A couple months ago I wrote a suggestion on how to incorporate coverage of the opioid epidemic into Intro Psych (Frantz, 2017). There I put it in the context of the availability heuristic. Here I will suggest covering the opioid epidemic in the context of neurons and neurotransmitters. The opiates work in a complex way to produce feelings of euphoria. Under non-opiate conditions, neurons release the neurotransmitter GABA that, in turn, inhibits the release of dopamine. When endorphins are released during sympathetic nervous system arousal or you take an opiate – legally or illegally, the body doesn’t care – the endorphins or opiates (endorphin agonists – drugs that look and act like endorphins) block GABA from being released. Without GABA’s inhibition, dopamine is free to flood synapses and attach to dopamine-receiving neurons resulting in warm, fuzzy feelings (Genetic Science Learning Center, 2013; Vaughan, et.al., 1997). That explains why people choose to use opiates. But how do people overdose on opiates? Part of the cause is that fentanyl, an opioid "that is similar to morphine but is 50 to 100 times more potent" (NIDA, 2016). "In 2014, 35 percent of [Rhode Island's] fatal overdoses occurred because of fentanyl, but it was involved in 56 percent of drug deaths by 2016" (Brown University, 2017). There is no question that fentanyl has entered the illegal drug supply and is contributing to the number of overdoses. Here's another factor that contributes to opiate overdoses. Opiates, in addition to producing euphoria, also act on the brainstem to reduce breathing. Take too much and you stop breathing. Like many drugs, the more you use, the greater your tolerance, meaning you need more opiates to get the euphoria. But here's a problem. Unfortunately, your brain’s ability to tolerate more opiates does not extend at the same rate to breathing. In other words, while you need more for the high, your brainstem isn’t keeping up. With continued opiate use, the window is closing. The amount of opiate it takes to feel the high is getting closer and closer to the amount that stops breathing (Boyer, 2012). Enter naloxone, brand name Narcan. Naloxone is an opiod antagonist. It blocks the receptor sites, but doesn’t activate the neurons. With the opioid receptors blocked, the opiates cannot have their effects – and breathing returns to normal (NHPR Staff, 2016). Because naloxone binds more strongly to the receptor sites than the opiates do, naloxone actually bumps them out and takes their place. That’s why naloxone acts so quickly, showing effects within five minutes (College of Pharmacists of British Columbia, 2016). Prevention Point Philadelphia provides naloxone and the training of its use to the librarians at McPherson Square Library, a library located in a high drug use area of the city. “While other libraries practice fire drills, McPherson began overdose drills.” It’s needed. Philadelphia is looking at a 30% increase in overdose deaths in 2017 as compared to 2016. That’s 1,200 expected ODs. When people started overdosing on heroin in the library and in the nearby park, the librarians decided it was time to get training on using the naloxone kits – and they’ve used them to save lives (Newall, 2017; Wootson, 2017). The opioid epidemic is not bypassing colleges and universities. “Last fall, three Washington State University students overdosed and died in Pullman, Wash.; a 25-year-old died from an overdose on the potent opioid fentanyl and heroin in a bathroom at Columbus State Community College in Ohio; and a student died from a suspected overdose at State University of New York at Geneseo. Fatalities in recent years have also hit campuses in New Mexico, Louisiana and beyond.” Institutions of higher learning are starting to step up to the plate by “distributing the anti-overdose drug naloxone to campus police and even students. Drug company Adapt Pharma Ltd. announced last month that it would offer 40,000 free doses of its branded version, called Narcan, to colleges nationwide. So far roughly 60 schools have reached out, according to company officials... The University of Texas at Austin now stocks naloxone at the front desk of its residence halls” (Korn & Kamp, 2017). Ask students to investigate who at your institution, if anyone, has been trained to administer naloxone. Do students feel like the number of people trained is sufficient? If not, what can students do to make a difference?   