Originally posted on May 31, 2016. In 1964, I arrived in Iowa City and anxiously walked into the University of Iowa’s psychology department to meet my graduate school advisor. Among his first words: “I know, Dave, that you indicated ‘personality psychology’ as your interest area. But our only personality psychologist has just left . . . so we’ve moved you into social psychology.” Thus began my journey into social psychology. Looking back, aware of the exciting fruits of social psychology’s last half century, I view that unexpected shift as providential. And reading The Wisest One in the Room, by my esteemed colleagues Tom Gilovich and Lee Ross, fortifies my sense of the importance of social psychology’s practicality. Their new book, subtitled How You Can Benefit from Social Psychology’s Most Powerful Insights, enumerates social psychology’s biggest ideas and applies them to promoting happiness, conflict resolution, success for at-risk youth, and a sustainable climate future. The latter goal, they note, will be enabled by social norms that stigmatize the worst climate-change offenders and celebrate those who are advancing sustainability. That may sound like an impossible aim in a year when one party’s presidential candidate is a climate-change skeptic who has tweeted that “the concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive”? But consider, Gilovich and Ross remind us, of how fast social norms can change, with same-sex couples’ rights going from nonexistent to the law and will of the land, fertility rates dropping sharply worldwide in response to overpopulation, smoking transformed from being grown-up and sophisticated to being (among middle class people) dirty and just plain stupid. Yesterday’s cool—big tobacco—has become today’s corporate evil. The hopeful bottom line: transformational change can happen with surprising speed and great effect. ... View more

Originally posted on June 8, 2016. Our personal assumptions matter, often by influencing our attitudes and public policies. Here’s an example: If you see same-sex attraction as a lifestyle choice, as swayed by social influence, or as encouraged by social tolerance, then you probably are opposed to equal employment and marriage rights for gay people. Those in fact are the prevailing assumptions in the 75 countries that legally forbid homosexual behavior. If you see sexual orientation as “inborn”—as shaped by biological and prenatal environmental influences—then you likely favor “equal rights for homosexual and bisexual people.” That being so, note Michael Bailey, Paul Vasey, Lisa Diamond, Marc Breedlove, Eric Vilain, and Marc Epprecht, in their state-of-the-art review of sexual orientation research, psychological science has much to offer our public conversation about gay rights issues. Some of their conclusions: The phenomenon: Sexual attraction, arousal, behavior, and identity usually coincide, but not always. For example, some men who identify as straight may nevertheless be strongly attracted to men. Same-sex attraction has existed across time and place. Although sexual identity and behavior are culturally influenced, same-sex activity crosses human history, dating from the era of Mesolithic rock art. Bisexual identity is multifaceted. Some claim bisexual identity after previous sexual experiences with both men and women, or, even if primarily attracted to one sex, because of occasional sexual attractions to the other sex.  “Some bisexual-identified men have bisexual genital arousal patterns and some do not.” With men, bisexuality is more often a transitional identity; with women, it is more often a stable identity. Heritability. Twin studies suggest that “about a third of variation in sexual orientation is attributable to genetic influences.” The nonsocial environment matters. One striking example is the fraternal birth order effect: The odds of a man having a same-sex orientation are about: 2% for those with no older biological brothers. 2.6% given one older biological brother, 3.5% given two older biological brothers, 4.6% given three older biological brothers, and 6.0% given four older biological brothers. The social environment matters little: “There is no good evidence that either [social influence or social tolerance] increases the rate of homosexual orientation.” If only a mad scientist could pit nature against nurture by changing, at birth, boys into girls. Castrate them as newborns, surgically feminize them, and then raise them as girls. Does such rearing socialize these “girls” into becoming attracted to males? Such surgical and social gender reassignment did happen between 1960 and 2000 after a number of babies were born with penises that were malformed or severed in surgical accidents. As teaching psychologists are aware, their gender identity was not so easily transformed. As is less well known, report the expert sexuality researchers, in each of seven known cases where sexual orientation was reported, it was predominantly or exclusively an attraction to women. “This is the result we would expect if male sexual orientation were entirely due to nature, and it is the opposite of the result expected if it were due to nurture.”­­ “If one cannot reliably make a male human become attracted to other males by cutting off his penis in infancy and rearing him as a girl, then what other psychosocial intervention could plausibly have that effect?” With such scientific evidence in mind, conclude the expert researchers, “we urge governments to reconsider the wisdom of legislation that criminalizes homosexual behavior.” ... View more

