Originally posted on August 21, 2014. One of psychology’s big discoveries is our almost irresistible tendency to judge the likelihood of events by how mentally available they are—a mental shortcut that Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky identified as “the availability heuristic.”  Thus anything that makes information pop into mind—its vividness, recency, or distinc­tiveness—can make it seem common­place.  (Kahneman explores the power of this concept at length in Thinking Fast and Slow, which stands with William James’ Principles of Psychology on my short list of greatest-ever psychology books.) My favorite example of the availability heuristic at work is people’s misplaced fear of flying.  As I document in the upcoming Psychology, 11th Edition, from 2009 to 2011 Americans were—mile for mile—170 times more likely to die in a vehicle accident than on a sched­uled flight.  When flying, the most dangerous part of our journey is typically the drive to the airport.  In a late 2001 essay, I calculated that if—because of 9/11—we in the ensuing year flew 20 percent less and instead drove half those unflown miles, about 800 more people would die.  German psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer later checked my estimate against actual traffic fatalities (why didn’t I think to do that?) and found that traffic fatalities did, indeed, jump after 9/11.  Thanks to those readily available, horrific mental images, terrorists had killed more people on American highways than died on those four ill-fated planes. The availability heuristic operates in more mundane ways as well.  This morning I awoke early at an airport hotel, where I had been waylaid after a flight delay.  The nice woman working the breakfast bar told me of how she, day after day, meets waylaid passengers experiencing weather problems, crew delays, and mechanical problems.  Her conclusion (from her mentally available sample of flyers):  something so often goes awry that if she needed to travel, she would never fly. Vivid examples make us gasp.  Probabilities we hardly grasp. ... View more

Want to add a little psychopathy to your neuroscience or emotion lectures? Or add a little emotion and neuroscience to your psychopathy lecture? Kevin Dutton (University of Oxford), in a 5-minute video, presents a couple versions of the trolley problem and explains the role of emotion in responding to the dilemma. He notes that psychopaths respond in a purely utilitarian way, without emotion getting in the way. In the first video below, Dutton describes a scenario in which five people will die if a trolley continues on its path but where flipping a switch will send the trolley down a different track killing one person. Pause this video at the 49-second mark and give students an opportunity to think about their decision. Ask students to decide, but not reveal their response. If you use a student response system, ask students to click in with, say, A once they’ve made their decision. Return to playing the video. Dutton changes the scenario so that now you are faced with a different decision. The trolley, again, on its current course will kill five people. But now there is a “large stranger” in front of you. If you shove this person to their certain death in front of the trolley, the trolley will stop and the five people will be saved.  Pause the video at the 1:38 mark and give students time to mull over their decision. Again, ask students to decide, but not reveal their response. As before, if you use a student response system, ask students to click in with A once they’ve made their decision. Dutton goes on to say that the first decision involves primarily the cerebral cortex. But when it comes to the second decision of whether to physically push someone to their death, for most people the emotion-heavy amygdala becomes involved and the decision is much more difficult. What about psychopaths? The amygdala stays quiet, and psychopaths don’t feel a difference between the two dilemmas. The decision to shove the stranger feels no different than the decision to flip the switch. Video Link : 1665 If you have time and wish to continue the topic, Dutton has another 5-minute video that expands on this one. To introduce it, ask students if there are any benefits to having someone who is willing and able to sacrifice one person, regardless of circumstances, to save many people? If time allows, ask students to discuss in pairs or small groups, and then ask for volunteers to share their responses. Now, play this video. Video Link : 1666 After this, students will have a lot to think about and may not be able to focus on anything else you have to say. It may be best to time this activity so it ends when your class session ends. ... View more

Theresa Wadkins (University of Nebraska – Kearney) has a quick, but powerful way to demonstrate schemas in action. On the day she covers schemas, Wadkins walks into class, approaches a student, and asks, “How are you? Are you having a good day?” After the student responds, sometimes in befuddlement, she returns to the front of the room and begins her lecture. A few minutes later, she returns to the student and asks, “How is everything?” Again, the student responds, even more perplexed. And then back to the lecture. For the third and final time, she returns to the same student and asks, “Can I get you anything?” Wadkins then explains to her students that we have different schemas for what happens in a classroom and what happens in a restaurant. While being asked such questions is peculiar for a classroom, we would be put off if we weren’t asked these very same questions by a server in a restaurant. If you’d like to expand on this activity, ask students – in small groups or through an online discussion board – to identify the schema characteristics of what happens when a customer visits a sit-down restaurant and the schema characteristics of what happens when a customer visits a fast-food restaurant. Invite students to share the characteristics of each that they generated. Summarize the responses into a coherent schema for each type of restaurant. Ask students to reflect – in small groups, through an online discussion board, or as a written assignment – on what would happen if they had no schema for a sit-down restaurant when they walked into one. Or if they had no schema for a fast-food restaurant when they walked into one. Or if they walked into one type of restaurant with the schema for the other type of restaurant in mind. For added discussion or writing assignment, invite students to identify times when a schema they had did not match the situation. ... View more

