Some people are more susceptible to the placebo effect than others; it turns out your DNA might be responsible! Your DNA Could Determine How Easily You're Fooled by Placebos http://ow.ly/TNoe30q9Ibn #psychstudentrss‌ ... View more

Probably like you, a lot of my Intro Psych students are interested in medicine. Most are interested in nursing, but a smattering are interested in becoming physicians or another type of medical professional, such as respiratory therapists. This New York Times article (Brown & Bergman, 2019), coauthored by nurse and a physician, will be of interest to these future medical professionals in your course. After covering ingroups/outgroups and superordinate goals in the social psychology chapter, ask your students to read the article and address these questions. What factors contribute to dividing medical professionals into the subgroups of doctors and nurses? For example, physicians have higher status than nurses.   What superordinate goal do the article authors suggest would bring nurses and doctors together? At about 1,000 words, the article is short enough for students to read and discuss in class. Alternatively, it’s an excellent real-world example to bring into your lecture.   From the new APA Intro Psych student learning outcomes, this activity addresses: Identify examples of relevant and practical applications of psychological principles to everyday life. Integrative theme: Applying psychological principles can changes our lives in positive ways.   Reference Brown, T., & Bergman, S. (2019, December 31). Doctors, nurses and the paperwork crisis that could unite them. New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/31/opinion/doctors-nurses-and-the-paperwork-crisis-that-could-unite-them.html ... View more

After covering operant conditioning, ask your students to consider how government agencies could encourage more public transit use by using reinforcement. Give students a couple minutes to think about this on their own, then ask students to share their ideas in small groups. Next, ask each group to develop a plan where operant conditioning could be used to encourage the use of public transit. What is the operant (the behavior being targeted)? What will be used as the reinforcement? Will it be positive reinforcement or negative reinforcement? What schedule of reinforcement would you recommend? Variable ratio, variable interval, fixed ratio, or fixed interval? Once the group discussion has died down, ask each group to share their plan, ensuring that they have correctly identified the type and schedule of reinforcement. Wrap up the discussion by sharing that Miami has implemented such a program. Using an app called Velocia, Miami residents can track how they get around: walking, biking, carpooling, riding the bus/train (“Miami launches app that rewards citizens for ditching their cars at home,” 2019). The more you don’t drive solo, the more “Velos” points you earn. Each method is worth a different number of Velos points. For example, walking 5 miles in a week earns you 300 Velos. Those points can be redeemed for public transportation discounts. For example, for 450 Velos you can rent a CitiBike for 30 minutes. Even if you are not in Miami, you can download the Velocia app from Google Play or the App Store to see how it works. An article on the Mass Transit Magazine website provides a nice summary of some transit rewards programs that have been implemented around the world (Comfort, 2019).   References Comfort, P. (2019). Loyalty programs and gamification in public transit. Retrieved January 8, 2020, from http://masstransitmag.com/technology/passenger-info/article/13000010/loyalty-programs-and-gamification-in-public-transit Miami launches app that rewards citizens for ditching their cars at home. (2019). Retrieved January 8, 2020, from https://www.optimistdaily.com/2019/12/miami-launches-app-that-rewards-citizens-for-ditching-their-cars-at-home ... View more

Fake news is everywhere - are you good at telling what's real and what's not? Research shows you're probably not as good at it as you think you are. Students Are Really, Really Bad at Spotting Fake News, Misleading Websites - Teaching Now - Education Week Teacher http://ow.ly/5ewd30q7y76 #psychstudentrss‌ ... View more

Forgiveness is GOOD for you, so why not try to be more forgiving in the new year? How To Forgive Someone Who Has Hurt You - and Why You Should https://www.popsci.com/story/health/forgive-psychology-trauma/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter #psychstudentrss‌ ... View more

Getting away from research done on "traditional" populations can show us a lot about what influences us. Personality is not only about who but also where you are | Aeon Ideas http://ow.ly/iCJb30q5Zca #psychstudentrss‌ ... View more

How much genetic testing should be required for newborns? What kinds of genetic tests would you want your baby to have? 23 and Baby: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/23-and-baby/ psychstudentrss‌ ... View more

How much genetic testing should be required for newborns? What kinds of genetic tests would you want your baby to have? 23 and Baby: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/23-and-baby/ #psychstudentrss‌ ... View more

Do these new findings challenge the view that men and women are more similar than different? Taking Sex Differences in Personality Seriously https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/taking-sex-differences-in-personality-seriously/ #psychstudentrss‌ ... View more