References Boyer, E. W. (2012). Management of opioid analgesic overdose. New England Journal of Medicine, 367(14), 1370-1373. doi:10.1056/nejmc1209707 Brown University. (2017, June 7). Feared by drug users but hard to avoid, fentanyl takes a mounting toll. ScienceDaily. Retrieved June 28, 2017 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170607123841.htm  College of Pharmacists of British Columbia. (2016, April 4). Naloxone: Frequently asked questions. Retrieved from http://library.bcpharmacists.org/6_Resources/6-5_Pharmacy_Resources/5183-Naloxone_FAQ.pdf Frantz, S. (2017, April 16). Do you cover drug abuse in Intro Psych? If not, it might be time to. Retrieved from https://community.macmillan.com/community/the-psychology-community/blog/2017/04/16/do-you-cover-drug-abuse-in-intro-psych-if-not-it-might-be-time-to Genetic Science Learning Center. (2013, August 30) Mouse Party. Retrieved June 22, 2017, from http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/addiction/mouse/ Korn, M., & Kamp, J. (2017, May 07). Fatal student opioid overdoses prompt colleges to action. Retrieved from https://www.wsj.com/articles/colleges-take-action-on-opioid-epidemic-1494158403 NHPR Staff. (2016, June 6). Primer: How does Narcan work? Retrieved from http://nhpr.org/post/primer-how-does-narcan-work Newall, M. (2017, May 21). For these Philly librarians, drug tourists and overdose drills are part of the job. Retrieved from http://www.philly.com/philly/columnists/mike_newall/opioid-crisis-Needle-Park-McPherson-narcan.html National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA). (2016, June 06). Fentanyl. Retrieved June 28, 2017, from https://www.drugabuse.gov/drugs-abuse/fentanyl  Vaughan, C. W., Ingram, S. L., Connor, M. A., & Christie, M. J. (1997). How opioids inhibit GABA-mediated neurotransmission [Abstract]. Nature, 390, 611-614. Retrieved from http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v390/n6660/abs/390611a0.html Wootson, C. R., Jr. (2017, June 02). ‘Drug tourists’ keep overdosing at this library. Here’s how employees are saving their lives. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2017/06/02/drug-tourists-keep-overdosing-at-this-library-heres-how-employees-are-saving-their-lives/ ... View more

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

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

“American and United are rolling out a stripped-down new [fare] class called Basic Economy” (Schwartz, 2017). And it’s providing foot-in-the-door examples for psychology instructors who are ready to talk about something other than safe-driving signs (Freedman & Fraser, 1966).   With American Airlines’ Basic Economy ticket class, I’m not allowed to use the overhead bins, I can’t choose a seat until I check-in (guaranteeing I’ll be in middle-seat-landia and probably not sitting with my travel companions), I have no possibility of a free upgrade, I can’t change my flight, and I board in the last group (big deal; I can’t put a bag in the overhead bin anyway). “’That’s the experience on a ultra-low-cost carrier,’ said Rajeev Lalwani, an airline industry analyst with Morgan Stanley. As the legacy airlines introduce similar no-frills offerings to hold off upstarts like Spirit, he said, ‘part of the idea is to get folks to upgrade to premium economy and collect fees’” (Schwartz, 2017). That’s the foot-in-the-door: get customers to commit to the lower fare first, and then dangle the next highest fare as a better alternative.   I went to the American Airlines website to see how this played out in real time. I chose a Dallas to Tampa roundtrip scheduled for three weeks from now. American gave me my ticket class options. Clicking on the “Basic Economy” link generated a helpful pop-up. I love the red Xs on the blah-grey background. I don’t think American really wants me to choose this fare.   Once I select the $317 “basic economy” fare – and getting pretty close to being mentally committed to flying American for this trip – I get another helpful pop-up. I can keep my red-fonted “Lowest fare.” Or For just an extra $20, I can have the green-fonted “Good value with benefits” fare and all of these green-checkmarked perks! I need to either “accept restrictions” for that lowest fare (and be treated like a teenager on “restriction”?) or “move to main cabin” (where I can be treated like an adult?). After I “Accept restrictions,” it’s still not too late for me to move to the main cabin! I can keep my red Xs or I can upgrade to bullet points. It’s just another $20… I might not have been willing to pay $337 to fly roundtrip Dallas to Tampa, but once I’ve said okay to that $317 foot in the door, it’s not that hard to say okay to an extra $20. The “ultra-low-cost” carriers have structured their fees to take advantage of foot-in-the-door, too. Where do you think American and United got the idea? That same trip from Dallas to Tampa would cost $177.18 on Spirit Airlines. That means no overhead bin use, no seat assignment until I get to the airport, and Spirit puts me in whatever seat they’d like, and I can’t print a boarding pass at the airport without paying a fee – pretty much the same deal I got with red-X Basic Economy fare on American, minus the boarding pass print fee. After my next click toward purchasing a ticket, Spirit, in a pop-up, says it is willing to give me all of those perks for $152. If I accept it, my total cost for this trip is now $329.18. For those who have not been paying attention, that’s just $7.22 less than American’s “good value with benefits” fare. If I don’t accept it, I can still go “à la carte” on the fees. I have already decided to buy the ticket. I’m ready to purchase it. All I have to do is click the huge red “ADD TO CART” button to get all of those things that make air travel a little more humane. Or I can click the small print link and choose my options later. Once I’ve mentally committed to purchasing a ticket and the airline has their foot in my door, the door is cracked to let in the for-a-fee add-ons. And as a psychologist there isn’t much I can do but say, “I see what you did there.”    References Freedman, J. L., & Fraser, S. C. (1966). Compliance without pressure: The foot-in-the-door technique. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 4(2), 195-202. doi:10.1037/h0023552 Schwartz, N. D. (2017, May 28). Route to air travel discomfort starts on Wall Street. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/28/business/corporate-profit-margins-airlines.html ... View more