The Washington Post published a wonderful article on the sense of shame that surrounds mental illness and how people are overcoming that shame and stepping out of the shadows. Ask your students to read the article and respond to the following questions in class as a small group discussion, online through a class discussion board, or as an out-of-class written assignment. 1. Those interviewed for the article expressed a fear of coming out as having mental illness. What is the stigma associated with mental illness, and why would those with mental illness fear others knowing? 2. The article identifies several ways in which people with mental illness are coming out publicly. What are those ways? If you were to come out publicly as having mental illness, which of those ways would you choose and why? 3. Visit the blog http://stigmafighters.com. Choose one blog post and answer the following. a. What is the person’s name and what they do in life (short descriptions are typically at the end of each post)? b. What type of mental illness do they have? c. Describe their milestone events, such as their first memory of symptoms, their first diagnosis. d. What’s it like for them to live with mental illness? e. What reactions did you have as you read their story? Itkowitz, C. (2016, June 1). Unashamed and unwell. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/local/wp/2016/06/01/unwell-and-unashamed ​[Note: Published in the paper on June 2, 2016 if you're looking for it in a library database.] ... View more

While we can talk about auditory hallucinations in class, it’s difficult for students to understand how much of an impact this experience can have on the people who must cope with the hallucinations. The free Hearing Voices app provides students with simulated auditory hallucinations (Android; may or may not be available for iOS – check iTunes). The app’s disclaimer statement notes that the audio simulations were “recorded by people who hear voices. The content is designed to reflect the variety of voices commonly experienced, as such some voices will be positive, providing support and encouragement, while others will be confusing or critical, perhaps repeating strange phrases or disparagements. It is vitally important that the recordings sufficiently mimic real-life and therefor the footage you will hear does contain profanities and explicit language which some people may find offensive.” The app comes with two activities and three exercises. The activities ask the listener to do a memory task and a mental math task while listening to the simulated auditory hallucinations. The exercises ask the listener to engage in conversation with a friend or engage in some other everyday activity while listening to the audio. If you would like to have students experience this in class, ask them to bring headphones (the iPhone users can plug their headphones into the Android phone of another student). One student can listen to the simulation while holding a conversation with the student next to them. And then have students switch roles so the other student can experience the simulated auditory hallucinations. Each activity and exercise comes with a “reflective prompt” that you may choose to use as a writing prompt for an out-of-class assignment. If students would like to explore further, in the Podcasts section of the app, four people speak of their experiences with auditory hallucinations. In the Explanations section, students can explore sociocultural, psychological, and biological contributors to the experience of auditory hallucinations. At the time of this writing, the app contains some glaring typos, but that doesn’t detract from the app’s value. There are several auditory hallucination simulation videos available on YouTube, such as this one. If you don’t want to ask students to download an app, students can launch on of those videos instead, such as this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vvU-Ajwbok. Video Link : 1613 [Thank you to Dana Wallace for posting on May 4, 2016 a link to this Hearing Voices app on the Society for the Teaching of Psychology Facebook page!] ... View more

