Have you ever tried an online dating app? Read about some trends here: Making Sense of Online Dating in 2020 | Psychology Today http://ow.ly/EqNQ30qn0e0 #psychstudentrss‌ ... View more

Photographer Noah Kalina took a photo of himself every day for 20 years. He put them all together into an 8-minute video. When he started this project on January 11, 2000, he was 19.5 years old. When this video ends on January 11, 2020, he was 39.5 years old. That’s 240 months in 480 seconds—one month every two seconds. If you play it at double speed, it will only take four minutes to show—one month every second. Once the recording starts to play, click the gear icon in the bottom right corner of the recording to change your playback speed.  Video Link : 2563 I have been thinking about this video since I first saw it. We watch people age all the time, but to watch it happen so quickly is… I’m not sure what. Jarring? Compelling? Both? This video could be a nice lead-in to your coverage of adulthood. Encourage your students to jot down their reactions as they watch. Afterwards, invite students to share their reactions in pairs/small groups or with the class as a whole. Kalina was born in early July, 1980. The first photo we have of him is in early January, 2000. As a rough starting point (within a few weeks), Kalina is about 19.5 years old in the first photo. In the development chapter, as you move from emerging adulthood to middle adulthood, use these video times to jump ahead in the recording. Approximate Age Video Time 19.5 0:00:02 20 0:00:14 21 0:00:38 22 0:01:02 23 0:01:26 24 0:01:50 25 0:02:14 26 0:02:38 27 0:03:02 28 0:03:26 29 0:03:50 30 0:04:14 31 0:04:38 32 0:05:02 33 0:05:26 34 0:05:50 35 0:06:14 36 0:06:38 37 0:07:02 38 0:07:26 39 0:07:50 39.5 0:08:02   Kalina has also compiled the photos into a collage. It’s difficult to see individual photos, but taken in its entirety, it’s just as compelling as the recording. ... View more

Well now this could be interesting. A New Netflix Show Will Tackle Life as a Department Chair. Academics Have Thoughts. - The Chronicle of Higher Education http://ow.ly/5z3n30qkUV8 #psychstudentrss‌ ... View more

Many cartoonists are excellent observers of the human condition. One of the best is Charles Schulz of Peanuts fame. With 50 years of comic strips, that’s 17,897 individual strips—drawn by him and him alone—Schulz’s characters can be a rich source of psychology examples. In this strip that ran most recently on May 5, 2019, Schulz gifts us with a beautiful example of classical conditioning. Students don’t need to be familiar with the characters to see the classical conditioning. If they are familiar with Charlie Brown and Lucy and the relationship these characters have with each other, they’ll better appreciate the humor. The characters are playing baseball. From the outfield, Lucy yells, “Hey, manager!” Charlie Brown, standing on the pitcher’s mound, looks at us with a queasy expression. He explains that hearing her say “Hey, manager!” is enough to give him a stomachache because every time she yells that, she follows it up with a stupid/dumb/sarcastic remark. In this particular case, she surprises him (and long-time Peanuts readers) by saying something else. In the last panel, though, Lucy reveals that she knows exactly what’s going on. I ask my students these questions about the strip: In this example, identify the unconditioned stimulus, unconditioned response, conditioned stimulus, and conditioned response.  Use this example to explain generalization and discrimination. What would need to happen in order to bring about extinction? What would spontaneous recovery look like? While I do this as part of a larger homework assignment, it also works as an in-class discussion topic or as a lecture example. Through this example, I have learned that many of my students are not familiar with the Peanuts comic strip. I know who is and who is not familiar based on what they call Charlie Brown. Students who know it call him Charlie Brown. Students who don’t know it simply call him Charlie—which is jarring to my 52-year-old, US-born ears. ... View more