After covering the Big Five personality traits, ask students to get into small groups and pose these questions. Thinking about your ideal instructor, rank order the Big Five traits according to the instructor’s traits that are most important to you. For each of those traits, what behavior would you expect to see from that instructor? Once discussion dies down, start with one of the Big Five traits, say extraversion, and ask volunteers to report where they scored their ideal instructor on that trait, why they chose that score, and what behavior did they expect to see from an instructor with that trait score. After you have gone through all of the traits, share with students a few peer-reviewed studies. A study reported in Inside Higher Ed (Elmes, 2017) using a British sample found that students rank ordered the traits they like to see in an instructor this way: conscientiousness, agreeableness, extroversion, openness, and neuroticism. Chamorro-Premuzic, et.al. (2008) found students had a preference for instructors who were low in neuroticism and high in conscientiousness. Interestingly, students preferred instructors who matched themselves on openness and conscientiousness. High openness-scoring students preferred high openness-scoring instructors, for example. A 2005 study, also by Adrian Furnham and Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic found that “students tended to prefer conscientious, open, and stable lecturers, though correlations revealed that these preferences were largely a function of students' own [emphasis in original] personality traits.” Again, this was true for openness, but this time instead of conscientiousness, it was agreeableness. Students preferred an instructor who scored similarly to them on agreeableness. Do student perceptions of instructor personality affect student evaluations of teaching? Yep. When students perceived their instructor as high on conscientiousness, agreeableness, openness, and extraversion, students rated the course and the instructor’s ability to teach as high. When students perceived their instructor as high on neuroticism, students rated the course and the instructor’s ability to teach as low. What about student personality traits? Students high in agreeableness were more likely to rate their instructor’s ability to teach as high (Patrick, 2011). No surprise; they’re agreeable! While students may have preferences for instructor personality, is there any evidence that instructor personality affects student performance in the course? I haven’t found any, but if someone knows of some, please let me know. To conclude your class discussion, ask students which of the Big Five traits is most strongly correlated with both high school and college GPA. The answer? Conscientiousness (Noftle and Robins, 2007).   References Chamorro-Premuzic, T., Furnham, A., Christopher, A. N., Garwood, J., & Martin, G. N. (2008). Birds of a feather: Students’ preferences for lecturers’ personalities as predicted by their own personality and learning approaches. Personality and Individual Differences, 44(4), 965-976. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2007.10.032   Elmes, J. (2017, May 18). Who wants a neurotic professor? Retrieved from https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/05/18/british-study-examines-traits-students-want-and-dont-want-professors Furnham, A., & Chamorro-Premuzic, T. (2005). Individual differences in students' preferences for lecturers' personalities. Journal of Individual Differences, 26(4), 176-184. doi:10.1027/1614-0001.26.4.176 Noftle, E. E., & Robins, R. W. (n.d.). Personality predictors of academic outcomes: Big Five correlates of GPA and SAT scores. PsycEXTRA Dataset. doi:10.1037/e514412014-495 Patrick, C. L. (2011). Student evaluations of teaching: Effects of the Big Five personality traits, grades and the validity hypothesis. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 36(2), 239-249. doi:10.1080/02602930903308258 ... View more