Susan Nolan, presenting at the Northwest Conference on Teaching Introductory Psychology, offered some suggestions on diversifying the images in your presentations – and I’d add diversifying name used in your exam questions – to ensure that all students see people and names that are both familiar to them and not familiar to them. I teach on a diverse campus where our students or their parents have come from all over the world. I use my students’ names in exam questions. Last term, I had one student, as she handed in her exam with a big grin said, “This is the first time I’ve ever seen my name on an exam!” Nolan suggested visiting Wikipedia’s most common surnames page. Choose a name, and then, if you’re looking for a photo to use on a presentation slide, search that name in Google images. Be sure to click on “search tools” and then under “usage rights,” choose “labeled for noncommercial reuse.” Alternatively, you can use a fake name generator, like, well, FakeNameGenerator.com. Choose the gender you’d like or leave it set to random. Choose your “name set,” such as “Arabic.” Click “Generate.” When I just ran it for Arabic, it generated Hafsah Yakootah Khouri. I can use that name in an exam question, or I can do a Google Images search for an image I can use on a presentation slide. Again, be sure to click on “search tools” and then under “usage rights,” choose “labeled for noncommercial reuse.” Do you give your students case studies of fictional people? Fake Name Generator is a terrific site for creating a fake person. Not only does it generate names, it will generate an entire fake identify, including address (that’s what the “country” field is for), phone number, birthday, MasterCard number, occupation and company, height, weight, blood type, favorite color. ... View more

Winston Moseley died on March 28, 2016 at the age of 81. His obituary appeared in the New York Times on April 4 th . Moseley was the catalyst for an event that everyone who has taken Intro Psych since the mid-1960s remembers, but I’m not surprised if you don’t recognize his name. The event is known for the victim, not the killer. In 1964, Winston Moseley murdered Kitty Genovese. “His life behind bars had been relatively eventful. Mr. Moseley was condemned to die in the electric chair, but in 1967, two years after New York State abolished most capital punishments, he won an appeal that reduced his sentence to an indeterminate life term. While at Attica Correctional Facility, in 1968, he escaped while on a hospital visit to Buffalo, raped a woman and held hostages at gunpoint before being recaptured. He joined in the 1971 Attica uprising; earned a college degree [bachelor’s in sociology] in 1977; and was rejected 18 times at parole hearings, the last time in 2015.” The obituary explains that this would have been just another murder among the 635 others that year in New York City had it not been for a front-page New York Times article published two weeks later. The story’s angle was apathy – that 38 people witnessed the whole thing yet did nothing. But that’s not quite what happened. “None saw the attack in its entirety. Only a few had glimpsed parts of it, or recognized the cries for help. Many thought they had heard lovers or drunks quarreling. There were two attacks, not three. And afterward, two people did call the police. A 70-year-old woman ventured out and cradled the dying victim in her arms until they arrived. Ms. Genovese died on the way to a hospital.” For more, see last month's blog post on Kitty Genovese. ... View more

Patty Duke, who portrayed a young Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker in the play and later in the movie, died on March 29, 2016. Her obituary in The Telegraph discussed her less-than-pleasant relationship with her guardians. For example, “For 18 months before the audition for the Broadway production of The Miracle Worker, the Rosses spent some time each day treating their protegée as if she were deaf and blind, banging pots and pans behind her until she no longer reacted and making her do household chores blindfold.” This is quite an example of habituation. “[S]ome time each day” for a year and a half Duke’s guardians made sudden, loud noises. Sure enough, she eventually would not respond to those sounds. If you have the time, you can do a quick classroom demonstration. Start the demonstration by asking students to write down something, like the names of five friends. As students look down to write, slam a book on a table. Ask students, “Raise your hand if you jumped.” Briefly tell your students who Helen Keller was and show a short clip from The Miracle Worker. Now ask your students to consider the challenges faced by Patty Duke playing someone who is both deaf and blind. “If you were Patty Duke, what could you do to prepare for this role so that you wouldn’t respond to sudden, loud noises?” After students share their ideas, reveal how Duke’s guardians prepared her. ... View more

Those who write/draw comic strips are often astute observers of human behavior. That makes the funny pages a gold mine for psychology examples. (Here’s another blog post I wrote about a comic strip illustrating the spotlight effect.) Last week (February 16, 2016), Scott Adams of Dilbert fame gave us a wonderful example of the door-in-the-face technique. When a coworker’s babysitter cancels, she asks Dilbert if he likes kids. He assures her that he is not interested in watching her kids. She replies, “I was going to ask you to adopt them.” There’s the door-in-the face. Dilbert’s replies, “Absolutely not. The best I can is watch them tonight.” One of my favorites comes from Mark Tatulli’s Lio (November 14, 2009). Lio is known for having a different group of friends than most kids. Including in his group are ghouls, goblins, and, yes, even death. In this particular comic strip, Lio loudly rips open a bag of “Monsta Treats.” In the next panel we see a monster towering over Lio, soaking him with dripping saliva. Ask students, in pairs or small groups, to identify the unconditioned stimulus, unconditioned responses, conditioned stimulus, and conditioned response. Circulate around the room clarifying as needed. Bring the class back together and identify each. Next ask what generalization would look like. And then ask what would need to happen to bring about extinction. Hilary Price in her Rhymes with Orange comic (August 21, 2013) gave a nice side-by-side comparison of positive and negative reinforcement. In the first panel a middle schooler is working on homework, and an off-panel parent says “If you finish this homework, I will let you watch a show.” In the second panel an adult is typing on a computer, and the adult’s thought bubble reads “If I finish this paragraph, I will let myself pee.” Ask students, again in pairs or small groups, to identify the behaviors being reinforced, and then to identify which is positive reinforcement (first panel) and which is negative reinforcement (adult) and explain why. If you have a favorite comic strip that illustrates some psychological comment, please leave a link to it in the comments! ... View more

