friends and make new friends. In SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, the author and Roman historian Mary Beard tells us that Polybius (200 BCE – 118 BCE) supposedly advised a young man, “Never come back from the Forum…until you have made at least one new friend” (Beard, 2016, p. 184). If we are not yet friends and you see me at a conference, please say hi. Remember that I’m following Polybius’s advice. After every conference trip, I need to have made at least one new friend. Attending conferences is more challenging as a retiree because your institutional travel support is gone. This is less of an adjustment for those who were at institutions that didn’t provide much or any travel support to begin with. Who knew that there’d be a plus side to that? If you have money budgeted for travel, consider building a vacation around a conference. NEPA/NECTOP are in Worcester, MA in early October 2023. My wife and I will be coming in a few days early and leaving a few days after so we can spend some time touring New England. Or, if you’re lucky, a conference may be held near your city. Here are some conferences worth considering. Some even have reduced registration rates for retirees. For example, STP’s ACT early bird registration for retirees (and adjuncts and high school teachers) is $35 less than the regular rate: NEPA/NECTOP (Oct 2023). Worcester, MA STP’s ACT (Oct 2023). Portland, OR NITOP (Jan 2024). Bonita Springs, FL EPA (Feb/Mar 2024). Philadelphia, PA SWPA (Mar 2024). San Antonio, TX RMPA (Apr 2024). Denver, CO SEPA (Apr 2024). Orlando, FL MPA (Apr 2024). Chicago, IL WPA (Apr 2024). San Francisco, CA Teaching Intro Psych (TIPNorthwest) (Apr 2024 – probably). Seattle, WA APS (May 2024). San Francisco, CA PsychOne (Jun 2024). Durham, NC APA (Aug 2024). Seattle, WA M is for meaning This may be the one that people contemplating retirement fear losing the most. The fear is not unwarranted. It’s not uncommon for recent retirees to struggle with finding meaning in their lives when for so long work provided so much of that meaning. These days, I get a lot of my meaning from writing. In addition to textbooks (including the Teaching Psychology book I have with Doug Bernstein and Steve Chew, I also have this blog and my Technology for Academics blog. I recently spoke with a publisher who was looking for someone to write a “how to teach Intro Psych” manual of sorts. While it’s not a project I can take on, it was a good reminder to let you know that if you’re interested in any kind of writing for publishers, let your book reps know. They’ll pass your contact information along to their editorial team. Lots of publishers are looking for people to create textbook supplements. Someone has to create the slide decks, instructor resource manuals, and test banks. It might as well be you. While writing a book is a significant commitment, a blog can be written on your own timeline. Here are some tips on getting started with blogs. Or maybe podcasts are more your thing. If you want to try out podcasting and you have an idea for a series, ask the good people at Psych Sessions (info@psychsessions.org) if they’d be interested in you being a series host. For example, a “where are they now?” series could be fun. You could have 30-minute conversations with teaching of psychology luminaries who have retired. What are they doing now? Or maybe you’d like to work one-on-one with someone who is new to teaching psychology. The Society for the Teaching of Psychology has a mentoring program where seasoned/experienced/veteran (you choose your adjective) faculty are paired with early career faculty or advanced graduate students. It’s a terrific opportunity to share your expertise. I also highly recommend getting involved in your professional associations. The Society for the Teaching of Psychology has a boatload of service opportunities—diversity and international, membership, resources, programming, awards. STP has something for everyone. You can always find current openings on the Get Involved page. A is for accomplishment Don’t underestimate the power of achieving goals. If you are about to retire or have recently retired, take some time to reflect on what you’ve accomplished (so far!) in your career. Now’s a good time to review your CV. What were your favorite classes to teach? Who are your most memorable students? What was your most satisfying research line? Who did you learn the most from? Who do you think learned the most from you? (Also, these are great questions for the guests on your “where are they now?” podcast series!) Now, what are your next set of goals? It’s time for a new chapter!   References Beard, M. (2016). SPQR: A history of ancient Rome. Profile Books. Frantz, S. (2023, August 21). Decreasing loneliness through weak ties: A survey example. Macmillan and BFW Teaching Community. https://community.macmillanlearning.com/t5/psychology-blog/decreasing-loneliness-through-weak-ties-a-survey-example/ba-p/19251 Seligman, M. (2018). PERMA and the building blocks of well-being. Journal of Positive Psychology, 13(4), 333–335. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2018.1437466   ... View more