In the Intro Psych sensation and perception chapter, we often cover monocular cues. While it’s fine to think about how monocular cues help us perceive depth, I had never given much thought to what we would perceive if we lacked several monocular cues. In Your Inner Fish, the author, paleontologist and anatomy professor Neil Shubin, writes There is no field manual for Arctic paleontology. We received gear recommendations from friends and colleagues, and we read books-only to realize that nothing could prepare us for the experience itself. At no time is this more sharply felt than when the helicopter drops one off for the first time in some godforsaken part of the Arctic totally alone. The first thought is of polar bears. I can't tell you how many times I've scanned the landscape looking for white specks that move. This anxiety can make you see things. In our first week in the Arctic, one of the crew saw a moving white speck. It looked like a polar bear about a quarter mile away. We scrambled like Keystone Kops for our guns, flares, and whistles until we discovered that our bear was a white Arctic hare two hundred feet away. With no trees or houses by which to judge distance, you lose perspective in the Arctic (pg. 17).  This photo of Arctic Alaska can help you picture what Shubin and his colleagues were seeing—or not seeing. The caption says that those dark dots are caribou. Looking at this tundra is not unlike looking at the sky, and the sky also frequently lacks monocular cues. When I see a speck with the sky as the background, if I perceive that speck as really close, then it’s a gnat. If I perceive it a little farther away, it’s a bird. If I perceive it really far away, it’s a plane. If I perceive the speck as being someplace between the bird and the plane, it’s Superman. In Shubin’s case, the Arctic tundra didn’t give him many monocular cues to work with. Without a solid sense of distance, it’s difficult to determine the size of the object or critter. After covering monocular cues, share with students the Arctic Alaska photo. Drag your browser so the description of the caribou is off the screen. Ask students to identify the dots in the photo. After all of the guesses are in, tell students that the dots are caribou. Ask students which of the monocular cues you covered can be seen in the photo, such as relative height. Ask students which ones are missing, such as linear perspective. The fewer distance cues we have, the harder it is to determine distance. To close the activity, read students Shubin’s hare/bear paragraph. That will give you a leaping off point to talk about the ways in which our expectations can affect our perceptions. Shubin and his colleagues could have perceived the critter as a hare from the very beginning, but because polar bears were very much on their minds, a polar bear is what they all perceived. That is, until further evidence proved them wrong. ... View more

Have you ever wondered if social media makes relationships harder? If so, read this! How Social Media Might Undermine Romantic Relationships | SPSP http://ow.ly/95cI30qiLMC #psychstudentrss‌ ... View more

Ingroups can be pretty powerful. We tend to like people in our ingroups more than people in our outgroups (ingroup bias), and we tend to see people in our outgroups as being more like each other than people in our ingroups (outgroup homogeneity bias), for example. There is much rhetoric about Democrats vs. Republicans, immigrants/refugees vs. native born, the wealthy vs. the middle class vs. the working poor, people with homes vs. people who are homeless. Depending on where you live, the groups may be different than these, but the groups are there. The next time you cover ingroups/outgroups, ask your students what groups are most salient to them – on your campus or in your town/city. If you’re in a small college town, it may be the townies vs. those at the college. Write down the names of the groups where students can see them. If time allows, ask your students to work in pairs or small groups to generate examples of how ingroup bias or outgroup homogeneity bias has affected or could affect how each group sees themselves and sees the other. Next, show this 3-minute TV2 Denmark ad that aired in 2017. Video Link : 2526 Ask students to share their reactions to the video. If they could get their-previously-identified groups together, what questions would they ask? Who likes pizza? Who likes dogs? Who likes cats? Who likes to drive?   Close this activity by pointing out ingroups/outgroups shift depending on context. When one context—politics, for example—is continually salient, it’s easy to forget that we have plenty in common with members of our—say, political—outgroup. What strategies might your students use to help them remember that they may have a lot in common with an outgroup member, and to remember that, in a different context, that person is probably a member of their ingroup? ... View more

Feeling the Valentine's Day love? People Who Think Their Partners Are a Perfect Fit Stay Happier—Even if They’re Wrong – Association for Psychological Science – APS http://ow.ly/3SFa30qhciv #psychstudentrss‌ ... View more

Has your university seen changes in the curriculum or in classroom behavior in the last few years? Read about one school in Texas that is facing widespread problems: When the Culture War Comes to the Classroom via @chronicle #psychstudentrss‌ ... View more

If you are about to cover or have recently covered the availability heuristic in Intro Psych, ask your students this question. Which are you more concerned about: the coronavirus or the flu virus? Alternatively, How concerned are you about the coronavirus? (1 not at all concerned to 7 very concerned) How concerned are you about the flu virus? (1 not at all concerned to 7 very concerned) Here are the statistics. Coronavirus As of Monday, February 3, 2020, CBS News reports that “there were more than 20,000 confirmed cases [of coronavirus infection] in more than two dozen countries, the vast majority of them in China, according to the World Health Organization. There have been at least 425 deaths in China, and one in the Philippines.” Flu virus In contrast, in the United States alone, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports as of January 25, 2020 that 19 million to 26 million people have contracted the flu resulting in 180,000 to 310,000 hospitalizations and 10,000 to 25,000 deaths. This year isn’t so bad. The CDC estimates that the flu virus killed 61,000 people during the 2017-2018 flu season, again, just in the United States. If your students are using the availability heuristic here, they are much more likely to be concerned about the coronavirus than the flu virus. The coverage of the coronavirus in mass media and social media is, well, substantial. The coverage of the flu virus is almost nil. This is an excellent opportunity to talk with students about how the information we take in can influence how we see the world, a perception that can cause us to put our fears in the wrong place. Ask students to take a few minutes to generate some strategies for increasing their own awareness of when they may be under the influence of the availability heuristic as well as some strategies for countering it. It may be as simple as realizing that we’re feeling frightened and saying, “Wait. Do I have reason to be frightened? Let me do some research into this.” Of course, this does not mean that your students should be freaked out by the flu instead. Encourage your students to do some research on who is most at risk for dying from the flu. For those who aren’t at risk from dying from the flu, getting the flu vaccine can help prevent them from passing the flu on to someone else who is at risk from dying from it. ... View more