National Geographic gives you 8 different scenarios in which you have (hypothetically) lied. Choose the most likely reason you lied. As a research methods booster have students discuss the validity of this measure – a measure that has not been used in formal research to the best of my knowledge. The basis for this quiz was recent research on lying. Communication Studies professor Timothy Levine and colleagues (2016) asked participants from five countries to recall a recent occasion when the participants had lied and then write about what took place. Trained coders read the accounts and categorized the motivation for lying. Levine, et.al. found that the most common reason was lying to gain something (45%) – to reap financial benefits (16%), to reap non-financial benefits (15%), to make a good impression (8%), to be humorous (5%). Another 36% lied for self-protection; 22% did so because of a personal transgression and another 14% did so to dodge people they didn’t want to interact with. The least common type of lying (11%) was designed to affect others in some way – to help them (5%), to hurt them (4%), to be polite (2%). Some lying appeared to be “without apparent motive or purpose, lies out of obvious delusion, or lying with blatant disregard for reality and detection consequences” (2%). The remaining 7% of participants didn’t give enough information to code the motive (5%) or the motive didn’t fit one of these categories (2%).   After covering operant conditioning, have students work in pairs or small group to identify if the teller of each of these kind of lies has been positively reinforced, negatively reinforced, positively punished, or negatively punished. Ask students to assume that the person has told this kind of lie before; perhaps this person has told this kind of lie many times before. Lied to cover up a personal transgression, e.g. lied to keep an affair from becoming public Lied to avoid someone, e.g., lied to get off the phone with someone you don’t want to talk to Lied for financial gain, e.g., lied on a tax return to get a bigger tax refund Lied for non-monetary benefits, e.g., lied to get people to vote for you Lied to make a good impression, e.g., lied on an online dating profile so people will view you as very attractive Lied to be polite, e.g., lied about liking someone’s shirt to avoid making the person feel bad After students have completed their discussion and if you use an audience response system, ask students to click in to vote for the type of operant conditioning associated with each kind of lie. Walk students through thinking about each type of lie to identify its type of reinforcement. This short activity will help students see that our behavior is often reinforced in unintended ways. References Levine, T. R., Ali, M. V., Dean, M., Abdulla, R. A., & Garcia-Ruano, K. (2016). Toward a Pan-cultural Typology of Deception Motives. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, 45(1), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1080/17475759.2015.1137079 ... View more

One of my favorite sources for examples of psychological concepts are comic strips. Some of them get worked into lectures, others show up on exams, and sometimes I’ll offer them for a couple points extra credit, especially for new comics that harken back to content covered earlier in the course. Here are some May 14, 2017 comic strips that may be worth adding to your stable of examples. The Betty comic strip gives us a wonderful example of change blindness. Junior, Betty’s son, is dinking around on his phone while explaining his generation’s amazing ability to multitask. During his explanation, Betty calls in her husband to take her place. When Junior’s attention is returned to his parent, he sees his dad and is completely unaware that he had replaced his mom. In Frank and Ernest Frank has a young person working out on his farm. The young person, upon hearing “crop,” thinks cropping photos instead of crops that are planted. For someone who spends a lot of time in the digital world instead of a farming world, that person would be primed to interpret “crop” as photo manipulation. Frazz gives us commentary on the positive reinforcement provided by smartphones. Pick up your smartphone to get a jolt of pleasure in some form – text messages, phone calls, games, social media updates. Caulfield, the boy in the strip, says that his dad “calls them dopamine pumps.” (If you want to dive deeper into smartphone use, I wrote a post on stress and smartphones a few months ago.) Bonus comic strip. My favorite classical conditioning comic strip comes from Lio (November 14, 2009). A monster replaces Pavlov’s dogs, “Monsta Treats” replace meat powder, and the sound of a ripping bag replaces the tone. Do you have any favorite comic strips that illustrate psychological concepts?   ... View more