The Introduction to Psychology course is the hardest course to teach because we do not have expertise in the vast majority of the material. When you teach Intro Psych for the very first time, you get used to saying, “I don’t know.” As the years have rolled by, I’ve accepted that “I don’t know” is just part of my Intro Psych teaching lexicon. For me, however, it’s not the not knowing that’s problematic. It’s all of the information that I thought I knew, but, alas, did not. Finding out that I’ve gotten something wrong makes me wish I could contact all of my previous students and say, “Hey! Remember that thing I told you about? No, you don’t remember? Well, anyway, it turns out I was wrong. Here’s the right information. Or at least here’s the right information as we know it today.” Okay, maybe it’s best that I can’t contact my previous students. In some cases, the scientific research has given us updated information. For example, research published a week ago in Nature reveals that the motor cortex is not all about motor control (Gordon et al., 2023). There are pockets of neurons in between the motor control sections of the motor cortex that connect with other parts of the body. “As a result, the act of, say, reaching for a cup of coffee can directly influence blood pressure and heart rate. And the movement is seamlessly integrated into brain systems involved in planning, goals and emotion” (Hamilton, 2023). This is a beautiful example of the first of APA’s overarching themes for Intro Psych: “Psychological science relies on empirical evidence and adapts as new data develop” (Halonen et al., 2022) In some cases what I got wrong was me just not understanding. For example, if you used to teach that the cat running to the sound of the can opener was classical conditioning, you can identify with what I’m saying. (See this 2016 blog post for the explanation as to why this is not classical conditioning, but operant conditioning.) While I don’t have any suggestions on how we can speed up science, I do have some suggestions on how we can mitigate how much stuff we don’t understand, and, thus, mis-teach to our students. Here are some excellent books that will expand your Intro Psych knowledge. Most are written by experts in the field. Others were written by people who got deeply interested in the topic. If you have books that you have found useful for expanding your Intro Psych knowledge, please add them to the comments. Thanks! Neuroscience The tale of the dueling neurosurgeons: The history of the human brain as revealed by true stories of trauma, madness, and recovery written by Sam Kean Incognito: The secret lives of the brain by David Eagleman Livewired: The inside story of the ever-changing brain by David Eagleman Sensation and Perception An immense world: How animal senses reveal the hidden realms us by Ed Yong Perception: How our bodies shape our minds by Dennis Proffitt and Drake Baer Consciousness Why we sleep: Unlocking the power of sleep and dreams by Matthew Walker Buzzed: The straight facts about the most used and abused drugs from alcohol to ecstasy, 3e by, Cynthia Kuhn, Scott Swartzwelder, and Wilkie Wilson Development Breaking the age code: How your beliefs about aging determine how long and well you live by Becca Levy The gardener and the carpenter: What the new science of child development tells us about the relationship between parents and children by Alison Gopnik Memory The memory illusion: Remembering, forgetting, and the science of false memory by Julia Shaw Moonwalking with Einstein: The art and science of remembering everything by Joshua Foer Cognition Thinking fast and slow by Daniel Kahneman The undoing project: A friendship that changed our minds by Michael Lewis Emotion Aroused: The history of hormones and how they control just about everything by Randi Hutter Epstein Why zebras don’t get ulcers: the acclaimed guide to stress, stress-related diseases, and coping, 3e by Robert M. Sapolsky Stumbling on happiness by Daniel Gilbert Social Aggression and violence: A social psychological perspective by Brad J. Bushman Kitty Genovese: The murder, the bystanders, and the crime that changed America by Kevin Cook Personality Quiet: The power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking by Susan Cain   References Gordon, E. M., Chauvin, R. J., Van, A. N., Rajesh, A., Nielsen, A., Newbold, D. J., Lynch, C. J., Seider, N. A., Krimmel, S. R., Scheidter, K. M., Monk, J., Miller, R. L., Metoki, A., Montez, D. F., Zheng, A., Elbau, I., Madison, T., Nishino, T., Myers, M. J., … Dosenbach, N. U. F. (2023). A somato-cognitive action network alternates with effector regions in motor cortex. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-05964-2 Halonen, J., Thompson, J. L. W., Whitlock, K. H., Landrum, R. E., & Frantz, S. (2022). Measuring meaningful learning in Introductory Psychology: The IPI student learning outcomes. In R. A. R. Gurung & G. Neufeld (Eds.), Transforming Introductory Psychology: Expert advice on teacher training, course design, and student success (pp. 57–80). American Psychological Association. Hamilton, J. (2023, April 20). An overlooked brain system helps you grab a coffee—And plan your next cup. NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/04/20/1171004199/an-overlooked-brain-system-helps-you-grab-a-coffee-and-plan-your-next-cup         ... View more