Originally posted on June 22, 2016. As every psychology student knows well, human perception is both a “bottom-up” and “top-down” process. Our perceptions are formed, bottom-up (from sensory input)...but also top-down (constructed by our experience and expectations). Top-down perception is usually illustrated visually. Reading from left to right, our expectations cause us to perceive the middle figure differently than when reading from above. And when first reading the phrase below, people often misperceive it: ...by seeing what they expect (and failing to detect the repeated word). The same constructive process influences what we hear. Told about a young couple that has been plagued by their experience with some bad sects, people may—depending on what is on their mind—hear something quite different (bad sex). The context of a sentence will determine whether you hear “the stuffy nose” or “the stuff he knows.” Likewise, the weather-forecasting “meteorologist” may become, in a discussion of a muscular kidney specialist, the “meaty urologist.” The reality of top-down hearing helps explain why theater instructors and directors, who are training their actors to project their voices, may not appreciate the hearing difficulty faced by those of us with hearing loss—and why we appreciate mic’d actors and the hearing assistive technology described here. The problem has two sources: Most theater directors hear normally, and thus may naturally assume that others hear what they hear. The directors already know what the words are. When my TV captioning is on, I can—thanks to top-down perception—hear the spoken words clearly. My expectations, formed by the captions, drive my perception. If I turn the captions off, I no longer understand the words. Play directors who know their scripts are like those of us who watch captioned TV. But their patrons are in the no-captions mode. Happily, here at my place called Hope (Hope College), hearing accessibility is being addressed. My theater colleagues are working to support their patrons with hearing loss—by seeking to understand their needs, by equipping their facilities with hearing assistance, and by welcoming feedback after plays. ... 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

In this 3 minute and 30 second video (posted June 30, 2016), Mary Roach, author of some of my favorite books, like Grunt, Bonk, and Stiff, reports that the Veterans Administration spends one billion dollars annually on hearing loss treatment. After covering hearing in the Intro Psych sensation chapter, but before showing this video, ask students to consider why there is so much hearing loss in the military (for example, there are lots of things that go boom). Now ask students for some possible solutions. Students may say better ear protection. Better ear protection would block out the sudden loud sounds, but ask students if someone out on patrol might want to also hear softer sounds, like what their fellow patrol-mates are saying. Now, show students this short video. Video Link : 1633 Roach notes that it’s likely that this technology will be available to civilians. Ask students who else might benefit from this technology. ... View more

R. Eric Landrum (Boise State University) tells the story of a student who earned a BA and went out into the workforce. One day she ran into him and apologized for not using her psych degree. He asked what field she was working in. She replied, “I run my own business.” Landrum notes that we need to do a better job helping our psych majors understand that the skills and knowledge that they gain through the major will help them in a large number of career fields. Dialing it back to Intro Psych, we can help everyone who takes the Intro course see the value of psychology. Near the end of the Intro Psych course, show students these data from the June 2016 APA Monitor. People with a bachelor’s in psychology work primarily in sales, other work activities (i.e. “design, development, computer applications, production, quality management and work activities not otherwise specified”), professional services (e.g., “health care, counseling, financial services, or legal services”), and management/supervision. Other areas include teaching (11%), accounting/finance/contracts (9%), employee relations (5%), and research (3%). For an in-class or online discussion board activity, divide students into eight groups and assign each group one job category from the chart. (For larger classes, to keep group-size small, use more groups.) Ask students these questions: Identify at least one concept from each chapter we covered in this course that would be useful in this job field. For each concept chosen, briefly explain why it would be useful for those in that job field to know it. Students can write responses individually or as a group or each group could verbally report out. If time permits, you can opt to use a jigsaw classroom. If you have a class of 64 or more, create 8 groups of at least 8 students each. (Have less than 64 in a class? Use fewer groups and fewer students per group and assign each group two or more job categories.) Each group answers the questions above. Following discussion, each group member is assigned to a new group so that each new group now has at least one person who had discussed each job category. Within the new groups, group members share the concepts their former groups had identified. Ask students to look for commonalities and differences. Following discussion of these new groups, ask students to report out what they learned. For example, did the same concepts appear regardless of job category? Or were there some concepts that seem to be unique to a particular job category. Conclusion This is a nice integration activity that fits with the pillar model for Intro Psych (Gurung, et.al., 2016) and Goal 5: Professional Development from Guidelines 2.0 Gurung, R. A., Hackathorn, J., Enns, C., Frantz, S., Cacioppo, J. T., Loop, T., & Freeman, J. E. (2016). Strengthening introductory psychology: A new model for teaching the introductory course. American Psychologist, 71(2), 112-124. ... 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

