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

How cool would it be if a couple cognitive psychologists decided to write a blog for students on how to study? Megan Smith (Rhode Island College) and Yana Weinstein (University of Massachusetts Lowell) have created LearningScientists.org. Their “[m]ission is to make scientific research more accessible to students and educators in order to increase the use of evidence-based study strategies among students.” Launched on Februrary 5, 2016, their first blog post, “Communication Breakdown Between Science and Practice in Education,” nicely explains why they decided to create this blog. In short, there needs to be a more direct pipeline between cognitive science and the people who use it, such as students and teachers. Those of us who teach psychology are professional interpreters and translators of psychological science, and as such, we have a responsibility to share what we know. Kudos to Drs. Smith and Weinstein for taking psychology to the streets. More recent blog posts include information on the testing effect and its benefits, the danger of relying on intuition, how confirmation bias can steer us wrong, and tips on how to study from a textbook by applying self-testing and spacing. Since their content is directed at students, I just added this blog as a feed to my course announcements. That means that every time a new blog post goes up, it will automatically be sent out to my students as a course announcement. While my college uses the Canvas learning management system (LMS), this ability should reside in whatever LMS your institution uses. To the people who run your LMS write, “I have an RSS feed (http://www.learningscientists.org/) I want to automatically push out to my students through our LMS, say, as an announcement. How can I do that?” While I love what Smith and Weinstein are doing, I’m not expecting huge changes in my students studying behavior. We know there is a (BIG) difference between knowing what we’re supposed to do and actually doing it. (Do you get as much exercise as you know you should? Do you eat as well as you know you should?) Of course we have to know what we should be doing – thus praise for their efforts – before we can start feeling guilty about not doing what we should be doing. Stephen Chew tackled the how-to-study problem in his 6-part How to Get the Most Out of Studying video series, and I know a number of faculty, in and out of psychology, who use at least parts of his series with their students. A couple years ago I did an hour-long session at my college titled The Science of Being a Student. It was recorded, so I have my Intro Psych students watch it and answer a few questions as an assignment. Students always report getting a lot out of it. But for most students, it has no discernible impact on exam grades. Perhaps for some students, they are looking for a magic bullet where none exists. Learning is hard work, and there is no way around that. But for those students who are ready to make a change in how they study, let’s make sure they know the best evidence-based techniques. And LearningScientists.org is a great place for our students to start. ... View more

I admit it. Development is not my favorite Intro Psych chapter. That makes me extra thankful to Intro Psych textbook authors who put one of my favorite cognitive psych concepts in this chapter. Understanding schemas can help students get inside their own heads and realize that how they think the world works may not actually be how the world works. Also, and I have no evidence for this, understanding schemas may help students be more patient with others. “Oh! I can see what schema you’re working from. It’s wrong, but I can see it.” The website Not Always Right gives those working in customer service an opportunity to share some of their more frustrating or baffling interactions with customers. Not Always Learning does the same for education with both those working in education and students sharing their experiences. We have schemas for social interactions. We carry a set of assumptions for how different social interactions will go. Probably every barista has greeted a customer with “Good morning. How are you?” only to have the customer respond with “I’ll have a tall coffee” (I’m Feeling Pretty Coffee Myself Too). The customer’s schema for barista-interaction has the barista asking, “What can I get you?” (or, more  and more frequently, what Starbucks has brought us, “What can I get started for you?”), so that is the question that is answered. In a noisy coffee shop with a sleep-deprived and not-yet-caffeinated customer, the actual question, “How are you?” may not have even been heard, and if it was, not processed. The customer relies on his or her schema to drive the interaction. We have schemas for how technology works. When a customer purchased a portable gaming system, the customer assumed that the system came with its own ability to connect to the Internet (Wireless, Clueless, Hopeless, Part 24). Through the interaction with the salesperson at the video game store, it becomes clear that the customer doesn’t have an accurate e schema for how the Internet works. While we’re not privy to the customer’s Internet experience, it’s reasonable to assume that the customer has a smartphone that doesn’t require anything special to connect to the Internet. It just does it. The customer’s schema for “connecting to the Internet” may include the idea that small electronics all come with an automatic ability to access the Internet. We have schemas for something as simple as how to make copies. A library patron has something in print, perhaps pages from a book, and wants a physical copy of it (Sloppy Copy). For those of us who spent too much of our time in college and grad school in front of copiers, our schemas for how to get a physical copy of book pages includes taking the book to the copier and, well, copying it. For those who grew up in a digital age, they are very familiar with printing, but probably not so much with copying. This patron was trying to figure out how to scan the book and then print it, not recognizing that photocopying directly was a possibility. And then try explaining mimeographs. As an out-of-class assignment or an in-class small group activity, send students to these websites, and ask them to find other examples of schemas gone awry. ... 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