In December 2022, I wrote about the new AI tool for generating writing, ChatGPT. Since then, the technology behemoths Microsoft and Google have rushed their own chatbots to public release. Unfortunately, neither were ready for primetime as both were reported to have delivered inaccurate information in their debut. In the meantime, discussion within the academy has exploded about the impact AI writing tools will have on education. Such discussions are often accompanied by much hand-wringing. Some instructors insist that their assignment prompts are not ChatGPT-able because, for example, the prompt asks for personal examples or personal opinion. Other instructors have embraced ChatGPT as a learning tool where they ask students to start with ChatGPT text, critique said text, and then edit it. Perhaps the biggest tell that a particular text was written by ChatGPT is that the references are bogus. The references look legitimate, but a quick Google search will reveal that the AI made them up. Making up references is academic dishonesty. A cloze test would provide further evidence that the student did not write the text. In a cloze test, the instructor removes every, say, fifth word from the text in question, and the student is asked to supply the missing words. A student who wrote the text will have an easier time supplying the missing words than a student who didn’t. This online cloze test generator will create a cloze test based on the supplied text and your parameters. The latest participant in the AI-generated text wars is Edward Tian, a Princeton grad student. During his winter break in Toronto, he spent time in a coffee shop writing code for a computer program that could detect AI-written text. He called it GPTZero (Kidson, 2023), and he has made it freely available. Paste in your text or upload a file, check the box saying you agree to the (pretty generic) terms of service, and click the “get results” button. Tian’s rationale was that since ChatGPT uses an algorithm to write text, code that is based on that same algorithm can detect that same text. For example, ChatGPT writes text by using what the next word in a sentence is most likely to be. Humans, however, tend to be less predictable in our writing. GPTZero uses a similar algorithm to ChatGPT’s to detect the predictably of each word in a sentence. The more predictable the words are, the greater the likelihood the text was writing by AI. For example, this human-written sentence has words that are, well, less predictable: The deliciousness of a Cosmic Crisp apple is to the fruit world what a fine Swiss chocolate is to the confectionary world. Tian and his colleagues are working a new version of their software called GPTZeroX (Kidson, 2023). This version is made for educators and will include a plagiarism score, highlighted sentences that were likely generated by AI, and the ability to upload multiple files (say, from the same class) at once. While they don’t say it, I fully expect learning management system integration is coming. On the GPTZero website, click the “join the product waitlist” button and fill out their form. Now, how long until we see the first case of academic dishonesty where a student used AI to generate their master’s thesis or doctoral dissertation? I predict it will be this calendar year.   Reference Kidson, R. (2023, February 17). Princeton student creates ChatGPT detector. GHacks Technology News. https://www.ghacks.net/2023/02/17/princeton-student-develops-gptzero-software-to-detect-plagiarism-by-ai-language-model-chatgpt/   ... View more

I’ve been thinking once again about, well, let’s call them age cohort differences. Eleven years ago, I wrote about how reading time on analog clocks is becoming a lost skill. I doubt that that trend has changed. Perhaps this is why no one has bothered to replace the batteries in my classroom clock. I’d do it myself, but I need a ladder to reach it. Also, when I’m standing in the front of the room, to see the clock, I need to look a little past 90 degrees to my left and into a dark corner to see it. My analog watch works just fine. Also, the students packing up their stuff—based on the time showing on their phones—gives me a five-minute warning. As I predicted in that analog clock post, clockwise and counterclockwise continue to fade away. In PowerPoint, for example, we now rotate our images 