If you make candy bars and sell them through vending machines, you can use operant conditioning principles to get people to do all sort of things. In this case, Nestlé, the maker of Kit Kat bars in Brazil, put special vending machines on two different college campuses in the same Brazilian city. The machines streamed video to each other. Players stepped up to each machine and pressed play (“jogar” in Portuguese). The goal? To win a staring contest. The winner earned a Kit Kat Chunky chocolate bar. Video Link : 1628 Bonus: If you’d like to expand your coverage of schemas to talk about differences in food preferences around the world, tell your students about the phenomenon that is Kit Kat, the most popular candy, in Japan. Ask your students to guess how many flavors of Kit Kat there are in Japan. The answer: almost 300 (Goldman, 2016). Some of the flavors: grilled potato, cherry blossom, soybean, blueberry cheesecake, chocobanana, white peach, green tea, pumpkin, apple, mango, lemon, red bean paste, apple vinegar, pineapple, kiwi, cappuccino, jasmine tea (The weird and wacky…, n.d.). Want to try out some of these flavors yourself? You can order some here. Why is Kit Kat so popular in Japan? One factor is probably because its name is similar to the Japanese phrase kitto katsu – good luck (literally, surely win) (Goldman, 2016). Goldman, R. (2016, May 13). Japan has a Kit Kat for every taste, and then some. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/14/world/what-in-the-world/kit-kat-japan.html The weird and wacky flavors of Kit Kat in Japan. (n.d.). Retrieved May 28, 2016, from http://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/worlds-weirdest-kit-kat-candy-bars/ ... View more

The Crisis Text Line is a crisis hotline that lets those in crisis text a volunteer crisis counselor. Since they launched in 2013, millions of texts have been exchanged between those asking for help and those providing it. This 10-minute TED talk by the founder Nancy Lublin provides an inspiring overview. Video Link : 1632 For students in crisis I’m adding this statement to my syllabus: Counseling Center.  Are you feeling stressed about college? Tests? Your future? A relationship? A loss? Adjusting to a new culture? An addiction, yours or someone else's? Living? Visit Highline's Counseling Center (counseling.highline.edu) in Building 6, upstairs on the north side of the building. Email: counseling@highline.edu. Phone: (206) 592-3353 If the Counseling Center is closed and you need to talk with someone now, call the King County Crisis Clinic at (206) 461-3222. If you'd rather text with someone, contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HELLO to 741-741. For texters concerned about privacy, the volunteer counselors don’t see their phone numbers. It’s all done through an encrypted computer interface. And for those who are really concerned, they can text “loofah” (or similar spellings) to have their texts scrubbed from the system (Dupere, 2016). Is your psych club, Psi Beta chapter or Psi Chi chapter looking for a project? Print and post flyers on your campus. You can use the Crisis Text Line’s pre-made flyer. Or do a fundraiser. Crisis Text Line accepts donations. How to become a volunteer Volunteers apply, and those who are accepted undergo 34 hours of online training. Volunteers commit to doing one 4-hour shift per week for a year. Do you have students who are over 18 years old who might be interested in volunteering? Download the Crisis Text Line volunteer flyer: http://www.crisistextline.org/wp-content/uploads/CTLVolunteerFlyer.pdf. It’s not a guaranteed gig; 39% of those who apply are accepted to begin the training (Dupere, 2016). Show me the data All of those 18 million texts provide a boat-load of data. And those data are publicly available at http://crisistrends.org. Texts about depression increase throughout the day, peaking at 8pm. Texts about family issues are most common on Sundays. The state with the most LGBTQ-related texts? Alaska. The least? Vermont. The state with the most bullying-related texts? Vermont. The least? New Hampshire. Starting in Spring 2014, texts about anxiety and texts about suicidal thoughts co-occur. You can also choose a topic to see a sample text and a word cloud of the top 50 words that appear in texts related to that topic. Here’s what I got when I selected anxiety. If you’re a researcher interested in using their data, their FAQ says, “Data access is available to approved academic researchers. The application will be available here in late January 2016.” As of this writing (June 2016), I don’t see an application. If you’re interested, email them at info@crisistextline.org.    Dupere, K. (2016, May 28). This text line is helping teens talk about mental health without saying a word. Retrieved May 31, 2016, from http://mashable.com/2016/05/28/crisis-text-line/ ... View more