After covering sensation and perception, take students back to 2015. In case you missed it, this was the image that blew up social media in February of that year. Viewers were divided into two camps. Some saw the dress as blue/black while others saw it as gold/white. These discussions were not about whether a color was more blue or more purple. People were talking about very different perceptions. Friends and family got into arguments because each camp thought they were being gaslighted by the other. [Side note. The term gaslight, in this context, comes to us from a 1938 play which became a 1944 movie.] What color is the real dress? Blue/black. But before the blue/black perceivers cheer for being right, the image of The Dress that falls on our retinas is more complicated than that. It turns out that both the blue/black and gold/white perceivers are right, that is, in terms of which light waves our eyes pick up. Oh. And if you perceive it as blue/brown, you’re not alone, but there aren’t that many of you. But first, why such different perceptions? Our sensation and perception colleagues identified an assumption that our brains had to make. Some of us assumed that The Dress was lit by artificial, yellow light, the kind of light we get indoors. Others of us assumed that The Dress was lit by natural, blue light, the kind of light we get outdoors. When we assume yellow light, our brains subtract yellow from the light wave data our eyes send to our brains. With the yellow removed, The Dress is perceived as blue/black. When we assume blue light, our brains subtract blue from the light wave data. With blue removed, The Dress is perceived as gold/white. Where does blue/brown come from? Those perceivers are splitting the difference. They’re subtracting a little yellow and a little blue. ASAP Science did a nice 2-minute video on how this – color constancy – works. Video Link : 2015 A closer look at The Dress You can show students exactly what their eyes are seeing, before the brain subtracts a color. On your classroom computer, right-click on the photo of this dress, and select “Copy image address.” Visit the LunaPic website. In the “Open from URL” box, paste the image address. On the far left side of the page you will see a toolbar. Click anywhere over there to enter editing mode. From that toolbar, choose the eyedropper; it’s the ninth icon from the top. Click anywhere on The Dress to see the color of that spot displayed at the top of the page. Click the eyedropper again and choose another spot. When you click on a blue/white band, the color is actually a slate gray. If our brains subtract yellow, we perceive the color as bluer than it is. If our brains subtract blue, we perceive the color as whiter than it is. Use the eyedropper to sample from the black/gold bands. They are a goldish brown. If our brains subtract yellow, we perceive the color as black. If our brains subtract blue, we perceive the color as yellow-gold. Who is more likely to perceive it one way and not another way and why? But none of that answers the question of why some people are more likely to assume yellow light while others are more likely to assume natural light. One hypothesis is that those who spend more of their day inside under artificial lights are more likely to subtract yellow and see a blue/black dress. Those who spend more of their day outside or inside spaces with a lot of natural light – think skylights and large windows – are more likely to subtract blue and see a gold/white dress. Survey research has found that “[o]lder people and women were more likely to report seeing ‘The Dress’ as white and gold, while younger people were more likely to say that it was black and blue” (Cell Press, 2015). Ask your students to work in pairs or small groups to generate some hypotheses as to why this is the case. Ask volunteers to report their hypotheses. For example, is it a cohort effect for age? Did older people spend more of their childhoods outdoors than today’s youth and therefore more likely to assume blue light? Teenagers are also more likely to be “owls.” Psychological scientist Pascal Wallisch reasoned that “owls” – people who get up late and go to bed late – would experience more yellow light and, thus, would be more likely to perceive The Dress as blue/black. Conversely, he expected “larks” – people who get up early and go to bed early – would experience more blue light and, thus, would be more likely to perceive The Dress as gold/white. He found a statistically significant difference between the owls and larks in their perceptions of The Dress, but the differences weren’t huge. In other words, it appears that this is one factor, but not the only factor, that influences our assumptions about the lighting (Wallisch, 2017). Recap Remind students that color does not exist outside of our brains. Outside, it’s light waves. Our eyes convert those light waves into neural signals. Our brain takes those neural signals and uses them in combination with other factors, like the surrounding colors and assumptions about the environment, to create the color that we see.   ... View more

On the Society for the Teaching of Psychology Facebook page, Cait Alice was asking for advice on how to handle a student’s misconception of how gender works. Allison Matthews recommended the gender unicorn created by the Trans Student Educational Resources group*.  If you’d like to turn this into a class activity, identify how many groups of 3 you will have in your class. Let’s say 16. Print out 16 copies, and then mark different spots on each continuum for each group.   