90 degrees left or right. In PDF24, my go-to pdf editor, I can still rotate pages clockwise and counterclockwise, but large icons show the direction of rotation. A friend who recently had a neurological exam told me that the clock-drawing test is still in use. (See this article, for example). I wonder if discussions are underway for a possible replacement for this task, because the clock is ticking, so to speak, on its utility as a cognitive test. And then there’s cursive. I wrote about that just this past September. To be clear, I’m not arguing that school children should learn cursive. Rather, for instructors who write in cursive, be aware that your students may not be able to read what you write, no matter how beautiful your Palmer penmanship. Which I never had. More recently, my wife sent me this 2021 article from Office Watch about young people (and not so young people) wondering what’s up with the design of the save icon that is common in so many computer apps. (Translation: apps = programs.) Some perceive the save icon as a vending machine dispensing a soda. (Visit the article to see the particular icon they’re talking about. Here’s another example.) The save icon, who don’t know, is a leftover graphic. Decades ago, this icon was an excellent way to represent save because it looked like a 3.5 inch floppy disk, a common external storage device. Think usb flashdrives, but with much less storage capacity. Also, they weren’t floppy at all. That was leftover terminology from the 3.5 inch’s predecessors—the 8 inch and the 5.25 inch—which really were floppy. Okay, they were actually more bendy than floppy. Here’s a photo of the 3.5 inch disk from the Computer History Museum. Or email me for photos. The last time I cleaned out my office, I still couldn’t bear to toss my disks—which is different than tossing one’s cookies, but feels eerily similar. I have no way to read these disks, of course. Maybe they’ll come back like vinyl records have. No, I’m not holding my breath. I’m still waiting for the return of 8-tracks. One more sidenote to add to this entire paragraph of side notes. The Internet tells me that in some parts of the world, the 3.5 inch disk was called a stiffy. Share that tidbit at your next cocktail party. No need to credit me. In fact, I’d prefer that you didn’t. And one very last sidenote. Do people still throw cocktail parties? If not, then shouldn’t we change the name of the cocktail party effect? In addition to analog clocks, Here's one more possible age cohort difference. This one I did not see coming. In the learning chapter, I have an assignment that asks students to identify the learning principles illustrated in a few different comic strips. I had a student message me about this part of the assignment. She did just fine, but she was not confident that she understood what was happening in the comic strips. She wrote, “I'm just not very familiar with reading comics.” I grew up reading comic strips in newspapers. I still get a newspaper. Just this morning I walked 100 yards up our driveway in 17 degree temperature (-8 Celsius) to retrieve the paper so that I could read it over breakfast. The more serious news is read with my egg and veggie sausage; sports and comics are read with my English muffin. My digital newsfeed on my tablet always starts with a banana. (Steve Chew: More trivia fodder for NITOP. You’re welcome.) Growing up, my hometown newspaper probably didn’t have more than a dozen daily comic strips. The big colorful comics spread that came with the Sunday paper was pure joy for my 9-year-old self. I enjoyed the Sunday comics even more if I had new Silly Putty for copying and stretching Snoopy, Woodstock, or whatever other Peanuts characters were featured that week. The newspaper of my new hometown does not have many comic strips, either, so I supplement with having hand-selected comic strips come into my news feed. Silly Putty doesn’t work as well on a tablet. Since the message from my student who struggled to understand the comic strips, I’ve been trying to wrap my head around not growing up with comic strips. With print newspapers going the way of the paper office memo and printed student assignments, I can see where whole swaths of young people would not have experience with comic strips. While graphic novels are a thing, their long-form design is a different read than a one to four panel comic strip. History departments will need to teach students how to read cursive if their students are going to be able to read original historical documents (that have not been translated into printed text). Perhaps those same departments will need to teach students how to read historical comic strips that are chockful of references to everyday life and politics. Or maybe my student’s experience is a one off? Maybe she is the only student I’ve had this year who is unfamiliar with reading comic strips. Maybe, but student questions like this feel iceberg-like. If one student is holding her hand up above the water, there are many more students who are keeping their hands below the surface. ... View more

