I read with increasing horror a New York Times article describing how college and university athletic departments have partnered with sportsbooks to encourage betting among their students. (The legal betting age in the U.S. varies by state. In ten states the minimum age is 18, in Alabama it is 19, and in all of the rest—including D.C.—it is 21. See the state list. In Canada, the age is 18 or 19 depending on province. See the province list.) “Major universities, with their tens of thousands of alumni and a captive audience of easy-to-reach students, have emerged as an especially enticing target” for gambling companies (Betts et al., 2022). While what I’d like to write is an opinion piece about the financial state of colleges and universities (how is it that public funding has evaporated?), how athletic departments have come to operate outside of the college and university hierarchy (why does my $450 airfare to travel to a professional conference have to be signed off on by a raft of people, but an athletic department can sign a $1.6 million dollar deal without the university’s Board of Regents knowing anything about it?), and the ethically-suspect behavior of a college or university using their student contact information—such as email addresses that the institution provides to them and requires them to use for official communication—to encourage those students to bet on sports. But I’m not going to write that opinion piece. At least not in this forum. Instead, I am going to write about what I know best: teaching Intro Psych. If our colleges and universities are going to encourage our students to gamble on sports, psychology professors need to be more explicit in discussing gambling. Within casinos, slot machines are the biggest gaming moneymaker (see this UNLV Center for Gaming Research infographic for an example). For everything you could possibly want to know about slot machines, I highly recommend Addiction by Design by Natasha Dow Schüll, cultural anthropologist at New York University. Slot machines and sports betting are similar in that they both pay out on a variable ratio schedule. People play slot machines to escape; they are powered by negative reinforcement, not positive. Each win provides the ability to play longer, and thus to spend even more time not thinking about problems at school, at work, at home, or in the world. The goal of the slot machine manufacturer and casino is to get you to stay at the machine longer. Having recently visited a casino, I was impressed by some of the newer innovations designed to do just that, such as comfy seats and phone charging pads built into the slot machine itself. While sports betting may—initially at least—be driven by positive reinforcement. Each win feels good and apparently outweighs the punishment of a loss. However, like slot machines, sports betting can become an escape. The time spent planning bets, placing bets, monitoring the games and matches one has put money on, and then trying to find ways to fund the next round of bets can be time not spent thinking about problems at school, at work, at home, or in the world. Since we’re talking about decision making, cognitive biases are also at play. For example, the availability heuristic may have us give undue attention to the big betting wins our friends brag about. Are our friends telling us about their big losses, too? If not, we may feel like winning is more common than losing. We know, however, that winning is not more common. Every time someone downloads the University of Colorado Boulder’s partner sportsbook app using the university’s promo code and then places a bet, the university banks $30. If the sportsbook is giving away $30 every time, how much money in losing bets per person, on average, must the sportsbook be collecting? While there are many topics in the Intro Psych course where sports betting can be discussed, I’ll suggest using it as an opener for discussion of psychological disorders. To be considered a psychological disorder, a behavior needs to be unusual, distressing, and dysfunctional (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Ask students to envision a friend who lies about how much they are gambling, who has wanted to quit or greatly reduce how much they are betting but can’t seem to be able to, and who is using student loans to fund their betting. Do your students think their friend meets the criteria for a psychological disorder? Why or why not? If you’d like, have students discuss in small groups, and then invite groups to share their conclusions. Gambling disorder is a DSM-V diagnosis categorized under “Substance Use and Addictive Disorders.” In previous editions of the DSM, it was called “gambling pathology” and was categorized as an impulse control disorder. Also in previous DSMs, illegal activity was a criterion for diagnosis; that has been removed in DSM-V. To be diagnosed with gambling disorder, a person must—in addition to impairment and/or distress—meet at least four of the following criteria: Requires higher and higher bets to get the same rush Becomes irritable during attempts to cut back on gambling Has been repeatedly unsuccessful when trying to cut back or stop gambling Spends