White light is the presence of all of the visible light waves. White noise is the presence of all of the sound waves within the range of human hearing. Because our sensory systems are optimized to detect change, noises at night are likely to jar us awake. White noise machines or smartphone apps (or fans) mask other noises. The frequencies from those other noises blend into the white noise as long as the loudness of the other noises is the same or lower than the white noise. If they blend in well enough, our brains won’t detect them, and we sleep right through the sound. (Mileage varies. Some people are more sensitive to other noises when presented inside of white noise.) Side note: Pink noise is like white noise in that all of the frequencies are there, but with pink noise, the higher frequencies have decreased loudness. LiveScience has a nice explanation of the difference. Why is it called pink noise? In light, the higher frequencies are on the blue end of the spectrum. If those higher frequencies in white light are reduced, the light would appear more pink. Some people prefer pink noise over white because white noise sounds too high-pitched. World War II (source: 99 Percent Invisible, Episode 208: Vox Ex Machina) The 1939 World’s Fair in New York debuted the first voice synthesizer, created by sound engineer Homer Dudley of Bell Labs. After the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the US called on Dudley to solve a serious communication problem. For allied military leaders to talk with each other, they had to use shortwave radio – that anyone could listen in on. They had been using a scrambling technique that would switch the frequencies of the voices, so that high frequency sounds would transmit as low frequency and vice versa. Decoding those transmissions was as easy as it appears – for anyone listening in. Homer Dudley created a 2,000 square foot, 50-ton computer that compressed and digitized voices then masked them in white noise, on the fly. The trick? Two identical vinyl records of recorded white noise – for each conversation. At least 3,000 pairs of these records were made – each with a different white noise pattern. One set stayed in Washington, DC; the other set was sent to London. Each pair had a codename, such as wild dog. Before a call, the communication officers would decide which record to use. At the Pentagon in Washington, DC, the communication officers would open a short wave radio connection to London. At the designated time, each side would start their records. The voice from, say Truman, would be sent from his microphone, through the machine that digitized his voice, then mixed his digitized voice with the white noise from the record, and finally sent it out over the shortwave radio frequency. To anyone listening in on that radio frequency, they would hear only white noise since Truman’s voice would blend into the white noise. Across the pond in London, the signal would be intercepted, run through the machine where the white noise playing on the vinyl record would be subtracted, and Churchill would hear Truman’s digitized voice. After the call, the records were destroyed. For the next call, a new pair was used. This device “was involved in virtually every major military operation after 1942. It was even critical in the planning of the Manhattan Project and the dropping of the atomic bombs over Japan.” Another side note: When this technology was declassified in the 1970s, researchers put it to good use. It’s digital compression that smooshes our voices enough to be sent through cell phone towers. Our MP3 audio files and streaming video files use this same compression technology. Conclusion This Memorial Day weekend, when you turn on your white noise generator, give a special nod to those fought in World War II. ... View more

The 1960s and early 1970s was a rough time in the United States – 1968 alone gave us the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy and riots at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Vietnam War protests were occurring on college campuses across the country – 1970 brought the Kent State University shootings. Out of this mayhem rose Bill Backer (born June 9, 1926 – died May 13, 2016). In 1971, his flight to London was forced to land in Ireland thanks to fog at his destination airport. “The next morning, Mr. Backer was stunned to see the diverse group of passengers who had been angry the night before cheerfully conversing in the coffee shop… ‘People from all over the world, forced by circumstance, were having a Coke – or a cup of coffee or tea – together.’” (Roberts, 2016). Bill Backer was the adman who brought us this commercial, introduced to a new generation in the final episode of Madmen. Video Link : 1614 In this one-minute commercial – music video, really – Backer tells us that while we all may be different in so many ways, by sharing a Coke, we are all part of a single ingroup. During such a fractious time period, what a wonderful message: Hey everyone, let’s just have a Coke and sing as one – if only just for a minute. In 2016, on the eve of a U.S. presidential election, with the country feeling as divided as ever, I would love to see someone, including an advertiser, step forward and offer a unifying message. I tell my students that what would bring about world peace is being attacked by aliens from outer space (one heck of a superordinate goal), but I much prefer the ingroupiness invoked by a serene image of all of us on a hilltop, singing together with a Coke in hand.   For a quick classroom demonstration, show the video to your students. Ask students in pairs, small groups, or as a class, to posit some possible ingroups for the people on the hilltop before they gathered there (e.g., culture, country of origin), and then identify the dominant ingroup conveyed by the commercial (e.g., Coke drinkers). Conclude the exercise by saying, “And if you’re drinking a Coke, you’re part of that ingroup.” Bonus tip: If you do buy the world a Coke, you'll probably feel happier -- "Doing good... makes us feel good" (Myers, 2014). Myers, D. G., & DeWall, C. N. (2014). Psychology in everyday life (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Worth. Roberts, S. (2016, May 16). Bill Backer, who taught the world (and Don Draper) to sing, dies at 89. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/17/business/bill-backer-who-taught-the-world-and-don-draper-to-sing-dies-at-89.html ... View more

