I’m a fan of infusing research methods throughout the Intro Psych course. We introduce psychology’s most common research methods early in the course, but we should revisit them every now and again in the context of psychology’s content to help make them stick. Think spacing effect.   First, a note on getting journal articles. For college and university faculty, accessing journal articles through their library’s databases is usually a pretty easy process. If your library doesn’t have it, you can request it through interlibrary loan (ILL). For high school teachers, getting research articles can be challenging. Some journals will make some articles freely available. Some authors make their articles freely available to download via ResearchGate. You will need a ResearchGate account, but it is free to join. Other authors—or the same authors, but different journal articles—will give you the option to contact them via ResearchGate for a copy of their article. If the author isn’t on ResearchGate, email them directly to ask for a copy of their article. Provide a full citation. Researchers may publish several articles on the same topic in the same year. Wherever you find an abstract, you can often find the email address of the lead author. If you can’t find the email address, you can usually find their affiliation. An Internet search of their name and affiliation will usually yield a page at their institution that includes an email address. Do not ever feel shy about contacting researchers to request a pdf of an article or to ask questions about their research. The vast majority of researchers, frankly, are thrilled to learn that someone is interested in their research. I’m not kidding. Interlibrary loan (ILL) may be another option for you. Ask your public library librarians if they do ILL for journal articles. Also, don’t be afraid to ask your friends who are college or university faculty. Just be sure to rotate your requests through your network. You don’t want to wear out your welcome with one person with a single request for a dozen articles! Finally, be aware that some of the classic case studies discussed in Intro Psych textbooks are not good examples, such as Phineas Gage. “Recent historical work, however, suggests that much of the canonical Gage story is hogwash, a mélange of scientific prejudice, artistic license, and outright fabrication,” writes one of my favorite science writers, Sam Kean (Kean, 2014). (If you have not yet read Kean’s book The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons, I highly recommend it. Kean dives into each major area of the brain, discussing both its history and current research.) Below are some case study examples, organized by pillar (Gurung et al., 2016). As with all research articles, you don’t have to understand every word to get the point. That’s probably a message worth communicating to our students. Researchers write journal articles for other researchers who are doing research in their same area. They are not writing for a general audience. Even researchers who work in other areas of the field may not grasp every word. And that’s okay! If you can get enough of the big picture to share the research with students—even if it’s in broad strokes—you are good to go. Here's an example of where I needed help with the big picture. I wrote a blog post recently on how the mapping of the motor cortex that we’ve taught for decades is wrong (Frantz, 2024). It was based on fMRI findings researchers published in the journal Nature (Gordon et al., 2023); the article is freely available. The lead author, Evan M. Gordon, is a radiologist at the Washington University School of Medicine. I am absolutely certain radiologists would understand just about every word in that article. I, however, am not a radiologist. I’m not even a biopsychologist; my background is in social psychology. With a rudimentary understanding of biology, however, I could grasp most of the article, but there were places where I struggled enough that I could not quite see the big picture. So, I did the only reasonable thing. I emailed Gordon. He replied very quickly—and graciously. It took an exchange of just a few emails for me to get it. The result was that blog post.   Biological Stevens, J. A., Cole, W. G., & Vishton, P. M. (2012). Using touch or imagined touch to compensate for loss of proprioception: A case study. Neurocase, 18(1), 66–74. https://doi.org/10.1080/13554794.2011.556124. [Download full text via ResearchGate.] Feinstein, J. S., Adolphs, R., Damasio, A., & Tranel, D. (2011). The human amygdala and the induction and experience of fear. Current Biology, 21(1), 34–38. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2010.11.042. [Full text available.] Tuckute, G., Paunov, A., Kean, H., Small, H., Mineroff, Z., Blank, I., & Fedorenko, E. (2022). Frontal language areas do not emerge in the absence of temporal language areas: A case study of an individual born without a left temporal lobe. Neuropsychologia, 169, 108184. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2022.108184. [Download full text via ResearchGate.]   Cognitive Linden, M. V. (1996). Semantic memory and amnesia: A case study. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 13(3), 391–414. https://doi.org/10.1080/026432996381953. [Download full text via ResearchGate.] Gould, C., Froese, T., Barrett, A. B., Ward, J., & Seth, A. K. (2014). An extended case study on the phenomenology of sequence-space synesthesia. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00433 [Download full text.]     Developmental Kocabaş-Gedik, P., & Ortaçtepe Hart, D. (2021). “It’s not like that at all”: A poststructuralist case study on language teacher identity and emotional labor. Journal of Language, Identity & Education, 20(2), 103–117. https://doi.org/10.1080/15348458.2020.1726756 [Request full text from the authors via ResearchGate.] Nelis, P., Pedaste, M., & Šuman, C. (2023). Applicability of the model of inclusive education in early childhood education: A case study. Frontiers in Psychology, 14, 1120735. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1120735 [Download full text.]     Social & Personality Herrick, S. S. C., Rocchi, M. A., & Couture, A. L. (2020). A case study exploring the experiences of a transgender athlete in synchronized skating, a subdiscipline of figure skating. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 44(5), 421–449. https://doi.org/10.1177/0193723520919816. [Request full text from the authors via ResearchGate.]   Ferguson, D., & Martin-Dunlop, C. (2021). Uncovering stories of resilience among successful African American women in STEM. Cultural Studies of Science Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-020-10006-8. [Request full text from the authors via ResearchGate.] Leporelli, E., & Santi, G. (2019). From psychology of sustainability to sustainability of urban spaces: Promoting a primary prevention approach for well-being in the healthy city designing. A waterfront case study in Livorno. Sustainability, 11(3), 760. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11030760. [Download full text via ResearchGate.] Hu, X., Sidhu, G. K., & Lu, X. (2022). Exploring positive psychology factors in the quality of English as a foreign language classroom life: A case study. Environment-Behaviour Proceedings Journal, 7(22), 17–22. https://doi.org/10.21834/ebpj.v7i22.4153. [Download full text via ResearchGate.]   Mental & Physical Health Black, Z. A., & McCarthy, P. (2020). A case study of a trainee sport psychologist adopting a person-centred approach with a professional basketball player. Sport & Exercise Psychology Review, 16(2), 74–83. https://doi.org/10.53841/bpssepr.2020.16.2.74. [Author’s accepted manuscript.] Borg, M. B. (2002). The Avalon Gardens Men’s Association: A Community health psychology case study. Journal of Health Psychology, 7(3), 345–357. https://doi.org/10.1177/1359105302007003226. [Request full text from the author via ResearchGate.] Blackwell, S. E., & Holmes, E. A. (2017). Brightening the day with flashes of positive mental imagery: A case study of an individual with depression. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 73(5), 579–589. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.22455. [Download full text.]     References Frantz, S. (2024, July 20). The classic motor cortex map is wrong. Macmillan and BFW Teaching Community. https://community.macmillanlearning.com/t5/psychology-blog/the-classic-motor-cortex-map-is-wrong/ba-p/21746 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, 617(7960), 351–359. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-05964-2 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 Kean, S. (2014, May 7). Phineas Gage, neuroscience’s most famous patient. Slate. https://slate.com/technology/2014/05/phineas-gage-neuroscience-case-true-story-of-famous-frontal-lobe-patient-is-better-than-textbook-accounts.html ... View more

“’You never know if your perception is a normal perception or if it’s a particular perception that differs from other ones,’ says Fabien Hauw, a neurologist and cognitive neuroscientist” (Makowski, 2024a). Many years ago, after I finished a short lecture on synesthesia in Intro Psych, one of my students raised her hand. She said, “I have synesthesia.” She went on to say that she didn’t know it was an unusual thing until a few months earlier when she was standing with a group of friends, and one was talking about this peculiar thing he had just learned about in his (my) Intro Psych course. As he explained that some people see colors when they hear sounds, my current student said, “Doesn’t everyone experience that.” All eyes turned her. No, no, they don’t. Some number of terms later, I shared with students that sometimes when it’s quiet—most commonly before falling asleep—a sudden noise results in a flash of a light pattern, such as a bright hashtag/pound sign or checkerboard. My (now laughable) mistake was that I assumed this was an experience everyone had. The looks on my students’ faces made it clear that it is