“Nature doesn’t kill people with avalanches. People kill people with avalanches” (Julavits, 2020, p. 26). Heidi Julavits tells us that in avalanche school she learned about six psychological concepts* that can cause back-country winter enthusiasts to make poor decisions—and then she went on to discuss how these very same factors led her, her classmates, and her avalanche instructors to make some poor decisions when they went out to the slopes (Julavits, 2020). Julavits makes it clear that knowing how psychological concepts can have a negative impact on our decisions doesn’t necessarily mean that we’ll make different decisions in the moment. This article reminds me—once again—that knowledge is necessary but not sufficient to change behavior. For example, I know what healthy eating and healthy exercise look like, and I know their benefits. That doesn’t mean that I always make the best decisions regarding healthy eating and healthy exercise. Knowledge is good. It’s just not enough. The Intro Psych thinking chapter or social psych chapter are good places to discuss these psychological concepts—and then help students think through ways of countering them so they don’t get sucked in when needing to make decisions that may indeed be life and death decisions. While the context here happens to be avalanches—and the avoidance thereof—these psychological concepts can be applied to almost any context where a decision needs to be made. Ian McCammon, a mechanical engineer, started thinking a lot about avalanches following the death of a friend. While his focus has been on the mechanics of avalanches, after researching 715 such accidents, he wrote about six psychological concepts that people may use out on the slopes that can lead to disaster (McCammon, 2004). These are the psychological concepts Julavits introduced to us in her avalanche school article (Julavits, 2020). McCammon (2004) begins with this premise: As sad as this accident was [the one that led to the death of his friend], the real tragedy is that similar stories unfold in accident after accident, year after year. An experienced party, often with avalanche training, makes a crucial decision to descend, cross, or highmark a slope they believe is safe. And then they trigger an avalanche that buries one or more of them. In hindsight, the danger was often obvious before these accidents happened, and so people struggle to explain how intelligent people with avalanche training could have seen the hazard, looked straight at it, and behaved as if it wasn’t there. (p.1) The Psychological Concepts Familiarity When we are in familiar surroundings, we are more likely to act just as we have acted in the past. That’s fine as long as the conditions are exactly the same. If they have changed, behaving the same way may not be the best course of action. In McCammon’s archival research, he found that people did indeed take more risks when they were in an area familiar to them. Consistency Once we’ve made a decision, it’s easiest to keep making decisions that are consistent with that first decision. Again, this is fine as long as the conditions stay the same. As conditions change, staying consistent with our first decision may lead to trouble. McCammon found that the groups most committed to being out on the slope took the most risks. Acceptance We want to be accepted by others, so we do things that we believe will lead to their acceptance. Straight men may make poor decisions in order to increase their chances of being accepted by women. McCammon found that groups that included both men and women made riskier decisions, and this seemed to be driven primarily by men making poor decisions, not the women. Expert halo An “informal leader” may spontaneously emerge in the group. This person may have experience or skill, may be older, or may just be more assertive. The group may give this person an “expert halo” and assume the person has expertise they don’t actually possess. McCammon found that groups that had someone that could be identified as a leader took greater risks. Social facilitation When people are confident in their abilities, the more people that are present, the more confident people become. McCammon found that groups that had avalanche training took greater risks if their group had met up with another group prior to the avalanche. Those who had not had avalanche training were less affected by the presence of another group.   Scarcity We value more that which is scarce. New, unblemished snow is scarce and, thus, is highly valued. Indeed, McCammon found that skiers heading to untracked snow took greater risks than those headed to previously-skied snow. Other examples If you live where your students ski or snowboard, this avalanche safety example may resonate with your students. In any case, ask your students to consider other situations where a group has to make a decision about whether or not it is safe to proceed. Boating on a body of water with choppy waves? Rafting on a river with unusually high water? Driving in an area where there is a tornado watch or warning? Weighing whether to stay or move inland with an approaching hurricane. Whatever situation is most likely for your student population, ask your students to identify how each of the factors discussed above may lead to a decision that may result in disaster. Overcoming these factors Now the hard part. Ask students what they could do to recognize these factors at play in the moment and, just importantly, how they could counteract them. As a take-home assignment, ask students to investigate strategies that help keep people from falling into these traps. During the next class session, ask students to share what they learned. Conclusion A lot of what we cover in the Intro Psych course has the potential to change a student’s life. This topic has the potential to save a student’s life.   References Julavits, H. (2020, January). Calamity lesson. New York Times Magazine, 24–31, 48. McCammon, I. (2004). Heuristic traps in recreational avalanche accidents: Evidence and implications. Avalanche Review, 22(68). Retrieved from www.snowpit.com.   *Julavits and McCammon refer to these concepts as heuristics. In Intro Psych, some of these are considered simply principles or concepts, so I’ve replaced the term heuristics with “psychological concepts.”   ... View more