a lot of time thinking about gambling When stressed, turns to gambling as an escape Chases losses (for example, after losing a $20 bet, places an even higher bet to try to get the $20 back) Lies about how much they are gambling Gambling interferes with their performance in school or in a job or has negatively affected interpersonal relationships Gets money from others to support their gambling Poll your students—even by a show of hands—to find out if they know someone, including themselves, who meet at least four of these criteria. For help with a gambling problem, residents of the U.S., Canada, and the U.S. Virgin Islands can contact the National Problem Gambling Helpline by calling or texting 1-800-522-4700 any day at any time. For those who prefer chat, visit this webpage. For additional peer support, recommend gamtalk.org. References American Psychiatric Association (Ed.). (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders: DSM-5 (5th ed). American Psychiatric Association. Betts, A., Little, A., Sander, E., Tremayne-Pengelly, A., & Bogdanich, W. (2022, November 20). How colleges and sports-betting companies ‘Caesarized’ campus life. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/20/business/caesars-sports-betting-universities-colleges.html ... 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

Observational learning is a powerful thing. We use the labels that those around us use, and often without giving much thought to the connotations those labels have. They are worth thinking about. APA recently released Inclusive Language Guidelines (American Psychological Association, 2021). With little preamble, the guidelines dive into the terminology. First, some terms—such as privilege and social justice—are defined to ensure that we are all on the same page. The bulk of the document identifies and provides rationale for terms that are best avoided and suggested terms to use instead. It’s important to acknowledge that not everyone reacts the same way to the terms the guidelines recommend for avoidance or recommend for use. When it comes to language, there is simply no way to please everybody. Instead, the best we can do is use the least polarizing and most innocuous language we can. The more we can model this for students in our teaching and writing, the more thoughtful our students will become in the language they use. At the beginning of your course, ask students to download the free APA Inclusive Language Guidelines. Suggest that students refer to it often during your course. Invite students to flag the less inclusive terms used in your presentation slides, your lectures, your exams and assignments, and your course readings, including their textbook. Remind your students that a society’s language changes over time, and it takes effort for each of us to change the language we use. You would like to enlist their help in ensuring that the most inclusive language is used in your course. If students are looking for non-inclusive language in the course, they should be more cognizant of the language they use in their own writing. If you cover thinking and language in your Intro Psych course, you may want to refer students back to the APA Inclusive Language Guidelines as an example of how our language can influence our thinking. The terms “third world” and “developing countries” were not included in this edition of the APA Inclusive Language Guidelines. If you would like your students to explore the concerns with these terms, invite students to read an essay from Science written by a Kenyan scientist (M’Ikanatha, 2022) or this article from NPR (Silver, 2021). Both agree that the terms “third world” and “developing countries” are problematic. Both struggle with what term would be best. Both land on the same conclusion: name the countries. From a research and teaching perspective, naming the countries is more accurate than boxing them up into a category that may or may not be relevant.   References American Psychological Association. (2021). Inclusive language guidelines. https://www.apa.org/about/apa/equity-diversity-inclusion/language-guidelines.pdf M’Ikanatha, N. (2022, March 17). I’m a scientist from Kenya—Not the ‘third world’ or a ‘developing country.’ Science, 375(6586). https://www.science.org/content/article/i-m-scientist-kenya-not-third-world-or-developing-country Silver, M. (2021, January 8). Memo to people of Earth: “Third world” is an offensive term! NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/01/08/954820328/memo-to-people-of-earth-third-world-is-an-offensive-term     ... 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