I was looking at how my students did on my Intro Psych exam questions this past fall. One item on split-brain jumped out at me. I have such a question on the first exam and another on the final. Both questions posit that something is briefly shown in the left visual field and another something is briefly shown in the right visual field of someone who has had split brain surgery. The answer choices ask the student to identify what the person can do, e.g., use their right hand to point at the first something, say what the other something was. Last fall, how did my students do on the split brain questions? Not so well. On the module exam, about 50% of my students got the question right. On the final exam, about 20% did. I know this is a tricky concept. Initially I was thinking I could do some sort of in-class demo to help students see the difference. I had some ideas that involved student volunteers, but then when it came time to do it in class, I thought, "There is no way this is going to work. They're going to leave being more confused." So I didn't do it. At my next department meeting, I said that I was trying to find a way to help students grasp split brain and was wondering if anyone had ideas. Rod Fowers said that he had created a worksheet [download here] that helps students think it through. He acknowledged that a 2-page worksheet for this concept may feel like overkill, but he was also trying to model to students how to break something that is complex into smaller chunks to make it more digestible. That makes sense. I sent the worksheet to my students as a 5-point extra credit opportunity (over 600 points in the course) via our course management system on Friday. The instructions were to print it out (or manipulate it digitally), follow the instructions (which includes drawing), and get it to me by the beginning of class on Monday (day of their first exam, an exam that included a split brain question). About half of my students completed the worksheet correctly. (Only one student who turned it in didn't earn credit for it.) How did they do on that first exam split brain question? Of the 26 who successfully completed the worksheet, 69% answered the question correctly. Of the 28 who didn't do the worksheet, 25% answered the question correctly. I can see that difference even without a statistical test. Now, I know what you're thinking. "But Sue, it's the students who tend to do better on tests who do the extra credit." I removed the split brain question from my students' total exam scores. Was there a difference in their adjusted exam scores? Nope. Next up is the final exam. Will I see an increase in performance on that split brain question as well? I'll let you know in a couple months. I have data at this point to include this split brain worksheet in my classes next term as a required assignment. I may even make it part of an in-class small group activity like my colleague Ruth Frickle did yesterday. Although I will probably modify the worksheet, removing the questions about how each eye is halved since that's a bit more than I really want my students to know. If you try this worksheet, I'd love to hear how it works for you! ... View more