Show students one as an example of what you are asking them to do. Using the graphic above, explain to students that the person identifies primarily as a woman who dresses and acts more masculine than feminine, whose assigned sex was female, and who is not physically attracted to anyone but is emotionally attracted to men and women with a slight preference for the former. Distribute the marked up gender unicorn handouts to your student groups, asking each group to describe their person. Walk around to each of the groups answering any questions they have. After discussion dies down, ask groups to pair up to share their descriptions. If time allows, invite a few volunteers to display their gender unicorn on the classroom’s document camera and describe their person. As a wrap-up to the activity, encourage students to think about where they fall on each of the gender unicorn dimensions – although your students probably already did this as soon as you showed them the infographic. Give each student an unmarked copy of the infographic to share with friends and family. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- * This is an edited post. The original post featured the Genderbread Person ostensibly created by Sam Killermann. A few people, including Allison Matthews, reported a concern with accusations of plagiarism by Killermann. A friend and colleague shared with me this analysis of the plagiarism accusation. Because of the potential issues with plagiarism, I've decided to use an image created by "the only national organization entirely led by trans youth." ... View more

Last month (January 2017), the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) issued a memo to law enforcement and prosecutors. The subject of the memo was “Eyewitness Identification: Procedures for Conducting Photo Arrays.” The DoJ’s last document that dealt with photo arrays was released in 1999. The authors of this memo acknowledge that a lot of research on eyewitness identification has happened since then, and that it was time to incorporate that research into new guidelines. The information provided in this document would make a nice addition to your coverage of memory in Intro Psych. It’s a wonderful example of how psychological research can be applied in real-world settings, and in this case, where people’s lives are at stake. The DoJ recommends that the police officer who is showing the eyewitness photographs of potential perpetrators be blind to the suspect. In other words, the police officer who is showing the photographs has no idea who his/her fellow police officers suspect is the perpetrator. This is for the same reasons researchers are blind to conditions – to avoid unintentionally cuing the eyewitness/research participant. If it’s a small police department, they might not have someone available to show the photographs who does not know who the suspect is. In that case, the DoJ recommends that the officer be “blinded,” where the officer doesn’t know which photograph the eyewitness is looking at any given time. Even better, the DoJ suggests having the photographs presented on a computer screen so no one else needs to be present. Another DoJ recommendation is that eyewitnesses, after identifying a photograph as that of the perpetrator, make a rating of confidence in their own words. “[N]ew research finds that a witness’s confidence at the time of an initial identification is a reliable indicator of accuracy.” Ask students, given what they now know about memory construction, what they would think if they were on a jury and the witness’s confidence at initial identification was very low but when on the witness stand during the trial was very high. Whatever procedures a law enforcement department uses, the DoJ recommends video recording the process. That’s the best proof that the eyewitness’ memory was not inadvertently (or intentionally) contaminated. If time allows, after discussing memory but before discussing the guidelines yourself, invite students to create them. With students working in small groups, ask students to create recommendations to law enforcement regarding the showing of suspect photographs to eyewitnesses. What recommendations do students have for how the photos should be displayed and what the officer showing the photographs should do or not do? After discussion dies down, ask volunteers to share the recommendations from their groups with rationales. And then highlight for students some of the DoJ recommendations. ... View more

Have you expanded the amount of positive psychology you cover in Intro Psych? Here’s an in-class activity to get students to consider their happiness and the happiness of others around the world. Ask students, “What is the happiness country in the world?” Before they answer, ask students to consider how such a thing could be measured. Give students a minute or two to jot down some ideas, then ask students to turn to one or two nearby students to share ideas. After a couple minutes of sharing ask for a few volunteers to share their ideas. Researchers (Helliwell, Layard, & Sachs, 2016) looked at Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita (World Bank data), “healthy life expectancy” (World Health Organization data), social support, freedom of choice, generosity, perceptions of corruption, and self-report on yesterday’s positive and negative affect (all from Gallup World Poll data). From these data, researchers calculated