Last week I wrote about how it is I came to wear psychology-related t-shirts to my Intro Psych classes. That post included nine t-shirts. [Read that post.] This week I have ten to share. Vision – Childish Side of the Moon This is a pretty straight-forward illustration of how white is the presence of all wavelengths of light. And the Pink Floyd fans in your class will enjoy the reference. Sleep – Big Fan I hammer pretty hard the importance of sleep. Too many students think that staying up all night studying is a good idea, and I present the landslide of evidence that says it’s not. In case they miss my message, perhaps due to sleep deprivation, this t-shirt drives home the point. Sleep – Counting Sheep If I’m feeling more whimsical, I will go with this shirt depicting counting sheep – on a calculator, on “fingers,” on an abacus. Psychoanalysis – Devil and angel bunnies If you talk about the id, ego, and superego, this shirt is a must. Wear a shirt over top, like a denim shirt or a light fleece. As you describe the conflict between the id and the superego, if you’re lucky, a student will say something like, “Oh! Like the devil and angel on your shoulders!” That’s your cue to remove your outer layer, revealing the devil and angel bunnies on your shoulders. Research methods – Science of the Lambs When introducing research methods in Intro, I sometimes talk about how people think that what determines what is a science and what is not are the apparatuses that are used. “If there are flasks and Bunsen burners, then it is science.” If class time allows, I ask students to consider that question: What makes a science a science? This makes for a nice think (on your own for a minute or two), pair (talk with the person next to you for a minute or two), share (ask for volunteers to share their responses) activity. Personality – Introverting When covering the Big Five personality traits, I use this shirt to come out as an introvert. The best metaphor I have heard for introversion and extraversion says that which way you lean is determined by what recharges your batteries most of the time. If your batteries recharge when you are with people, you are more extraverted. If your batteries recharge when you are alone, you are more introverted (see this blog post for example). The message in this shirt is “back off; I’m recharging.” Sensation — Hello? Can anybody hear me? I use this shirt to introduce the idea that sound and color only exist in our brains. Sound waves and light waves exist outside of us, but what we describe as sound and what we describe as color don’t. They are sensations created by our brains, a conversion of those waves into something we can experience. Development – Donkey Kong and Mario  This shirt’s a nod to the gamers in your class. If you’d like to use this shirt for discussion, ask students questions like: Given that Mario is walking, how old would you guess he is? [2-ish] What reflex is Donkey Kong exhibiting with the baby bottle? [grasping] Years later, do you expect them to remember this event? Why? [nope, infantile amnesia] You can also reprise this shirt for the social psych chapter. What are some ways in which Donkey Kong and Mario could work to resolve their conflict? [e.g., superordinate goals].            Optimism/pessimism – Which glass are you? When covering optimists and pessimists, this shirt provides an opportunity to introduce students to some other -ists, such as utopists and surrealists. Be prepared to explain some of these; students will ask. Final exam day – Pencils Since students are required to bring a Number 2 pencil to take the final exam, this handy shirt depicts pencil numbers 1 through 12. ... View more