During college, one of my professors advised the class to find interest in whatever we were learning, no matter the course. If I remember correctly, the advice was given as a way to better remember course content, but I now also recognize it as a way to be less miserable. It’s a nice reframing. Thinking “Oooo, that’s interesting!” is a clearer path to happiness than thinking, “Why do I need to learn this?!” But it’s even more than that. “Each day is an opportunity to learn a little more” (Peters-Collaer, 2023, p. 210). Curiosity could be defined, in part, as finding interest in, well, whatever. I like to think that I came to college with a strong sense of curiosity, but since I still remember my professor’s advice almost 40 years later, his words must have had some impact on my desire to learn. My sense of curiosity has certainly served me well. At root, I want to know how stuff works, whatever that stuff might be. As a psychology professor, I want to know how the mind works, but that’s only one example. In a completely different domain, I’m a big fan of industrial tourism. One of my favorite tours was of a wastewater treatment plant. (Steve Chew, you are welcome to use that tidbit in NITOP trivia.) What I learn in one domain may connect to another domain, sometimes in unexpected ways. For example, as you may or may not recall from a recent blog post, I learned that the opening line to the song Jolene was the result of maintenance rehearsal. Maybe my professor’s advice just opened my mind to one of the great benefits of a liberal arts education. Exposure to a lot of different ideas in a lot of different domains can lead to novel ideas or novel solutions to problems. As I think about curiosity and how much we value it as a trait in our psychology majors (American Psychological Association, 2013), I wonder if we could be more explicit about what it means to be curious. Stephen Peters-Collaer, a Ph.D. student in forest ecology at the University of Vermont wrote a one-page essay in Science (freely available) on how curiosity has served him well in his education (2023). Invite your students to read his essay, and then ask students to respond to the following questions as part of an in-class discussion, an asynchronous online discussion, or a short writing assignment. The article author, Stephen Peters-Collaer, found his fieldwork crew leader’s enthusiasm for the natural world infectious. Have you had someone in your life have such enthusiasm for something that you found yourself becoming similarly enthusiastic? Please describe. Peters-Collaer writes, “Each day is an opportunity to learn a little more.” How might holding such an attitude help a college student? The author describes some of the strategies he uses to stay sharp in his more sedentary work. Describe some of the strategies you use to stay mentally sharp. The author closes the article with this statement, “I remind myself that any task can present an opportunity to learn—as long as I am open to it.” Would you describe the author as someone who is curious? Why or why not?   References American Psychological Association. (2013). APA Guidelines for the undergraduate psychology major: Version 2.0. https://www.apa.org/ed/precollege/about/psymajor-guidelines.pdf Peters-Collaer, S. (2023). Stay curious. Science, 379(6628), 210.   ... View more

Many of us who have been around psychology for a while remember ELIZA (or at least remember learning about ELIZA), arguably the first chatbot. Jumping ahead a few decades, with paraphrasing tools users copy/paste text into the tool, click a button, and the words—after being hammered by a thesaurus—are spun into new text. The tools have been marketed to freelance writers. The freelance writer can write one article, copy/paste it into the tool, click the button to get their next text, then tweak the new text to make sure it sounds good. They now have a new-enough article they can sell to someone else without it being picked up by plagiarism detectors as duplicated content. Some of our students have been using these same paraphrasing tools, although sometimes without the proofreading and tweaking. The results can be, frankly, hilarious. My favorite is a history essay that kept referring to President Shrub. Computing technology, however, continues to march on. And now we have AI tools that will write a pretty good essay based on a sentence fragment. We even get fake references. Plagiarism checker tools will not flag the content because the sentences have been newly generated. Just not by a human. The newest tool is called ChatGPT. Anyone can try it out, although at the time of this writing, the website says, “We’re experiencing exceptionally high demand. Please hang tight as we work on scaling our systems.” While we wait for them to have enough servers to handle the demand (from our students?), read