not. Interestingly (or not), I haven’t had this experience in at least five years—neither the flash of light nor those looks on my students’ faces. With that as my mental backdrop, I read with great interest an article in the July/August 2024 issue of Scientific American about ticker tape synesthesia, aka ticker taping (Makowski, 2024b). The article is available freely online (Makowski, 2024a). It’s especially interesting because the writer—a copy editor for Scientific American—has ticker tape synesthesia. The name ticker tape synesthesia is unfortunate, because to explain what this is to our students we first have explain what a ticker tape is. The Wikipedia article on ticker tape will get your students (and you?) up to speed quickly. We already have to explain what a cocktail party is when describing the cocktail party effect, so we’re used to this sort of problem. Sir Francis Galton described ticker tape synesthesia in 1883. While he didn’t call it that, he did reference the telegraph technology that made ticker tapes possible: Some few persons see mentally in print every word that is uttered; they attend to the visual equivalent and not to the sound of the words, and they read them off usually as from a long imaginary strip of paper, such as is unwound from telegraphic instruments. The experiences differ in detail as to size and kind of type, colour of paper, and so forth, but are always the same in the same person (Galton, 1907, p. 67). In short, ticker tape synesthesia is personal captioning—words that are heard become words that are seen. As a person with this form of synesthesia hears someone speaking—including themselves (Hauw et al., 2023), their brain automatically generates text. Some people describe the text as scrolling across their mind’s eye, like a ticker tape. Others describe it as a few words appearing and then being replaced with the next set of words. Others describe the text as coming out of the mouth of the person who is speaking. What if the person doesn’t know how to spell the word? The word may appear as fuzzy text. What if two people are speaking? There are two streams of text in different locations (Makowski, 2024b). Some people with ticker tape synesthesia report that the written words may look different depending on context. For example, if the speech they are hearing is particularly emotional, the words may take on a different color, may tremble, or may be larger. Some report that louder voices result in larger words. What about words that are sung? The words may be less visible or may “undulate according to the melody” (Hauw et al., 2023, p. 171). And what about numbers? They typically appear as Arabic numerals rather than written out as words (Hauw et al., 2023). I wonder if someone who is well-versed in APA-style would see numbers one through nine as spelled out rather than as Arabic numerals. And if they would apply the exceptions, such as “6 cm.”   Research into the underlying brain mechanisms of ticker tape synesthesia is just getting started, but as you might imagine initial results show increased activity between the areas of the brain associated with seeing written words and the areas associated with processing speech (Hauw et al., 2024). Even though ticker tape synesthesia is currently thought to be rare, I suspect that the more people hear about it, the more people will say, “I experience that. Doesn’t everybody?”     References Galton, F. (1907). Inquiries into human faculty (2nd ed.). https://galton.org/books/human-faculty/text/galton-1883-human-faculty-v4.pdf Hauw, F., Béranger, B., & Cohen, L. (2024). Subtitled speech: The neural mechanisms of ticker-tape synaesthesia. Brain, 147(7), 2530–2541. https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awae114 Hauw, F., El Soudany, M., & Cohen, L. (2023). Subtitled speech: Phenomenology of tickertape synesthesia. Cortex, 160, 167–179. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2022.11.005 Makowski, E. (2024a, July 1). My synesthesia transforms speech into text I ‘see’ in my head. Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/my-synesthesia-transforms-speech-into-text-i-see-in-my-head/ Makowski, E. (2024b, August). Speech transforms into text I “see.” Scientific American, 331(1), 90–92.   ... 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