When I first started teaching, not as a grad student, but as real live instructor out on my own, I was 24 years old. I was a part-time instructor at a community college near Kansas City. Thinking I had to look the part, I bought some new clothes -- khakis and button-down shirts. It probably didn’t take me more than a couple weeks to realize that wasn’t going to work for me. Most of the students in my classes were older than I was, some by a full generation or two. And a lot of them were scared. They had never been in a college class before, but life circumstances gave them an opportunity – or forced them – to be here. A lot was riding on their being able to do well. Trying to project some sort of authority didn’t mesh with how I walked in the world, and, frankly, I didn’t think it would help my students. Instead, I decided to go where they were. I traded in my new khakis for new jeans. And over time the button-down shirts were gradually replaced by t-shirts. My overarching philosophy to teaching psychology boiled down to this: I know the theory and the research, and you have the life experience; let’s merge them together and see what we can learn from each other. Long ago I moved on to full-time teaching, currently up here in the Pacific Northwest, and I finally caught up to and then surpassed the average age of my students. Even though I’m now older and my students are now younger, I know that many of them are still afraid. I want to lighten the mood. Over the last 15 years, I have amassed a t-shirt collection suitable for Intro Psych. Frankly, I don’t know if wearing these t-shirts in class makes me more approachable. I do know that it’s common for students to look forward to seeing the day’s shirt. And if the connection to the material isn’t immediately obvious, they are on the edge of their seats waiting for the connection to become clear. Okay, maybe no one is quite on the edge of their seats, but I have heard audible “Oh!”s after explaining the relevance of the shirt. Besides, knowing what I’m going to wear on most every class day -- my classes meet on Mondays and Wednesdays -- eliminates having to decide what to wear. I typically wear a denim shirt or a light fleece over top, and then reveal the shirt when it’s relevant to what I’m discussing. This post will feature nine shirts. Next week will feature an additional ten. [Read that post here.] First day -- It's in the syllabus I debated about getting this one. I was concerned it would sound snarkier than I meant it to be. Snarkiness is not the tone I’m after upon meeting my students for the first time. I carefully frame it by asking, by a show of hands, for whom is this their first college term. I explain that I remember by first college term. As I went from class to class, the professors were all talking about the syllabus – a word I had never heard before. Finally I figured out they were referring to these pieces of paper they were handing out.  “Any time you have questions about anything related to the course, the answer is probably in the syllabus.” Completely anecdotally, when I wear the shirt on the first day, I seem to get many fewer questions about the course later on. Biopsych – Serotonin and the Dopamines: The Happiness Tour In Intro, I don’t spend oodles of time on neurons, but this shirt is a handy reminder of the role neurotransmitters play in our everyday lives. Besides, what better way to remember that serotonin and dopamine influence feelings of happiness? Biopsych - Brain Sometimes, when teaching, it helps to have an extra brain. Memory – Les Déspicables I admit that when I first saw this one, it cracked me up so much I just wanted it. And then I figured out where to fit it into Intro. I use it in the memory chapter when talking about retrieval cues. The image retrieves both memories of Les Misérables and minions from the Despicable Me movies. The juxtaposition of such different memories makes this funny. Thinking – Penguin experiencing insight  When you have wings, you think you should be able to use them to fly. And this young penguin flaps and flaps, all to no avail. And then with what is apparently a flash of insight given the presence of the lightbulb in panel 8, the penguin dons a jetpack. Easy peasy. Operant or classical conditioning – Exercise: Some Motivation Required I love this shirt for both operant and classical conditioning. For operant conditioning, the behavior is running. The t-rex is being positively reinforced (running faster gets t-rex closer to a tasty morsel), and the person is being negatively reinforced (running faster gets the person further away from the t-rex).  For classical conditioning, being chased is the unconditioned stimulus and fear is the unconditioned response. Seeing a t-rex in the future would be the conditioned stimulus, and fear at seeing the t-rex is the conditioned response. Stress or classical conditioning – Godzilla destroying city If Godzilla destroys your city, you will likely experience stress. For classical conditioning, Godzilla destroying your city would be the unconditioned stimulus and fear would be the unconditioned response. Seeing Godzilla in the future would be the conditioned stimulus and fear at seeing Godzilla would be the conditioned response. Stress or operant conditioning – Procrastination… just one more game For stress, this is a nice example of emotion focused coping. As long as you are playing the game, you can avoid thinking about all the homework you need to do. For operant conditioning, game play is one big variable ratio schedule of reinforcement. You never know when you’re going to win, but the more you play, the faster you’ll get to that next win. Attention – Car Talk inattentive driving [Currently on clearance. Not available much longer.] When covering attention, the back of this shirt nicely illustrates how we really can’t do two things at once. ... 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