an essay that Mike Sharples had the ChatGPT tool create on learning styles (Sharples, 2022). Sharples gave the AI this prompt: “The construct of ‘learning styles’ is problematic because.” Here’s a paragraph from that AI-generated essay—and, yes, the Dunn and Dunn reference is fake, although it is based partially on fact. In a review of this research, Dunn and Dunn (1997) found that the evidence does not support the idea that people have a particular learning mode that is dominant or that they process information in a particular way. In their study, the authors found that when students were given a particular instructional treatment, they could be classified in a particular learning modality category. But when they were given a different instructional treatment, they were classified in a different category. In a follow-up study in which they gave students a number of instructional treatments, Dunn and Dunn found that students could be placed in a particular category in some treatments, but not others (Sharples, 2022). As I pasted in that paragraph from a four-paragraph essay, I wondered if I would be violating copyright law for the amount that I was using. And then I thought, “Wait! No one actually wrote this!” Surely if a monkey does not own the copyright to their selfies (Nauro, et al. V. David John Slater, et al., 2016), then a computer program does not own the copyright to their generated text. To make this even creepier, Sharples writes, “’Just as a student can generate an essay in seconds, so a teacher can assess it. Add ‘Here is a short assessment of this student essay:’ to the end of the text and GPT-3 writes a review.” Now that I’ve concluded that a computer cannot hold the copyright, I have no qualms sharing the entire AI-generated review with you. The essay discusses the idea of learning styles, and how they may be developed over time. It cites research by Dunn and Dunn which suggests that learning styles are not fixed, and that people can learn in different ways depending on the situation. The essay is well-organized and flows smoothly. It makes a clear argument and supports it with evidence from research. One potential criticism is that the essay does not discuss the implications of learning styles research, or how this research can be used to improve learning. However, this is not necessarily a flaw, as the essay is only meant to be a brief overview of the topic (Sharples, 2022). Sharples suggests that instructors use AI writing tools as a teaching tool rather than struggling to find ways to detect or counter their use. I’m less optimistic. Stephen Marche, writing in The Atlantic, also has concerns. “The essay, in particular the undergraduate essay, has been the center of humanistic pedagogy for generations. It is the way we teach children how to research, think, and write. That entire tradition is about to be disrupted from the ground up… Neither the engineers building the linguistic tech nor the educators who will encounter the resulting language are prepared for the fallout” (Marche, 2022). I have lots of questions and no answers. What have we done to create a generation of students who are more interested in completing an assignment for a course grade than learning? What happens when college degree recipients hit the workforce and are unable to write? Will the AI tools cover for them there, too? Does writing make us better thinkers? What happens if we stop writing? Is this the beginning of the end of online education? Are we going to turn back the clock and return to in-class, hand-written assessments? If so, will cursive writing make a comeback because it’s a faster way to hand-write? And if we all return to the classroom, what are the implications for who has and who does not have access to higher education? Or will we require students to do a Cloze test on all of their assignments to prove that they did indeed write them themselves—or at least were able to memorize their AI-generated essay well enough to convince their instructors that they wrote it? Or will we do what Sharples suggest, such as use AI to generate essays, and then ask students to critique the essays and then edit them so they are better (Sharples, 2022)? Lots and lots of questions. No answers.   References Marche, S. (2022, December 6). The college essay is dead. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/12/chatgpt-ai-writing-college-student-essays/672371/ Nauro, et al. V. David John Slater, et al., No. 24, 28 (U.S. District Court, Northern District of California January 28, 2016). http://s3.amazonaws.com/cdn.orrick.com/files/naruto-v-slater-motion-to-dismiss-feb-2016.pdf Sharples, M. (2022, May 17). New AI tools that can write student essays require educators to rethink teaching and assessment. Impact of Social Sciences. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2022/05/17/new-ai-tools-that-can-write-student-essays-require-educators-to-rethink-teaching-and-assessment/     ... View more