We're deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Albert Bandura, one of the most honored and influential psychologists and researchers of his time, and a beloved Macmillan author. Our thoughts are with his family, friends, and colleagues.   Bandura was a titan of 20th century psychology, best known for developing social cognitive theory (also known as social learning theory); the concept of self-efficacy – the idea that a person’s belief in their ability to succeed can shape how they think, act and feel; and his Bobo Doll experiments.  Here is a full obituary from The New York Times.     Macmillan Learning is proud to be the publisher of two of Bandura's books, Self-Efficiency (1997) and Moral Disengagement (2016). Here is a link to one of his last interviews, for the Macmillan-sponsored podcast, PsychSessions. You can also access this re-released PsychSessions episode #124 at your favorite podcast provider. ... View more

Particularly important today after Simone Biles withdraws from team competition in Tokyo Olympics. Going for Gold: How Sport Psychologists are Helping Olympians https://www.apa.org/topics/mental-health/going-for-gold ... View more

Excellent resource for students! Gain insight into the peer review process by examining published peer reviews: https://plos.org/published-peer-review-examples/ ... View more

Ever found yourself stuck while writing demographic questions? If so, see this guide: Bad Gender Measures and How To Avoid Them https://devonprice.medium.com/bad-gender-measures-how-to-avoid-them-23b8f3a503a6 ... View more

Do your students know what makes them happy? They probably think they do, and much what they think is probably wrong. Professor Gilbert will discuss the science of happiness, and tell you about some findings that will surprise your students – and maybe you as well!      WATCH RECORDING ... View more

Five conditions that cause people to abandon happiness: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/when-kids-call-the-shots/202106/why-you-don-t-believe-in-happiness-anymore ... View more

Summer 2021: June 1 to August 31 Sports psychology Recommended by a member of the Society for the Teaching of Psychology History of psychology Written by a person with a disability Recommended by a colleague at your institution Written by a BIPOC psychologist Neuroscience   On your shelf Cognition Written by a person diagnosed with a psychological disorder Written by a person who identifies as transgendered Stress & coping FREE Fiction Prejudice & discrimination Emotion Written by an APA 2021 keynote speaker I/O psychology Written by a psychologist who works outside the U.S. Social justice/activism Comparative psychology Cultural psychology   Science that is not psychology Written by a psychologist under the age of 40 Sensation & perception   Created by Sue Frantz                                               Read books that match the categories. Only one book per category. Write in the author’s name and title of the book in the box. A bingo is 5 across, 5 down, or 5 diagonally. How many bingos can you get? If you read 24 books—one that matches each category--that’s a blackout. Congratulations! Between August 31 and September 6, share your completed bingo cards to the Society for the Teaching of Psychology Facebook group or Twitter using hashtag #psychbookbingo. Happy reading! [Download as a Word file]    [Download as a PDF] ... View more

If you are looking to freshen up your examples of experiments, here’s a pretty readable one from an open access journal. Pendry, P., Carr, A. M., Vandagriff, J. L., & Gee, N. R. (2021). Incorporating human–animal interaction into academic stress management programs: Effects on typical and at-risk college students’ executive function. AERA Open. https://doi.org/10.1177/23328584211011612 Here is a summary. Petting therapy dogs can help college students cope with stress. (2021). The Optimist Daily. Retrieved May 28, 2021, from https://www.optimistdaily.com/2021/05/petting-therapy-dogs-can-help-college-students-cope-with-stress While you can use this as your own lecture example, if you want to make this an assignment or a discussion, here are some questions. Use whatever best matches your coverage of experiments. Ask students to read both the summary and the original research article, then answer these questions. What is the independent variable? What are the levels of the independent variable? What is the dependent variable? How many different times was the dependent variable measured? Were participants randomly assigned to conditions? Why is random assignment important? In the research article, the authors identify three limitations to the study. What are they? Which of the three do you believe is the biggest limitation? Why? Identify at least two more pieces of evidence you would like to have before recommending that your college or university spend money on therapy dogs. ... View more