More than one Intro Psych textbook opens with this warning to students: Beware the hindsight bias! And students should beware, of course. Once the findings of a research study are revealed, it is hard for students to turn back the clock to the time when they did not know the results. With the results known, they are likely to label them as obvious; they knew them all along. Steven Pinker (2016) urges us, as instructors, to remember that we, too, fall victim to hindsight bias, the curse of knowledge. We have spent years talking about these Intro Psych concepts. Because we have a difficult time imagining what it was like to not know these concepts, we may rush through our lectures, thinking our students either already know the concepts or can grasp them with quick, concise explanations. How can we, as instructors, keep hindsight bias at bay in the classroom? Pinker says “[t]he best antidote is feedback: Asking students questions; monitoring their reactions, soliciting commentary; querying knowledge through regular assessments.” On the first day of class, as I am explaining the structure of the course, I will explain to my students what the hindsight bias is, how I can’t remember what it was like to not know the content of this course, and how I have built a course designed to keep me informed of what they, the students, are understanding and what they are not as we go, before we get to the high stakes exams. And that I am going to trust them to tell me when they are not following what I am saying. What better way to help students understand a concept like hindsight bias than to immediately use it to explain a common instructor behavior? With the added bonus of showing students how psychology can be used to teach psychology! Pinker, S. (2016, January 3). The sense of style: Writing and teaching in the 21st century. Address presented at National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology in Tradewinds Island Grand Resort, St. Petersburg Beach. [Pinker’s book by the same title has an entire chapter devoted just to hindsight bias if you would like to read more.] ... View more

Place lag (n.): “[T]he imaginative drag that results from our jet-age displacements over every kind of distance; from the inability of our deep old sense of place to keep up with our airplanes.”                               - Mark Vanhoenacker (2015), Skyfaring: A Journey with a Pilot I am currently reading a rather poetic memoir by a 747 pilot. As someone who frequently changes place, Mark Vanhoenacker has spent much time reflecting on this experience. Anyone who has flown across time zones has experienced jet lag. But if you’re staying for a while, you adjust to the local time zone. Flight crews often don’t bother trying to change. If you’re there only for a day or two, it makes more sense to just stay on your home time. Place lag, coined by Vanhoenacker, is different. Imagine starting your day in Seattle, flying several hours, and then getting off the plane in Tokyo. It’s disorienting. As Vanhoenacker notes, we aren’t built to experience this much cultural change in this short of time. Evolutionarily-speaking, we can easily handle gradual change that comes at the speed of walking. Anything that happens faster than that is much more difficult for our brains to process. Why is this practically sudden change in location so disturbing? Any time we experience a cultural change, we encounter a new set of schemas. The more different those schemas are, the greater our culture shock. But even if we are familiar with the culture we have just been dropped into, it takes time to load the right cultural schemas. If you get to stay for a while, you have time to complete the processing. If you’re part of the international flight crew, though, you have only just started to load the right set, when you’re back on the plane headed to another part of the world with an entirely different set of schemas. Of course we don’t have to travel halfway around the world to experience place lag. Your first generation college students may experience this when traveling between home and college – even commuter students. Their college lives are likely very different from their home lives. What is crucially important at college is not understood at all by family members who have not attended college. Ask your students, in pairs or small groups, to discuss schema differences between home and college. For example, are the kinds of conversations students have with other students different from the kinds of conversations they have with family members? Is the humor different? After discussion, invite students to share examples with the class. ... View more