If you are looking for a new study to freshen up your coverage of experimental design in your Intro Psych course, consider this activity. After discussing experiments and their component parts, give students this hypothesis: Referring to “schizophrenics” as compared to “people with schizophrenia” will cause people to have less empathy for those who have a diagnosis of schizophrenia. In other words, does the language we use matter? Assure students that they will not actually be conducting this experiment. Instead, you are asking them to go through the design process that all researchers go through. Ask students to consider these questions, first individually to give students an opportunity to gather their thoughts and then in a small group discussion: What population are you interested in studying and why? Are you most interested in knowing what impact this choice of terminology has on the general population? High school students? Police officers? Healthcare providers? Next, where might you find 100 or so volunteers from your chosen population to participate? Design the experiment. What will be the independent variable? What will the participants in each level of the independent variable be asked to do? What will be the dependent variable? Be sure to provide an operational definition of the dependent variable. Invite groups to share their populations of interest with a brief explanation of why they chose that population and where they might find volunteers. Write the populations where students can see the list. Point out that doing this research with any and all of these populations would have value. The independent variable and dependent variable should be the same for all groups since they are stated in the hypothesis. Operational definitions of the dependent variable may vary, however. Give groups an opportunity to share their overall experimental design. Again, point out that if researchers find support for the hypothesis regardless of the specifics of how the experiment is conducted and regardless of the dependent variable’s operational definition, that is all the more support for the robustness of the findings. Even if some research designs or operational definitions or particular populations do not support the hypothesis, that is also very valuable information. Researchers then get to ask why these experiments found different results. For example, if research with police officers returns different findings than research with healthcare workers, psychological scientists get to explore why. For example, is there a difference in their training that might affect the results? Lastly, share with students how Darcy Haag Granello and Sean R. Gorby researched this hypothesis (Granello & Gorby, 2021). They were particularly interested in how the terms “schizophrenic” and “person with schizophrenia” would affect feelings of empathy (among other dependent variables) for both practicing mental health counselors and graduate students who were training to be mental health counselors. For the practitioners, they found volunteers by approaching attendees at a state counseling conference (n=82) and at an international counseling conference (n=79). In both cases, they limited their requests to a conference area designated for networking and conversing.  For the graduate students, faculty at three different large universities asked their students to participate (n=109). Since they were particularly interested in mental health counseling, anyone who said that they were in school counseling or who did not answer the question about counseling specialization had their data removed from the analysis (n=19). In the end, they had a total of 251 participants. Granello and Gorby gave volunteers the participants Community Attitudes Toward the Mentally Ill scale. This measure has four subscales: authoritarianism, benevolence, social restrictiveness, and community mental health ideology. While the original version of the scale asked about mental illness more generally, the researchers amended it so that “mental illness” was replaced with “schizophrenics” or “people with schizophrenia.” The researchers stacked the questionnaires so that the terminology used alternated. For example, if the first person they approached received the questionnaire asking about “schizophrenics,” the next person would have received the questionnaire asking about “people with schizophrenia.” Here are sample items for the “schizophrenics” condition, one from each subscale: Schizophrenics need the same kind of control and discipline as a young child (authoritarian subscale) Schizophrenics have for too long been the subject of ridicule (benevolence subscale) Schizophrenics should be isolated from the rest of the community (social restrictiveness subscale) Having schizophrenics living within residential neighborhoods might be good therapy, but the risks to residents are too great (community mental health ideology) Here are those same sample items for the “people with schizophrenia” condition: People with schizophrenia need the same kind of control and discipline as a young child (authoritarian subscale) People with schizophrenia have for too long been the subject of ridicule (benevolence subscale) People with schizophrenia should be isolated from the rest of the community (social restrictiveness subscale) Having people with schizophrenia living within residential neighborhoods might be good therapy, but the risks to residents are too great (community mental health ideology) What did the researchers find? When the word “schizophrenics” was used: both practitioners and students scored higher on the authoritarian subscale. the practitioners (but not the students) scored lower on the benevolence subscale. all participants scored