When I first started teaching I was surprised at how exhausted I was at the end of the day. I grew up in working class family where I created my schema for work. Work was manual labor, and it was exhausting. Teaching was not manual labor, therefore teaching was not “work” as my young brain defined it. So why was I exhausted? When we cover cognition in Intro Psych, we spend a considerable amount of time on automatic cognition (Daniel Kahneman’s System 1). And rightly so. Our students need to know that we are cognitive misers—a term coined by Susan Fiske and Shelley Taylor in the 1980s. I’d like us to throw a little more love at controlled cognition (Daniel Kahneman’s System 2). Teaching is all about controlled cognition. Hour upon hour instructors are consciously thinking about what we’re saying and about what we’re going to say next. When a student asks a question, we have to consciously search our long-term memory for relevant information that can inform our response. With the question answered, we need to exert conscious effort to identify where we left off and get headed down our path again. If an hour later, we are teaching a different section of the same course, we have the added challenge of separating what happened in the earlier section with what is taking place in this section. “I know I’ve said this already, but was that in the earlier section or earlier in this section?” As an added challenge, teach three sections of the same course. Back to back to back. That is a lot of controlled cognition. Assuring our students that learning also requires a lot of controlled cognition and, therefore, is exhausting would help validate their experience. The human brain comprises about 2% of our body weight, but it uses about 20% of our energy. Unless we’re being grilled with math or interview questions, then the amount of energy our brain uses can increase by a third to almost half—or at least that was the case for one person (Gibbons, 2022). This apparent increase in the brain’s use of energy during controlled cognition may be why I ate my way through college and graduate school. And why I eat my way through grading. I know I’m not alone in this—looking at you, colleagues. Another cognitive-heavy activity is lying, especially if we haven’t planned and rehearsed the lie in advance. Every question we are asked, requires us to consciously decide if we are going to tell the truth or lie. If we choose lie, we have to consciously create a plausible story and monitor the reaction of the person we are telling the lie to (“Are they buying this?”). If they seem skeptical, we need to consciously amend our story. And then we need keep track of everything that we’ve said before. Given how poor we are at detecting lies, researchers wondered if they upped the cognitive load of lie-tellers, would we have an easier time telling truth from lie? They randomly assigned volunteers to tell the truth or tell a lie. These volunteers were then randomly assigned to do so under no additional cognitive load or while also remembering a 7-digit number. Reviewers blind to conditions found the lies told under the additional cognitive load less believable (Vrij et al., 2022). Another activity that requires a significant amount of controlled cognition is driving. When we are first learning to drive, the amount of controlled cognition is very high as we sort out which pedal is the gas and which is the brake, what turns on the windshield wipers, and how to turn on the turn signal—once we remember that we need to turn on the turn signal. It’s okay to turn right on red—unless the sign says we cannot. Once we have successfully learned the mechanics of driving, the general rules of the road, and the specifics of driving in our own areas, the amount of controlled cognition we need to use drops precipitously. When we are driving somewhere new, though, we may turn down the music or turn off the podcast so we can devote more cognition to navigation. And then if you find yourself driving in a country where they drive on the other side of the road, be prepared to find driving exhausting. It’s not bad as long as you are driving in a single direction. Right and left turns, though, require a lot of controlled cognition. When we were planning a trip from the U.S. to Australia, a friend with a lot of driving-on-the-other-side-of-the-road experience advised to make any turns the responsibility of everyone in the car. When turning, everyone in the car was required to say, “Stay left! Stay left!” As the driver, I very much appreciated off-loading some of this controlled cognition to my passenger, given the life and death consequences at stake. The Texas Department of Transportation began posting driving fatality numbers on highway dynamic message signs (DMS) one week a month starting in August 2021. The signs had a simple message, such as “79 TRAFFIC DEATHS THIS YEAR” (Ullman & Chrysler, 2022). Researchers wondered if this messaging would make drivers more cautious resulting in fewer crashes. It did not. In fact, the messages seem to have made things worse, causing a 1.52% increase in crashes within 5 km of the signs.   