Whatever words researchers have chosen to use to refer to people with intellectual disability have been turned into pop culture insults, such as idiot, imbecile, and moron. In more recent decades when researchers favored the term mentally retarded, “retard” became the preferred insult. In fact I heard a student utter this in my class just a couple weeks ago. The student, I am sure, did not intend to offend an entire group of people. Instead, she was using a word she learned to be a good stand-in for asinine. Personally, I’d like to see asinine make a comeback. It’s a good word. It nicely calls out asinine behavior without denigrating a group of people. In the fall of 2012, after a presidential debate, Ann Coulter tweeted “I highly approve of Romney’s decision to be kind and gentle to the retard” (https://twitter.com/AnnCoulter/status/260581147493412865). On the Special Olympics website the next day John Franklin Stephens responded. “I’m a 30 year old man with Down syndrome who has struggled with the public’s perception that an intellectual disability means that I am dumb and shallow. I am not either of those things, but I do process information more slowly than the rest of you. In fact it has taken me all day to figure out how to respond to your use of the R-word last night.” His time was well-spent; he wrote a beautiful, well-crafted response. He closed with this, “Well, Ms. Coulter, you, and society, need to learn that being compared to people like me should be considered a badge of honor. No one overcomes more than we do and still loves life so much. Come join us someday at Special Olympics. See if you can walk away with your heart unchanged.” He signed it, “A friend you haven’t made yet.” More recently, a New York Times article (May 7, 2016) reflected on the use of the term intellectual disability, the favored term for the last decade. The article provides a nice historical summary of both the language used and how people with intellectual disabilities were treated. Michael Wehmeyer (director of the University of Kansas Beach Center on Disability) notes that intellectual disability is “the first term that doesn’t refer to the condition as a defective mental process – slow, weak, feeble… Intellectual disability conveys that it is not a problem within a person, but a lack of fit between that person’s capacities and the demands of the environment in which the person is functioning.” Although he personally prefers cognitive disability (and so do I, not that I really get to have an opinion on the matter). It is difficult to imagine how “intellectual disability” could be twisted into an insult. While those who think of such things work on that, the rest of us can work on helping our students understand how offensive it is to casually toss around the word retarded as an insult. This is an easy topic to tackle when covering development, intelligence, or perhaps even better, stereotyping and prejudice. We seem to have largely moved past “that’s so gay” as an insult. We can do the same with “that’s so retarded.” Signed, The niece of a woman with an intellectual disability ... 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

The Discovering the Scientist Within: Research Methods in Psychology author team—Gary Lewandowski​, Natalie Ciarocco​, and David Strohmetz​—would like to share our sincere thanks for your overwhelming interest in our recently published first edition. Since publication in December, we've been so delighted to see that our vision to create a text with a student-centric "learning by doing" approach has resonated with so many our of colleagues throughout North America. Thank you for your reviews, comments, support, and excitement. We hope that you will contact us with any questions! Best wishes in your courses in the upcoming year. Sincerely, Gary, Natalie and Dave What's so different about Discovering the Scientist Within? Each design chapter focuses on a single research question, which provides a strong foundation for students’ understanding of the actual design and the entire research process. Each design chapter repeats all steps of the research process, which puts into classroom practice the authors’ own experience-based conclusion that repetition is the key to solidifying research skills—skills that lead to success in the laboratory, in the workplace, and beyond. Book-specific Research in Action activities in LaunchPad Solo put students in the role of the researcher and ask them to make decisions in planning and executing a study from idea to results. The authors have provided the most comprehensive Instructor’s Resource Manual for the research methods course, containing nearly 300 sources to make teaching methods easier and more relatable to students. ... View more