higher on the social restrictiveness subscale. there were no differences on the community mental health ideology subscale for either practitioners or students. Give students an opportunity to reflect on the implications of these results. Invite students to share their reactions to the experiment in small groups. Allow groups who would like to share some of their reactions with the class an opportunity to do so. Lastly, as time allows, you may want to share the two limitations to their experiment identified by the researchers. First, the practitioners who volunteered were predominantly white (74.1% identified as such) and had the financial means to attend a state or international conference. Would practitioners of a different demographic show similar results? The graduate students also had the financial means to attend a large in-person university. Graduate students enrolled in online counseling programs, for example, may have different results. A second limitation the researchers identified is that when they divided their volunteers into practitioners and students, the number of participants they had was below the recommended number to give them the statistical power to detect real differences. With more participants, they may have found even more statistical differences. Even with these limitations, however, the point holds. The language we use affects the perceptions we have.   Reference Granello, D. H., & Gorby, S. R. (2021). It’s time for counselors to modify our language: It matters when we call our clients schizophrenics versus people with schizophrenia. Journal of Counseling & Development, 99(4), 452–461. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcad.12397           ... View more

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

In the June 2022 edition of the APA Monitor on Psychology is an excellent article on the psychology of traffic safety. The article features David Strayer’s “four horsemen of death”: speed, impairment, fatigue, and distraction. Given the number and breadth of psychological concepts covered, this article provides fodder for a good end-of-term assignment. It may also save the lives of your students. Note that the journalist uses the term “crash” rather than “accident.” “Crash” is the preferred term by U.S. government agencies, such as the CDC and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The word “accident” implies an incident that could not be avoided. The word “crash” does not carry that connotation. Giving the causes of traffic fatalities are due to driver decision-making, whether it be the driver of the vehicle or the driver of another vehicle, “crash” is a better descriptor than “accident.”   Ask students to read the article “Improving Traffic Safety” (Pappas, 2022), and then answer the following questions. How many people died on U.S. roadways in 2020? Speed. What percentage of the 2020 traffic fatalities were estimated to be caused by excessive speed? The article describes three ways that our environment can contribute to unsafe driving. Take a photo of a road in your area that illustrates one or more of these environmental hazards. Explain. The article also describes three ways that our environment can contribute to safe driving. Take a photo of a road in your area that illustrates one or more of these environmental benefits. Explain. In a survey of drivers at the beginning of the pandemic, researchers “saw an increase in respondents saying they were more likely to break the law because they knew they were less likely to be caught.” Explain this finding in terms of operant conditioning. With fewer people on the roads during the pandemic shut-down, researchers speculate that street racing may have increased. What Ontario law led to a reduction in street racing? Explain this effect in terms of operant conditioning. If you are primarily a driver, what can you do to reduce your chances of dying in a car crash due to speed? If you primarily a passenger, what can you do to reduce your chances of dying in a car crash due to speed? Impairment. What percentage of the 2020 traffic fatalities were estimated to be caused by impaired driving? Based on your reading of the article, describe the relationship between stress, alcohol, and driving while impaired. What Big Five personality trait is associated with a history of driving while impaired and reckless driving? Given your knowledge of this trait, why might that association exist? Fatigue. What percentage of the 2020 traffic fatalities were estimated to be caused by fatigue? Why might this number be an underestimation? Summarize what you learned in this course about the effects of sleep deprivation. Choose five effects, and for each, briefly explain how it could negatively effect driving.   According to the article, what have Australian highway authorities done to combat boredom on empty stretches of highway? Distraction. What percentage of the 2020 traffic fatalities were estimated to be caused by distracted driving? Explain how stress may contribute to distracted driving. Explain how the design of cars may contribute to distracted driving. Give at least one example. Conclusion. What was the most surprising thing you learned in this article? Explain. Identify at least one concept you learned in this course that could apply to speed, impairment, fatigue, or distraction but was not discussed in the article. Briefly describe the concept, and then explain how it could be a contributor to car crashes.   Reference Pappas, S. (2022, June). Improving traffic safety. Monitor on Psychology, 53(4), 46–55.       ... View more