scores for 157 countries. Ask students to guess which country is the happiest. The answer: Denmark. Switzerland, Iceland, Norway, and Finland round out the top 5. Canada is number 6. The United States? Number 13. Why is Denmark so happy? The Danes and Dana Dunn (2017) will tell you it is (at least partially) because of the concept of hygge (HOO-gah) -- cozy. “Danes burn 13 pounds of [unscented] candle wax a person a year, doing so even in classrooms and office buildings” (Green, 2016). “How to get hygge? Go home and stay there, preferably in your hyggekrog – a.k.a. ‘cozy nook’ – wrapped in a blanket, drinking a cup of coffee and watching a Danish police procedural about a serial killer with your friends” (Green, 2016). Ask your students to take a couple minutes to think about whether they have hygge in their own lives. If so, what does it look like? If not, what might it look like? Then give students a couple minutes to share their hygge experiences with one or two other students. Following this short discussion, ask for volunteers to share with the class.   References Dunn, D. (2017, January). Quotidian positive psychology: Helping students seek strengths and apply what they learn. Paper presented at the National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology, St. Petersburg Beach, FL. Green, P. (2016, December 24). Move over, Marie Kondo: Make room for the hygge hordes. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/24/fashion/wintering-the-danish-way-learning-about-hygge.html Helliwell, J., Layard, R., & Sachs, J. (2016). World Happiness Report 2016, Update (Vol. I). New York: Sustainable Development Solutions Network. ... View more

You have likely heard of the classroom demonstration where the students condition the instructor or a student volunteer to do some behavior by clapping (positive reinforcement) whenever the person gets closer to the behavior. Jon Skalski, Joel Lynch, and Amy Martin (2017) from Rockford University take this demo up a notch by modifying it to help students understand not only shaping, but also positive/negative reinforcement/punishment.   Skalski (personal communication, January 19, 2017) explains: I have a student volunteer step outside the classroom. The class selects a behavior that they would like to shape in his/her absence (like standing the corner and/or scratching the head).  The volunteer returns to the room. I place a backpack loaded with textbooks on his/her shoulders. Then, I remove a couple books when the student starts doing something that approximates what the class has selected for the volunteer to do (as a form of negative reinforcement).  I add books (as a form of positive punishment) when the student is not doing what I am trying to shape. I add skittles to a cup (positive reinforcement) and also take skittles away from the cup (negative punishment) to shape approximations of the desired outcome. Thus, the demonstration involves rewarding (both positively and negatively) and punishing (both positively and negatively) at the same time, at least in shaping a single behavior, and it is quite vivid and memorable. I then help students to process and think about the demonstration in order to make distinctions about positive and negative forms of reinforcement and punishment.   During the demonstration, Skalski changes which technique he is using from moment to moment. In doing so, students can see the impact each change has on the volunteer’s behavior. After successfully training the volunteer to do the selected behavior. Skalski recaps what the students just saw. Shout out to Jon Skalski for this clever demonstration! REFERENCE Skalski, J., Lynch, J, & Martin, A. (2017, January). Teaching negative reinforcement; it’s not punishment. Poster session presented at the National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology, St. Petersburg Beach, FL. ... View more

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

It can be an eye-opener for a parent when their child starts to mimic their behavior in the form of pretend play. Even more so when what is being portrayed is pre-divorce arguments and the stand-ins are Mary, Joseph, and Jesus. After covering observational learning (learning) or pretend play (development), share with students this example courtesy of Carol Weis and the New York Times (2016). Weis and her soon-to-be ex-husband had had a number of arguments leading up to their decision to divorce. It was near Christmas, and the house decorations included a nativity set. The parents explained to their then-5-year-old daughter that they were separating. Following her father’s moving out, the child began to play with the nativity set. “Through her thoughtful manipulation, Mary and Joseph carried on arguments with each other, similar to the ones she’d witnessed between her dad and [her mom].” In the category of observational learning, I had a student years ago who said one day when she was picking up her 3-year-old son from preschool, the staff asked to speak with her for a minute. That day at recess, her son was near the top of the slide waiting for another child to slide down. He got impatient and yelled, “Too slow b****! Get the **** out of my way!” My student, somewhat sheepishly, said to the class, “I have a problem with road rage.” If you discuss the nativity example during observational learning, give students an opportunity to share their favorite examples of observational learning. They could be their own experiences or what they witnessed in younger siblings or their own children. If you discuss the nativity example during development, give students an opportunity to share their favorite examples of pretend play. Again, they could be their own experiences or what they witnessed in younger siblings or their own children.   