The title of this article implies a causal link. Is this accurate? Eating A Low Carb Breakfast May Make You A More Tolerant Personpsychstudentrss‌ ... View more

Students appreciate examples that are meaningful to them. How about a little selfie research? After covering experiments in the Intro Psych research methods chapter, ask students to think about how they would do an experiment to find out if people perceived those who post a lot of selfies to Instagram differently than those who post a lot of “posies”—photos of themselves taken by other people. Emphasize that the question is not how the people actually are, but how others think they are. Give students the independent variable: the last 30 Instagram photos—mostly selfies or mostly posies. Next, ask students to jot down some dependent variables. What might those different perceptions be? For example, would your students expect those with lots of selfies to be perceived as being more self-absorbed? After students have had a couple minutes to think about these, ask students to work in pairs or small groups to come up with their list of dependent variables. Once discussion has died down, ask each group to volunteer one dependent variable that has not already been identified by a previous group. Write the dependent variables where the class can see them. After each group has given one, ask students for any other dependent variables they came up with that haven’t already been named. Explain that in an experimental study, researchers could create fake Instagram accounts and manipulate how many selfies and how many posies to show participants who would then rate the owners of those fake accounts on each of the dependent variables.  In a recent correlational study, researchers wanted to know exactly that. Do people perceived Instagram users differently depending on how many selfies or posies the users posted (Barry et al., 2019)? Participants in this study rated 30 individuals based on the last 30 photos posted to their Instagram accounts. Researchers measured 13 dependent variables. Remember, these are all perceptions people had of the Instagram users based on their last 30 photos: self-esteem, liking adventure, loneliness, extraversion, trying new things, success, likeability, dependability, would be a good friend, self-absorption, worried about being left out, emotionality, and considerate of others. Those who had more selfies were perceived to: Have low self-esteem Not like adventure Be lonely Not be outgoing Not like trying new things Not be successful Not be likeable Those who had more posies were perceived to: Have high self-esteem Like adventure Not be lonely Be outgoing Be dependable Like trying new things Be successful Be likeable Be a good friend There were no significant correlations between number of selfies or number of posies and perceptions of being self-absorbed, worried about being left out, being emotional, or being considerate of others. After sharing these results, ask students what follow-up research questions should be addressed next. Or, if students were to replicate this study, what changes would they make?   Reference Barry, C. T., McDougall, K. H., Anderson, A. C., Perkins, M. D., Lee-Rowland, L. M., Bender, I., & Charles, N. E. (2019). ‘Check your selfie before you wreck your selfie’: Personality ratings of Instagram users as a function of self-image posts. Journal of Research in Personality, 82, 103843. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2019.07.001 ... View more

 If you're feeling stressed or anxious, consider the work of Viktor Frankl, who taught us that finding meaning in life is our most important quest: Viktor Frankl: Doctor prescribed the meaning of life - Big Think #psychstudentrss ... View more

Several years ago, back when I was still giving in-class exams, I was convinced by Roddy Roediger to give a comprehensive final exam. By asking students to review the course material one more time by studying for the final, this increased the chances students would remember more of the course content some time later. You’ll recognize the use of the spacing effect. When I completely revamped my courses, going all-in with my variation on interteaching (see this blog post), I eliminated my in-class exams. With no comprehensive final, what could I do insteaad that would encourage students to go back through the course content one more time? Since what I really want to know is what my students got out of the course, I decided to just ask them. Final Course Review: Looking back over the course, identify the 10 most important things you learned in this course. Rank order them so the most important is number 1, the second most important is number 2, and so on. For each of those important things, explain what the concept is, and explain why it is important to you.  An "important thing" could be a concept -- think bold-faced term -- or a research finding. Please do not list entire chapters.  Those are all of the instructions. I purposefully leave it wide open to what “things” students couldn’t identify. And I leave “important” undefined. Most often students interpret it as things that are important to them personally, but some interpret this as things important for anyone to know, or even things that are important functions of being human. When I assign this in a face-to-face class, we meet during our scheduled final time. Each student submits their list to the course management system before class, and they also bring them to class–or access them on a device. I ask a volunteer to share their number 1 item and why they chose it. I write the concept on the board, then briefly summarize the concept, maybe even referring back to something I covered in lecture or was covered in the textbook to help students with retrieval. Next, I ask if anyone else had that item on their top ten list. If so, I ask each to share why it made their lists. From that group of students, I ask one to share their number one item. We repeat until everyone has had an opportunity to share their number one most important item. Because I want students to not only review the course content when they are creating their lists, but to also review the course content in class when we go through the lists, my scoring of this assignment is a little creative. The assignment is worth 30 points. Each of the 10 items is worth 3 points: identify something from the course, correctly explain what it is, and discuss why it is important. If a student is in class for this final review, students earn 5 points extra credit. If they are absent, they lose 15 points. For my online courses, the instructions for the Final Course Review are the same, but I assign it as a discussion. I want students to not only have reviewed the course content to create their own lists, I want students to read the lists of other students. I ask students to respond to read the lists of two of their discussion groupmates, and reply with at least two of these types of comments: A compliment, e.g., "I like how... because...," I like that... because..." A comment, e.g., "I agree that... because...," "I disagree that... because..." A connection, e.g., "I have also read that...," "I have also thought that...," "That reminds me of..." A question, e.g., "I wonder why...," "I wonder how..."    Reading what students submit for the Final Course Review is an important reminder to me that there is much value in the content covered by Intro Psych. I love ending the course with this assignment not only because it gives students an opportunity to review the course content one more time, but it also allows me to see what students are taking with them as they leave my classroom (or my virtual classroom) for the last time. It’s what they’ve written that I take with me into the next term as I consider the course content I want to keep, I want to eliminate, and I want to add. ... View more