As a psychology instructor it is clear to you the myriad ways in which psychology can be used to both understand social issues and speak to solutions. In fact, the APA Guidelines for the Major (2013; see below) encourages us to help our students see the same. Debra Mashek (2016) suggests a few assignments that provide our students opportunities to connect psychology with today’s social issues. Integrative essay The instructor chooses three articles (interesting, nifty methodology, and not too difficult for students to understand – but on the surface may not have anything obviously to do with each other), and assigns one of those articles to each student, i.e. 1/3 of the class gets article A, 1/3 gets article B, and 1/3 gets article C. Each student writes a one-page summary of their assigned article and brings that with them to class. The class breaks up into groups of three, where the groups are composed of students who have all read different articles. In a jigsaw classroom format, the students tell the others in their three-person group about their article. Students then “articulate an applied question that invites application of ideas from all the articles.” Each 3-person group then co-authors a short paper (two to three pages) that identifies their applied question and how each of the three articles speak to that question. Persuasion research activity Right after Hurricane Katrina, Mashek decided she wanted her Intro Psych students to experience psychological research firsthand while also contributing to the relief effort. Mashek gave a brief lecture on foot-in-the-door, door-in-the-face, and reciprocity. She randomly assigned ¼ of students to foot-in-the-door, ¼ to door-in-the-face, ¼ reciprocity (she gave these students lollipops to hand to people before asking for a donation), and ¼ to a command condition (“give money”). During that same class period students were sent out in pairs to different areas of campus to return an hour later. Thirty-five students collected $600. Students reported a greater connection to the victims of Katrina after they returned than they reported before they left. Mashek used this experience as a leaping off point for discussing research methodology in the next class session. Current headline classroom discussion Pick a current headline. Break students into small groups, perhaps as an end of class activity, and give them one or two discussion questions based on the current chapter you are covering that are relevant to the headline. For example, if you are covering the social psychology chapter in Intro Psych, give students this headline from the January 9, 2016 New York Times: “Gov. Paul LePage of Maine Says Racial Comment Was a ‘Slip-Up’.” This is a short article, so you could ask students to read the article itself. Sample discussion questions: (1) What evidence is there of ingroup bias? (2) Do Gov. LePage’s comments illustrate stereotyping, prejudice, and/or discrimination? Explain. If time allows, student groups can report out in class. Alternatively, this could be a group writing assignment or a scribe for the group could post a summary of the group’s responses to a class discussion board. Students will gain an appreciation of the scope of psychology and how it is relevant to today’s social issues. This activity throughout the course should help students, after the course, to continue to see psychology at play. The APA Guidelines for the Major (2013) include these indicators related to social issues: 1.3A Articulate how psychological principles can be used to explain social issues, address pressing societal needs, and inform public policy 3.3c Explain how psychology can promote civic, social, and global outcomes that benefit others 3.3C Pursue personal opportunities to promote civic, social, and global outcomes that benefit the community. 3.3d Describe psychology-related issues of global concern (e.g., poverty, health, migration, human rights, rights of children, international conflict, sustainability) 3.3D Consider the potential effects of psychology-based interventions on issues of global concern American Psychological Association. (2013). APA guidelines for the undergraduate psychology major: Version 2.0. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/ed/precollege/undergrad/index.aspx Mashek, D. (2016, January 4). Bringing the psychology of social issues to life. Lecture presented at National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology in Tradewinds Island Grand Resort, St. Petersburg Beach. Seelye, K. Q. (2016, January 9). Gov. Paul LePage of Maine Says Racial Comment Was a 'Slip-up'. The New York Times. Retrieved January 9, 2016, from http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/01/08/gov-paul-lepage-of-maine-denies-making-racist-remarks ... View more

This question may appear on my next Intro Psych exam that includes coverage of the social psychology chapter. If you want 2 points extra credit, answer A. If you want 6 points extra credit, answer B. But wait! You will only get the points if 90% or more of the class chooses 2 points. If less than 90% of the class chooses 2 points, no one will get any extra credit. Dylan Selterman (2015) has given his University of Maryland students a similar challenge on their term papers. Since 2008, only one class has earned the extra credit. Why bring this ‘tragedy of the commons’ (aka ‘prisoner’s dilemma) to our students in such a real-life way? We face similar choices all of the time. Finding a recycling bin is a little inconvenient but it the end we all benefit by having less trash in landfills. Shortening a shower means more water for all of us. Driving a little slower means less fuel consumption resulting in a reduced need to drill more oil wells. Perhaps having this experience will make our students, the next time they are confronted with such a choice, avoid acting solely in their own best interest and instead choose to give up a little in the interest of benefitting everyone. Selterman, D. (2015, July 20). Why I give my students a 'tragedy of the commons' extra credit challenge. Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/07/20/why-i-give-my-students-a-tragedy-of-the-commons-extra-credit-challenge/ ... View more

This Between Friends comic from July 5, 2015 provides a nice example of the spotlight effect. The protagonist is convinced that the fast-food restaurant employee is noticing everything that she doesn’t like about her appearance, everything from her hair color to the stain on her shirt. In the comic, the employee’s expression doesn’t change leading the reader to conclude that the employee notices nothing. Ask students to think about a recent spotlight effect experience they had. Was there something about their appearance that they were certain everyone would notice but likely no one or very few did? After students share their experiences with one or two people near them, ask for volunteers to share a few examples with the class. Conclude this exercise by inviting students to yell out ideas about what the fast food employee is thinking about what she is certain others are noticing about her. ... View more