In 1989, the woman I was dating and I walked out of a Kansas City gay bar at midnight. We had to cross a fairly desolate four-lane boulevard to get to my car. There were no crosswalks, and the nearest cross-streets were ¼ to ½ mile in either direction. There was no traffic coming from the left; from the right, there were three cars some distance away. We started across. She decided to stop midway and wait for them to pass. I jogged across. As I was putting my key in the car door, something caught my attention. I turned in time to see a pickup truck come from the previously-no-traffic left, move into the left lane, and hit her – intentionally. The driver continued to accelerate; the brake lights never flashed. Witnesses later reported that the truck had pulled out from the parking lot behind a nearby not-gay bar. I ran to where she lay in the street. The truck’s bumper had caught her on the hip and she did a helicopter spin and landed flat, dispersing the energy across her entire body, instead of, say, just her head taking the brunt of the pavement. It is better to keep injured people where they are, unless it’s more dangerous to do so. On a very dark boulevard with oncoming traffic, I decided it was better for us to be on the sidewalk. I looked toward the bar we came from to discover that a group of people had gathered.  I issued a general call for help. No one moved. I thought, “The bystander effect!” Jumping ahead to 2015, on Friday, December 11 th during the very busy morning commute on a freeway here in the Greater Puget Sound Area, a public transportation bus with only a driver onboard traveling along with traffic displayed a disturbing message: “HELP! CALL 911.” (Full article here.) There were hundreds of drivers on the road, which suggests not many would call because of diffusion of responsibility. We also don’t know how many saw the message. But the help message didn’t ask for a big intervention or time commitment: Just call 911. The article reports that “several” people called.  One of whom was Robert Rode.  The article ends with: Rode figured Friday’s display was a false alarm because the bus was traveling normally, but said he “wasn’t going to be a victim of the bystander effect and not call 911.” I don’t know if Robert Rode took Intro Psych, but given the popularity of the course, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that that is where he learned about the bystander effect. I tell my students, “Now that you know how the bystander effect works, you have a moral obligation to help. You don’t have to personally jump in and participate, but there is no reason you can’t call 911.” As for my 1989 self, I knew from the bystander effect research how to break the spell. I identified one person and asked for something specific: “You in the red sweatshirt! Go in and call 911!” As predicted, his fellow bystanders turned and looked at him. He was no longer a bystander, but a part of the action. Sure enough, he immediately went in and asked the bartender to make the call. His friends, now feeling involved by being connected to him, came out to the street and helped me move her to the sidewalk. I contend that Intro Psych is one of the most important courses we have in our curriculum. What we teach in that course not only has the potential to improve lives, but to save lives. Epilogue: She spent a few days in the hospital just badly bruised. To my knowledge the perpetrator was never apprehended. ... View more

It's been quite a while since my last post. Time seems to slip away much more quickly every year. In the Chronicles of Higher Education, they recently published an article describing a most interesting "experiment." If you teach online or hybrid, this is an article you should read and consider. Alvin Malesky was able to work with his institution, Western Carolina University, to do something all of us have wondered about. Could he catch an online cheater? Using a research grant to fund this study, Mr. Malesky and his colleague, Robert Crow, were able to create a fake online 10-week introductory psychology course and past undergraduate students and graduate students took the class for the full 10 weeks using fake identifying information. Malesky and Crow knew that at least one student was paying a company to take the entire class. The article describes the process the graduate student went through to hire the company to take the class for him. It might surprise you that a full service successful completion with an A in the course cost only $917. That would be a well worth the price for many students. The real question is whether a forensic psychologist who has taught for many years and his colleague could accurately identify who was cheating and how. You'll have to read the article to find out. Here is the direct link to the article: In a Fake Online Class With Students Paid to Cheat, Could Professors Catch the Culprits? - The Chronicle of Higher Educa… ... View more