Ever wonder what a mummy would sound like? No? Well here's your chance to find out anyway! 3-D Printing Gives Voice to a 3,000-Year-Old Mummy - Scientific American http://ow.ly/wpnf30qd35U #psychstudentrss‌ ... View more

More new research on the questionable link between electronic use and social problems in children. What do you think? Panicking About Your Kids’ Phones? New Research Says Don’t - The New York Times http://ow.ly/gORu30qcFEG #psychstudentrss‌ ... View more

I read with interest a recent journal article on the benefits of having students share some good news from their lives. This study was done in a face-to-face class, but I’m wondering about the implications for online students. Courtney Gosnell at Pace University randomly assigned her students to share good news with their classmates eight to ten times over the course of a term. Those who felt like they got the most support from their classmates reported “a greater sense of class belonging,” a “stronger belief that their classmates wanted them to succeed,” “greater college identification,” and “greater satisfaction with college life.” And, interestingly, they “also approached the class with more of a challenge mindset” (Gosnell, 2019). Given that the students who got the most benefit from sharing their good news were the ones who felt the most supported, the question is how to help students feel more supported. Gosnell (2019) suggested giving students a little training on what an “active constructive response” is, such as that described by this Woods and colleagues article (2015). These researchers presented pairs of people who shared a close relationship—romantic or platonic—with a 20-minute training on how better to give and respond to, well, good news, “including verbal (e.g., energetic voice, positive feedback, and ask specific questions) and nonverbal (e.g., smile, raise eyebrows, nod, and face body toward partner) examples of active–constructive responding.”   This term I am asking my face-to-face students to share some good news with their groups during our first class session of the week. But these aren’t the students I’m concerned about. It’s my online students that I would like to feel more connected to each other, to me, and to the college. Since my online students have a weekly discussion board (one initial post and two responses) that is pretty prescriptive in its requirements, it wasn’t hard for me to wedge in a good news requirement. Here are the instructions for the first part of their initial post. Part A: Good news from the last week What's the most positive experience you’ve had in the last week. Only share if you feel comfortable, otherwise tell us about your second most positive experience. It could be big (“I got an A on an assignment!”, “I got a car!”) or it could be small (“I have a new favorite dessert,” "My grocery bag broke, and someone helped me pick everything up."). Tell as much as you want about your event. For the response, everything in the nonverbal section that Woods and colleagues (2015) identified I could safely exclude from this online forum. For the verbal, I went with a reaction (presumably positive since the person is sharing good news) and a question. Here are the response instructions for this section of the discussion. Part A: Good news from the last week Share your reaction to their good news, e.g., "I am so happy for you!", "It sounds like you had a lot of fun!", then ask at least one follow up question, "What kind of car did you get?", "What was in your new favorite dessert?".  We’re only a few weeks into the term, so my sample is small, but I’ve been having a lot of fun reading their good news and their responses to the good news of other students. Through sharing good news, we’re getting to know each other better. I already know who likes football, who plays soccer, who enjoys shopping for dresses, who has struggles with transportation, who likes cheesecake, and who has a new job. Whatever someone shares, the responses to their good news feel genuine. While the questions are required, (most of) the questions come across as legitimate interest. Many students provide a follow-up in response to the questions asked, which I’m grateful for, because I often have the same questions. While I don’t participate in the group discussion, I do score the discussions. In my comments, I offer my own reaction to their good news, ask a question, and then give my good news for the week. Near the end of the course I’ll ask my students about how connected they felt to the others in their groups and to me. I’m especially interested in seeing if more students persist in the course than has been true in my previous online courses. What’s your good news?   References Gosnell, C. L. (2019). Receiving quality positive event support from peers may enhance student connection and the learning environment. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1037/stl0000178 Woods, S., Lambert, N., Brown, P., Fincham, F., & May, R. (2015). “I’m so excited for you!” How an enthusiastic responding intervention enhances close relationships. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 32(1), 24–40. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407514523545 ... View more

Excellent (and timely!) review of note-taking strategies at the start of a new semester: Note Taking: A Research Roundup https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/note-taking/  #psychstudentrss‌ ... View more