Here’s a question for your students after covering the brain in Intro Psych: “How would you react if you learned, today, that you were missing your left temporal lobe?”  In 1987 at the age of 25, EG (not her real initials) happened to have an MRI scan, and her physicians—and I imagine, she—were surprised to see a blank spot where her left temporal lobe should be. EG is highly educated with strong language skills. Her missing left temporal lobe does not appear to be affecting her in any way (Tuckute et al., 2022). Unless we have had an MRI scan of our brain, we have no idea if we have a neurotypical brain or if we, too, are missing an entire cerebral lobe. In the research article (Tuckute et al., 2022), Figure 2a features MRI scans of EG’s brain from the right, the front, and the top. The images are worth sharing with your students. In early childhood, language processing is bilateral. It is only later that language specialization—for most of us—moves to the left cerebral hemisphere. EG does not recall any early childhood brain trauma, so it may be that EG’s missing left temporal lobe was congenital. In any case, EG’s brain had no problem turning language specialization over to her right hemisphere. While EG’s left frontal lobe is intact, it is her right frontal lobe that is language dominant, not left. Researchers speculate that it is the language specialization of the temporal lobe that drives the language specialization of the frontal lobe. If that specialization happens in the left temporal lobe, then the left frontal lobe also develops language specialization. Conversely, if that specialization happens in the right temporal lobe—as it did for EG—then the right frontal lobe also develops language specialization. EG’s experience is a good one to share with Intro Psych students, because it illustrates the remarkable flexibility of the human brain. The research article featuring EG opens with a statement from EG herself. She opens with how she came into contact with this group of researchers in 2016. Then EG reminds us that the language we use matters. “Though [the research team’s] studies answer some questions about how my brain is wired the same as or differently than a typical brain, it does not tell others who I am. Please do not call my brain abnormal, that creeps me out. My brain is atypical. If not for accidently finding these differences, no one would pick me out of a crowd as likely to have these, or any other differences that make me unique” (Tuckute et al., 2022, p. 1). With many of our Intro Psych students preparing for careers in healthcare, EG includes an important reminder that each patient is a person, not merely a collection of health conditions who should then fit into a particular health condition box. “In the past, several well-meaning but misguided healthcare professionals have told me that I should not have more than a 5th grade vocabulary, that I should have seizures, or that I should have other deficits and limitations. I do not. They seemed disappointed, even angry, that I did not have the limitations they unilaterally pronounced that I should have, without the benefit of any further investigation” (Tuckute et al., 2022, p. 1).   Reference Tuckute, G., Paunov, A., Kean, H., Small, H., Mineroff, Z., Blank, I., & Fedorenko, E. (2022). Frontal language areas do not emerge in the absence of temporal language areas: A case study of an individual born without a left temporal lobe. Neuropsychologia, 169, 108184. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2022.108184   ... View more

The planning fallacy tells us that everything will take longer than we think it will (Kahneman & Tversky, 1982). In a fun—and unpublished—study, MIT graduate student Kaley Brauer, tells us about what they learned about the planning fallacy—albeit never named as such—when a “small group of postdocs, graduate students, and undergraduates inadvertently formed a longitudinal study contrasting expected productivity levels with actual productivity levels.” It all started in an effort to be more productive by holding each other accountable. Once a week this group would get together to declare what tasks they wanted to accomplish for the following week and report on what they had accomplished the previous week. As part of this accountability, each person was asked to predict how long each task would take and then report on how long each task actually took. Nine months and “559 self-reported tasks” later, the data are