Belief perseverance, holding onto your beliefs in the face of contradictory evidence, can be incredibly powerful. Here are a couple examples for your students. Two people bring their new puppy, indeed the first dog they have ever owned, to the vet. When the vet tech comments on how cute he is, they are taken aback because they thought ‘he’ was a ‘she.’ The vet tech confirms that, no, indeed he is male. The vet tech points out the puppy’s penis and testicles. No, they insist, the dog is female. “I want to talk to a vet!” one of them says. The vet, unsurprisingly, says the same thing; the dog is male. The dog owners continue to argue with the vet that the dog is female. (Full story.) At a movie theater, a couple customers are in front of the concessions counter talking about the popcorn. One of them insists that the popcorn is purchased by the theater already popped and delivered in big garbage bags. The concessions employee overhears them and makes a big show of putting unpopped kernels into the popper right behind the counter and turning it on. When the customers see this, one of them comments on how it’s just for show, that they only sell the stale, garbage-bag popcorn. The employee writes, “I guess some people just HAVE to believe that they’re getting ripped off, even when they aren’t.” (Full story.) Your students who work with customers may have stories of their own to share. ... View more

If you teach Intro Psych, you know that most of your students are not psychology majors. This course gives us a captive audience to tell our future business leaders, medical personnel, government employees, etc. about psychology. Susan Nolan (2015) in a recent talk identified teaching as one way we can inform the public of the value of psychological science. As instructors, we also have a responsibility to empower our students to be voices for psychological science in their communities. Here are some additional ways Nolan noted we can disseminate psychological science. Writing for the general public. While not all of us can write trade books, we can write articles for newsletters and editorials for newspapers. And we can blog. Talking to reporters. If you’re not happy with how news outlets cover psychological science, then it is time to leap in and help them out. Start with being a resource for the journalists of your institution’s student paper or your local paper. Speaking to the community. Contact your local civic organizations or public library. Would they like to hear your most interesting lecture? Or start your own monthly Pub Science lecture series at your favorite neighborhood drinking establishment. Volunteering your science skills. Become an “on-call scientist” to human rights organizations through AAAS. If you live in or around New York City, become an APA-appointed representative to the United Nations. Volunteer for the Statistics without Borders project of the American Statistical Association. Serving the community. Run for your local school board or city council. Harnessing social and mass media. If you use social media, explain the psychological science behind the hot topic issues to your friends and family. Or if you don’t want to do the explaining, leap onto Facebook or Twitter with links to websites that do the explaining for you. What are you doing, outside of your classroom, to ensure that good psychological science is being delivered into the hands of the general public? Nolan, S. A. (2015, July 24). Beyond the academy: Sharing psychological science in a global context. Lecture presented at Vancouver International Conference on the Teaching of Psychology in Coast Hotel Plaza and Suites, Vancouver, BC. ... 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

When I took Intro Psych in my first semester of college, I knew I wanted to be a psychology major. But I didn’t have any plans beyond that. Early in the course, my professor said that not all psychologists are therapists. That made me very happy – and that’s how I knew I didn’t want to be a therapist. What did I want to be? I still didn’t know, but knowing what I didn’t want to be helped narrow down the career choices. Would I have chosen being an NFL linebacker coach had I known that was an option? Maybe. Jen Welter (MS in sport psychology and PhD in psychology from Capella University) spent the summer of 2015 coaching the inside linebackers of the NFL Arizona Cardinals. She also comes with player credentials having spent 13 years in professional women’s league football. Think, pair, share. Near the end the Intro Psych course (or whatever course you think appropriate, capstone perhaps) while reflecting back on what they have learned about psychology, ask students to jot down what knowledge or skills someone with a psychology background could bring to a coaching job. Students then share with one or two students near them. Finally, ask students to share the list of knowledge and skills they generated with the class. ... View more