This piece was originally published on April 17th, 2008   Throughout the world, boys and girls prefer to play with different types of toys. Boys typically like to play with cars and trucks, while girls typically choose to play with dolls. Why is this? A traditional sociological explanation is that boys and girls are socialized and encouraged to play with different types of toys by theirparents, peers, and the “society.” Growing scientific evidence suggests, however, that boys’ and girls’ toy preferences may have a biological origin. In 2002, Gerianne M. Alexander of Texas A&M University and Melissa Hines of City University in London stunned the scientific world by showing that vervet monkeys showed the same sex-typical toy preferences as humans. In an incredibly ingenious study, published in Evolution and Human Behavior, Alexander and Hines gave two stereotypically masculine toys (a ball and a police car), two stereotypically feminine toys (a soft doll and a cooking pot), and two neutral toys (a picture book and a stuffed dog) to 44 male and 44 female vervet monkeys. They then assessed the monkeys’ preference for each toy by measuring how much time they spent with each. Their data demonstrated that male vervet monkeys showed significantly greater interest in the masculine toys, and the female vervet monkeys showed significantly greater interest in the feminine toys. The two sexes did not differ in their preference for the neutral toys. Alexander and Hines’s article contains a wonderful picture (reproduced here in full living color, courtesy of Gerianne M. Alexander) of a female vervet monkey conducting an anogenital inspection (examining the genital area of the doll in an attempt to determine whether it is male or female), as a girl might, and a male vervet monkey pushing the police car back and forth, as a boy might. If children’s toy preferences were largely formed by gender socialization, as traditional sociologists claim, in which their parents give “gender-appropriate” toys to boys and girls, how can these male and female vervet monkeys have the same preferences as boys and girls? They were never socialized by humans, and they had never seen these toys before in their lives. Yet, not only did male and female vervet monkeys show the identical sex preference for toys, but how they played with these toys was also identical to how boys and girls might. As stunningly ingenious and spectacular Alexander and Hines's initial study was, it stood alone in the scientific literature for a while. All new scientific discoveries must be replicated to make sure that the findings are both genuine and generalizable. Well, it took the field six years, but the original findings have now been replicated. In a forthcoming article in Hormones and Behavior, Janice M. Hassett, Erin R. Siebert, and Kim Wallen, of Emory University, replicate the sex preferences in toys among members of another primate species (rhesus monkeys). Their study shows that, when given a choice between stereotypically male “wheeled toys” (such as a wagon, a truck, and a car) and stereotypically female “plush toys” (such as Winnie the Pooh, Raggedy Ann, and a koala bear hand puppet), male rhesus monkeys show strong and significant preference for the masculine toys. Female rhesus monkeys show preference for the feminine toys, but the difference in their preference is not statistically significant. We do not yet know exactly why males of different primate species prefer wheeled toys and other vehicles, or why females of different primate species prefer plush toys and other dolls (except for their vague resemblance to babies, for which females are evolutionarily designed to care). However, it is becoming less and less likely that “gender socialization” is the reason why boys and girls prefer different toys, and more and more likely that there are some genetic, hormonal, and other biological reasons for the observed sex differences in toy preference. ... View more

As we are all aware, it's tough being an adjunct. Brianne Bolin, an adjunct, and two fellow adjuncts (one past and one current) have stepped up and are doing something to help their fellow adjunct colleagues. They've created a non-profit organization, PrecariCorps: Agents for Higher Ed. On the home page, it simply states "Seeking to provide temporary, welcome relief from the economic, emotional, and physiological stressors that all too often define the life of an adjunct educator. Brianne was inspired to create PrecariCorps as a result of the unsolicited donations she received from people who read about her experiences and struggles in an article in Elle. Brianne has a masters in English and struggles to care for herself and son on the salary she makes being an adjunct instructor at Chicago College. She struggles to make ends meet and during the summer months when she qualifies, she pays for food using food stamps ($349 per month). The PrecariCorps site was created in hopes that they could solicit donations to help fell adjuncts in various ways, from financial assistance to a place for adjuncts to share their experiences. So far, they've received 28 donations, received 10 applications for funding, and have given 2 grants. She has plans to expand the campaign and take the message to administrators and tenured colleagues. Brianne and her colleagues remind us that each of us has the power to take the first steps in making a difference in the lives of others, even when we face our own struggles. You can read about Brianne and what she is accomplishing in the March 2015 Article and the July 2015 PS article. ... View more