In either case, consider using think-pair-share. Give students a minute or two to consider their examples, then a couple minutes to share with a neighbor, then ask for a few volunteers to share their examples.   REFERENCE Weis, C. (2016, December 23). Working through divorce with Mary and Joseph. Retrieved December 27, 2016, from http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/23/well/family/working-through-divorce-with-mary-and-joseph.html ... View more

After introducing correlations, I share a number of examples with students. Here are couple new ones that going into my pool. Young adults (age 19-32) who spend their time on a lot (7 to 11) of different social media platforms are more likely (than those who spend their time on 0 to 2 different social media platforms) to report symptoms of depression. That same relationship exists between the number of different social media platforms and anxiety (Primack, et.al., 2017). Ask students if these represent a positive, negative, or zero correlation (clicker question, show of hands, shout out). (Both correlations are positive.) If students say negative, they may be caught in the trap of thinking that this is a “bad thing,” so it’s negative. Remind students that that is not what positive and negative mean in this context. It can help students in identifying correlations to first note what the two variables are (“number of social media platforms used” and “depression”; “number of social media platforms used” and “anxiety”) and then sort out whether those variables are moving in the same direction (positive) or opposite directions (negative). Next, to help students see that correlations don’t mean causation, ask students to consider the causes, why anxiety and depression may be related to the number of social media platforms used. In think-pair-share, give students a couple minutes to jot down their thoughts, then give students a couple minutes to share their ideas with one or two classroom neighbors, then ask for volunteers to share their thoughts. Students may surmise that jumping from one social media platform to another may cause depression or anxiety. The authors note three possibilities here: “participation in many different social media platforms may lead to multitasking between platforms, which is known to be related to poor cognitive and mental health outcomes;” since each platform has its own rules and customs “as the number of platforms used increases, individuals may experience difficulty navigating these multiple different worlds successfully, leading to potentially negative mood and emotions;” and the more social media platforms you are on you run an “increased risk of damaging gaffes.” Students may also surmise that those who are depressed or anxious may choose to jump from one social media platform to another. The authors suggest “[t]his may be because these individuals tend to search multiple avenues for a setting that feels most comfortable and in which they feel most accepted.”  A third possibility is that something else, a third variable, could be affecting both social media use and depression/anxiety, perhaps loneliness. Those who are more isolated may be more likely to seek out community in social media and being more isolated may contribute to depression/anxiety. Remind students that the value in correlations comes from revealing a relationship between two variables. Students identified a number of possible reasons as to why there is a relationship between those variables. The next step is to do more research on which of those possibilities are right -- and it may be one, some, or all of them.  Side note. Even though their research is clearly correlational, the article's authors are comfortable suggesting that it’s the social media use that’s causing or at least contributing to depression/anxiety. They write “it may not be too soon to suggest that individuals with depressive and/or anxiety symptoms, and who use a high number of different social media platforms may wish to decrease the number of platforms used.” Ask students if this is a fair statement for the authors to make.    Primack, B. A., Shensa, A., Escobar-Viera, C. G., Barrett, E. L., Sidani, J. E., Colditz, J. B., & James, A. E. (2017). Use of multiple social media platforms and symptoms of depression and anxiety: A nationally-representative study among U.S. young adults. Computers in Human Behavior, 69, 1-9. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2016.11.013 ... View more