Our proposed explanation for this surprising finding is that these “in-your-face,” “sobering,” negatively framed messages seize too much attention (i.e., are too salient), interfering with drivers’ ability to respond to changes in traffic conditions. Supporting this explanation, we found that displaying a higher fatality count (i.e., a plausibly more attention-grabbing statistic) causes more crashes than displaying a small one, that fatality messages are more harmful when displayed on more complex road segments, that fatality messages increase multi-vehicle crashes (but not single-vehicle crashes), and that the impact is largest close to DMSs and decreases over longer distances (Hall & Madsen, 2022, p. 370). One last thought on traffic crashes and controlled cognition. In 2021, there were almost 43,000 traffic-related deaths in the U.S., the highest number in 16 years (National Center for Statistics and Analysis, 2022). Because of the pandemic lockdown, many of us did not drive much in 2020. As we began to re-emerge in 2021, did your driving skills feel as rusty as mine did? I found myself using much more controlled cognition than I did before or have since. This certainly is not the only explanation for the increase in traffic fatalities, but it can’t have helped. (Did more people take road trip vacations rather fly? That would put more people on the road and in unfamiliar locations.) To wrap up this blog post, I want to note that writing is also a cognitive-heavy activity. Right after posting, we are going to get into our car and drive to our local farmer’s market—and I’m going to try very hard to not think about traffic fatality statistics on our way there or back. Please stay safe.   References Gibbons, A. (2022). The calorie counter. Science, 375(6582), 710–713. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.ada1185 Hall, J. D., & Madsen, J. (2022). Can Behavioral Interventions Be Too Salient? Evidence From Traffic Safety Messages. Science, 376(6591), 370. https://doi.org/0.1126/science.abm3427 National Center for Statistics and Analysis. (2022). Early estimates of motor vehicle traffic fatalities and fatality rate by sub-categories 2021 (BOT HS 813 398; Crash Stats Brief Statistical Summary, p. 10). National Highway Traffic Safety Admistration. https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/813298 Ullman, Gl., & Chrysler, S. (2022). How safe are safety messages? Science, 376(6591), 347–348. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abq1757 Vrij, A., Deeb, H., Leal, S., & Fisher, R. P. (2022). The effects of a secondary task on true and false opinion statements. International Journal of Psychology and Behavior Analysis, 8(185), 1–8.       ... 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 Confirmation Bias of Wordle Fans https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/misinformation-desk/202203/the-confirmation-bias-wordle-fans?fbclid=IwAR32p20dgZjxuBxp8yCOFR2q90iSGeO90S7_tNleBvQ_P64sZxTQQRoX0UU ... View more

When about to give birth, I would like my healthcare provider to make a recommendation for cesarean or vaginal delivery based on my particular set of circumstances and indicators, and mine alone. I would also like a pony. Both may be equally likely. Using 21 years-worth of data (2000 to 2020), Manasvini Singh* reviewed reports of “86,345 deliveries by 231 physicians” that occurred at two hospitals, one urban and one suburban (Singh, 2021). She discovered that if a particular physician delivered a baby say, via cesarean at 1pm and the birth had complications, then the next delivery overseen by that physician later that day would be more likely to be vaginal. Conversely, a vaginal birth with complications was more likely to be followed by a cesarean birth. Interestingly, the more experienced the physician, the more likely the physician was to make the switch. Similar results were found among physicians regarding colonoscopies. If a physician referred a patient for a colonoscopy, and the patient experienced serious complications, the rates of colonoscopy referrals from that physician decreased during the next quarter of the year (Keating et al., 2017). The same is true for prescribing drugs. Physicians who had a patient who had a bad reaction to a drug were less likely to prescribe that drug again (Choudhry et al., 2006). Now, the million-dollar question: why? The data, unfortunately, are silent on the matter. One possibility identified by Singh, Keating et al., and Choudhry is the availability heuristic. When it comes to making decisions about whether to recommend a vaginal or cesarean birth, whether to recommend a colonoscopy, and whether to recommend a particular drug, the physician may mentally flip through how things have gone in the past. Events that stand out—such as events with bad outcomes—will most easily come to mind. For the purposes of teaching Intro Psych, the availability heuristic is a perfectly fine explanation. For those who would like to split cognitive hairs, there are some other possibilities, such as the recency effect, the frequency illusion, or the affect heuristic. In my mind, those are all subtypes of the availability heuristic. I will concede that if this were my area of research, I might have a better appreciation for the nuance. If you would like to challenge your students while introducing them to even more cognitive biases, ask students to review the biases in one section of the Cognitive Bias Codex. Are there any other biases in that section that could possibly explain the physician decision-making described above? Explain.   * Singh’s website includes this tidbit: “My secret talent: If you send me your study, I’ll summarize the results in a limerick for you.” References Choudhry, N. K., Anderson, G. M., Laupacis, A., Ross-Degnan, D., Normand, S. L., & Soumerai, S. B. (2006). Impact of adverse events on prescribing warfarin in patients with atrial fibrillation: matched pair analysis. BMJ (Clinical research ed.), 332(7534), 141–145. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.38698.709572.55 Keating, N. L., James O'Malley, A., Onnela, J. P., & Landon, B. E. (2017). Assessing the impact of colonoscopy complications on use of colonoscopy among primary care physicians and other connected physicians: an observational study of older Americans. BMJ open, 7(6), e014239. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2016-014239 Singh, M. (2021). Heuristics in the delivery room. Science, 374(6565), 324–329. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abc9818   ... 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