For women, perceptions of intelligence and morality change based on how much makeup they're wearing: https://www.psypost.org/2021/05/study-suggests-that-women-wearing-heavier-makeup-are-perceived-as-having-less-mental-capacity-and-less-moral-status-60837 ... View more

Good cartoonists are excellent observers of people, and that’s why cartoons can be a tremendous resource for teaching psychology. Use these cartoons by visiting their websites as copying/pasting into your slide deck or your learning management system is most likely a violation of copyright. Use these to freshen your operant conditioning examples, or use these as a basis for discussion or as a stand-alone assignment. Edge City, May 3, 2021. We see both Colin’s behavior and his father’s behavior. What behavior has likely been positively reinforced? And what behavior has likely been negatively reinforced? Explain. Deflocked, March 26, 2021. We know both the sheep’s behavior and the sheep’s mother’s behavior. Which behavior has been positively reinforced? And which behavior has been negatively reinforced? Explain. Bleeker: The Rechargeable Dog, March 11, 2021. The real dog has learned to turn off the robot vacuum. Has the “turning off” behavior been positively or negatively reinforced? Explain. Stone Soup Classics, February 9, 2021. Max has learned a new word. When he yells this word, he gets a reaction that will likely increase the chances of him saying it again. Has his saying the word been positively or negatively reinforced? Explain. Nest Heads, December, 2020. We know both Taylor’s behavior and her grandfather’s behavior. What behavior has likely been positively reinforced? And what behavior has likely been negatively reinforced? Explain. And now for the hard one. Drabble, February 23, 2021. In operant conditioning, a discriminative stimulus is a signal that a specific behavior is likely to be reinforced. What is the discriminative stimulus in this strip? What behavior has this discriminative stimulus signaled will be reinforced? ... View more

I have been reading with interest about how national chain pharmacies have started to offer mental health services: Therapy on Aisle 7 (NY Times, 5/7/21), CVS to Offer In-Store Mental Health Counseling (NPR, 4/29/21). While some pharmacies, such as CVS, are offering in-store or virtual mental health counseling, other pharmacies, such as Walgreens, connect customers to third-party therapy providers. These recent developments could be fodder for some very interesting class discussions or a stand-alone assignment following your coverage of psychotherapy. Here are some possible questions. What are some reasons that pharmacies, like CVS, may be interested in offering mental health services? Identify at least 3 positive things about pharmacies offering mental health services. Identify at least 3 concerns you may have about pharmacies offering mental health services. As one should when hiring anyone to provide any kind of service, what questions should you ask in your first meeting? This New York Times article, Therapy on Aisle 7 (5/7/21), offers some suggestions. For more questions you may want to ask, visit the How to Choose a Psychologist page on the American Psychological Association website. Once you have your list of questions to ask, for each question identify at least one answer you would want to hear and at least one answer you would not want to hear. Would you, personally, go to a pharmacy for mental health services? Why or why not? What other kinds of places might people quickly and easily access mental health services if they were available? ... View more

Have you spend time reading or binge-watching your favorite shows this year? Research suggests that those beloved characters mean as much to us as our friends, at least if we are immersed in the fictional environment: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/time-travelling-apollo/202104/mind-melding-our-favorite-fictional-characters ... View more

Great example of epigenetics: Male bearded dragon embryos will hatch as females if the eggs are too warm - the heat overrides their genes to make them change sex!  https://www.newscientist.com/article/2274481-heat-overrides-genes-to-make-bearded-dragon-embryos-change-sex/?utm_term=Autofeed&utm_campaign=echobox&utm_medium=social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1618516391 ... 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

The Neural Basis of Empathy via Knowing Neurons (and check out some of their other easy-to-digest articles for students while you're there!): https://knowingneurons.com/2021/03/29/neural-basis-of-empathy/ ... View more