interesting if not surprising. “The actual number of hours required to complete a task is, on average, 1.7x as many hours as expected (with a median multiplier of 1.4x).” The worst estimates were for tasks related to writing and coding. The best estimates were for tasks that had a set deadline. To help ourselves overcome the planning fallacy, there are three things we can do. First, break the task down into its component parts and estimate how long each component will take. When we do this, our predicted times to completion are more accurate (Forsyth & Burt, 2008; Kruger & Evans, 2004). Second, make a plan. When we decide when and where we are going to do these subtasks, we are more likely to complete them in the time predicted (Koole & van’t Spijker, 2000). Lastly, when we are working on the task, getting rid of distractions and interruptions—phones set to silent!—will help us finish the darn thing in the time we predicted (Koole & van’t Spijker, 2000). After sharing information with your students about the planning fallacy and how to mitigate it, ask your students to take a look at the assignments remaining in your course. Send students into small groups to break down each assignment into smaller, component parts, and provide a time estimate on how long they think each part would take to complete. As a “deliverable,” ask each student to submit a work plan for each component. For each remaining assignment (or, perhaps, just one large assignment), for each subcomponent, note how long they think it will take to complete and identify where and when they will do this subcomponent task. If you’d like to do a follow-up, ask students to keep track of how long it actually takes them to complete each subcomponent task, and submit this information when they submit their assignment(s). Giving students some practice with this skill now may benefit them enormously in the long run.   References Forsyth, D. K., & Burt, C. D. B. (2008). Allocating time to future tasks: The effect of task segmentation on planning fallacy bias. Memory and Cognition, 36(4), 791–798. https://doi.org/10.3758/MC.36.4.791 Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1982). Intuitive prediction: Biases and corrective procedures. In D. Kahneman & A. Tversky (Eds.), Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases (pp. 414–421). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511809477.031 Koole, S., & van’t Spijker, M. (2000). Overcoming the planning fallacy through willpower: Effects of implementation intentions on actual and predicted task-completion times. European Journal of Social Psychology, 30(6), 873–888. https://doi.org/10.1002/1099-0992(200011/12)30:6<873::AID-EJSP22>3.0.CO;2-U Kruger, J., & Evans, M. (2004). If you don’t want to be late, enumerate: Unpacking reduces the planning fallacy. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40(5), 586–598. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2003.11.001 ... View more

In the Society for the Teaching of Psychology Facebook group, Maria Lechtreck shared a 15-minute Graham Shaw video that teaches us how to draw. After learning—in mere minutes—how to draw cartoon faces, I have been wondering how to work this into my Intro Psych course—the video, not the cartoon faces. The Intro Psych textbook I use (Myers and DeWall, Psychology in Everyday Life) opens with a short chapter titled “Student Success,” and the chapter contains all kinds of useful information on how to be, well, a successful student. I ask my students to reflect on what they read in this chapter, identify three suggestions they found most useful and why, and then identify their biggest challenges and what strategies they have in place to cope with those challenges. As a companion to that question, I’m considering adding this set of questions. *********** How confident are you in your ability to draw? Very? Somewhat? Not at all? Now, watch this 15-minute video. Participate along with the audience, drawing the characters as the presenter Graham Shaw draws them: Spike, Thelma, Jeff, Pam, and Albert Einstein. Draw a character of your own imagination. Take a photo of your collection of 6 drawings, and paste the photo here as part of your assignment. After watching the video and participating along with the audience, are you more confident in your ability to draw? Explain. At the end of the recording, Shaw asks us to consider what other beliefs we carry around about ourselves that may be causing us to limit what we can do. If someone believed that they are “not good at math,” for example, how could that belief limit the career paths they might take? Lastly, read “How praise came to be a consolation prize” in The Atlantic. What is meant by “fixed mindset?” What is meant by “growth mindset?” When someone says, “I can’t draw” or “I can’t do math” or “I can’t write,” are they exhibiting a fixed mindset or a growth mindset? Explain. Lastly, what is meant by “false growth mindset?” According to growth mindset, what’s the best way to react to a failure? ... View more