Humor is a vital part of our lives (even more so now). So, what's the secret recipe that makes something funny? https://www.spsp.org/news-center/blog/warren-barsky-mcgraw-humor-theory ... View more

I haven’t given much thought to how check cashing stores and payday lending stores are designed, probably because I have not had occasion to go in one. I’m reading the book The 99% Invisible City, a collection of essays based on the popular podcast 99% Invisible. In one essay—"Reality Checks”—we learn that check cashing stores and payday lending stores have purposely designed their interiors to be similar to, say, a corner grocery or convenience store—think linoleum and displayed product prices—and employees in branded polo shirts. If you have experience with corner grocery/convenience stores, you have a schema for what corner grocery/convenience stores look like and how they work. When you walk into a check cashing store or payday lending store for the first time, your corner grocery/convenience store schema helps you feel less out of place. The essay goes on to tell us that banks, in contrast, have interiors that are designed very differently—think plush carpeting and ferns and tellers in suits. If you have experience with banks—perhaps as a child you tagged along with a parent or guardian who had business to conduct there—you have a schema for banks. Now, as an adult, you can walk into a bank with your bank schema and feel at ease. You know what a bank looks like and how it works. For someone who has never had experience with banks, walking into a bank with no bank schema can be a very scary experience. It can feel like you don’t belong. But with corner grocery/convenience store experience—thus a corner grocery/convenience store schema—check cashing stores and payday lending stores feel much more comfortable. Unfortunately, with high fees, there is a monetary charge for that feeling of comfort. Some banks are taking a page out of the check cashing/payday lending store interior design playbook, the essay reports, and are redesigning their interiors to, well, look less like the traditional bank. Some have even added coffee shops. In preparation for this class discussion on schemas, ask your students to listen to the 5-minute, March 4, 2011 episode of 99% Invisible—Check Cashing Stores—on which this essay was based. (The first 90 seconds of the episode is advertising.) Next, ask your students to visit a check cashing store or a payday lending store and to visit a bank (but only post-pandemic). As a cover story, students could ask for pamphlets that provide information on lending services. During their visits, students should note how each space is designed. Is there carpeting, tile, or linoleum? Are there plants? Are there other decorative elements? What are the employees wearing? What kind of information is on the signs? Next, ask your students to visit a corner grocery/convenience store.  Again, during their visits, students should note how the space is designed. Is there carpeting, tile, or linoleum? Are there plants? Are there other decorative elements? What are the employees wearing? What kind of information is on the signs? During their group discussion, ask students to compare what they saw in the check cashing store or a payday lending store with what they saw in the bank with what they saw in the corner grocery/convenience store. Would having a schema for a corner grocery/convenience be of help when first visiting a check cashing/payday lending store? Would having a schema for corner grocery/convenience help when first visiting a bank? You may also want to take this opportunity to introduce paradox of choice. In the 99% Invisible episode, the host, Roman Mars, and his guest, Douglas McGray, note that check cashing/payday lending stores provide a limited number of options. Banks, on the other hand, lead us to feel “paralyzed by the vast number of options available to” us. “And I [Roman Mars] for one always seem to leave with the feeling that I picked the wrong one.”   ... 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

"Dissonance is most painful when evidence strikes at the heart of how we see ourselves—when it threatens our belief that we are kind, ethical, competent, or smart." Check out the great piece on cognitive dissonance from The Atlantic, by Worth author of the The Social Animal,  Elliot Aronson, plus Carol Tavris.  #psychstudentrss ... View more