Check out these brand-new penguin parents, Skipper and Ping, who are the latest gay couple to adopt a penguin baby! Congratulations to new penguin dads Skipper and Ping | Popular Science   psychstudentrss‌ ... View more

The American Psychological Association’s Board of Educational Affairs, at the behest of the Committee on Associate and Baccalaureate Education, convened a working group under the title Introductory Psychology Initiative (IPI). The working group was tasked with sorting out four major areas related to the Intro Psych course. First, can we, as a discipline, please agree on a set of student learning outcomes? And while we’re at it, can we have some sample assessments for measuring those outcomes? Second, what are some different ways the course can be structured? Third, what sort of training should there be for Intro Psych instructors, and how can we deliver that training? And fourth, how can what students learn in Intro Psych help them succeed in their courses, in their careers, and in their lives?   The IPI working group will be rolling out recommendations over the coming months. First up are the student learning outcomes.   By the end of the introductory psychology course, students should be able to:   - Identify basic concepts and research findings, and give examples of psychology's integrative themes.   Psychological science relies on empirical evidence adapting as new data develop.   Psychology explains general principles that govern behavior, while recognizing individual differences.   Psychological, biological, social, and cultural factors influence mental processes and behavior.   Our perceptions filter experience of the world through an imperfect personal lens.   Applying psychological principles can change our lives in positive ways.   - Apply psychological principles to everyday life. - Draw appropriate, logical, and objective conclusions about behavior and mental processes from empirical evidence. - Evaluate misconceptions or erroneous behavioral claims based on evidence from psychological science. - Design, conduct, or evaluate basic psychological research.  - Describe ethical principles that guide psychologists in research and therapy.   For a seasoned Intro Psych instructor, there is probably nothing in here that is too shocking. As you read through the themes, the content you currently cover in your course likely already fits these themes. What we’re asking is that the themes be made explicit to students. While students may not remember years later much specific content, such as Piaget’s third stage of development, we would love students to remember these larger themes. In the psychological research student learning outcome, we recognize that different instructors working with different class sizes and student populations, such as honors courses, will decide to do different things. Perhaps you want students to design a basic study, correctly applying independent variables and dependent variables. Or perhaps you want your students to conduct a basic study, inside or outside the class. Or perhaps you would like your students to read a summary of a less-than-well-designed study and identify some of the flaws. In all cases, students will gain an appreciation for what is involved in doing psychological science. Where I expect most Intro Psych instructors to say, “Oooo, I haven’t been teaching that,” is the ethical principles that guide therapists. A lot of Intro Psych textbooks cover the ethics of research, but not the ethics of therapy. Intro Psych students will likely encounter a therapist sometime in their lives—whether it be for themselves, a family member, a friend, or a co-worker/employee. Intro Psych students should know what ethical guidelines therapists are expected to follow and to know when those ethical guidelines have been breached. For myself, I will take it one step beyond the listed student learning outcome and ask my students to identify some next steps they can take if they believe a therapist has acted unethically—once I figure out what those are myself. This is the first time the discipline of psychology has a set of student learning outcomes for Intro Psych. Try them out. Let us know what you think. ... View more