Originally posted on October 27, 2016. Sometimes adversities become blessings. A defeat sparks a new resolve that produces a champion. A setback seeds a success. An adversity awakens a passion and purpose. (For me, the silver lining of hearing loss has been an avocational purpose as hearing advocate.)   Such, writ large, is the life story of prisoner-turned-prisoner-advocate Dirk Van Velzen, whom I encountered a decade ago when he wrote from a California prison. I receive occasional letters from prisoners requesting copies of one of my books, or asking questions about them. But no prison correspondent impressed me more than Van Velzen, who asked perceptive questions from his reading of my Social Psychology textbook. Our ensuing exchanges enabled me to track his progress as a distance learning student, leading to his 2010 Pennsylvania State University graduation—while still behind prison walls—with a 3.99 GPA.   This heartwarming journey, from “America’s Most Wanted” (for repeated burglaries) to honors graduate, is but the prelude to the rest of his story. Van Velzen was keenly aware that the educational opportunity he received, thanks to his father’s support, was unavailable to other able and motivated inmates. (Although prisoners can benefit from some forms of education, Congress in 1994 banned postsecondary Pell Grants to prisoners.) Undeterred by the magnitude of the challenge, Van Velzen created the Prison Scholar Fund to support other U.S. prisoners desiring higher education. With support from a handful of donors, including small grants from the Annenberg Foundation and our family foundation, and through the sale of calendars featuring prisoners’ art, the Fund has awarded 190 scholarships to 110 prisoners.   Seattle Fast Pitch Presentation (courtesy Dirk Van Velzen) In recognition of his determined efforts, Van Velzen received a White House award for volunteer service—while still behind bars. (His good deeds notwithstanding, Van Velzen served his full 15 year term, without clemency or early release.) In the 17 months since his 2015 release, he has established a Prison Scholar Fund start-up office, housed at a Seattle Methodist church, and completed programs in nonprofit management and social entrepreneurship at the University of Washington and Stanford. When he pitched his vision in Seattle’s Social Venture Partners “Fast Pitch” competition, he finished first—and received $20,000 to help seed his program.   On my recent visit to Seattle and to his office, Van Velzen showed me the bulging files of applications from prisoners seeking higher education support, and told me of the support he receives from his new board members, from University of Washington volunteers, and from Microsoft executives. The latter are assisting him in planning—if funding becomes available—a social experiment that will assess the long-term impact of enabling prisoners to do college work.  DIRK VAN VELZEN (PHOTO BY DAVID MYERS) By painstaking sleuthing, Van Velzen and his volunteers found that, among the 74 scholarship awardees released from prison with the benefit of added education, only three spent time back behind bars. But does this remarkably low recidivism rate merely reflect a selection effect—the high quality of capable, motivated prisoners who would seek higher education? Answering that question requires—as any psychology student would appreciate—an experiment that randomly assigns matched eligible inmates to either a scholarship or no-scholarship condition, and then follows their lives through time. Should the impact prove positive, it would validate both his program and a fledgling government effort to restart prisoner higher education.   Sometimes, observed Walt Disney, “A kick in the pants may be the best thing in the world for you.” Dirk Van Velzen kicked society. Society kicked him back. In response, he has become an example of how, in those blessed with gritty determination, adversity can ignite passion and purpose. ... View more

Originally posted on July 7, 2016. In authoring textbooks (and this blog) I seek to steer clear of overtly partisan politics. That’s out of respect for my readers’ diverse views, and also because my calling is to report on psychological science and its application to everyday life. But sometimes psychology speaks to politics. Recently, more than 750 psychotherapists have signed “A Public Manifesto: Citizen Therapists Against Trumpism.” Its author, University of Minnesota professor William Doherty, emphasizes that the manifesto does not seek to diagnose Trump, the person. Rather it assesses Trumpist ideology, which it sees as “an emerging form of American facism” marked by fear, scapegoating, and exaggerated masculinity. An alternative statement, drafted by public intellectual David Blankenhorn of the bipartisan “Better Angels” initiative (and signed by 22 of us), offers “A Letter to Trump Supporters”—some arguments for rethinking support of Donald Trump. Social psychologists will recognize this as an effort at “central route” persuasion (offering reasons for rethinking one’s position). But in this presidential season, are rational arguments or emotional appeals more likely to sway voters—or some combination of both? What do you think? ... View more

Originally posted on October 28, 2014. With nearly 5000 misery-laden deaths and no end in sight, Ebola is, especially for Liberia and Sierra Leone, a West African health crisis.  It may not yet rival the last decade’s half million annual child deaths attributable to rotavirus—“Where is the news about these half-million kids dying?.” Bill Gates has asked.  But West Africans are understandably fearful.   And North Americans, too . . . though perhaps disproportionately fearful? Thanks to our tendency to fear what’s readily available in memory, which may be a low-probability risk hyped by news images, we often fear the wrong things.  As Nathan DeWall and I explain in the upcoming Psychology, 11th Edition, mile for mile we are 170 times safer on a commercial flight than in a car.  Yet we visualize air disasters and fear flying. We see mental snapshots of abducted and brutalized children and hesitate to let our sons and daughters walk to school. We replay Jaws with ourselves as victims and swim anxiously.  Ergo, thanks to such readily available images, we fear extremely rare events. As of this writing, no one has contracted Ebola in the U.S. and died.  Meanwhile, 24,000 Americans die each year from an influenza virus, and some 30,000 suffer suicidal, homicidal, and accidental firearm deaths.  Yet which affliction are many Americans fearing most?  Thanks to media reports of the awful suffering of Ebola victims, and our own “availability heuristic,” you know the answer. As David Brooks has noted, hundreds of Mississippi parents pulled their children from school because its principal had visited Zambia, a southern African country untouched by Ebola.  An Ohio school district closed two schools because an employee apparently flew on a plane (not the same flight) in which an Ebola-infected health care worker had travelled.  Responding to public fears of this terrible disease, politicians have proposed travel bans from affected African countries, which experts suggest actually might hinder aid and spread the disease. Déjà vu. We fear the wrong things. More precisely, our fears—of air crashes versus car accidents, of shark attacks versus drowning, of Ebola versus seasonal influenza—are not proportional to the risks. Time for your fall flu shot? ... View more

Originally posted on November 25, 2014. The November APS Observer is out with an essay by Nathan, “Why Self-Control and Grit matter—and Why It Pays to Know the Difference.” It describes Angela Duckworth’s and James Gross’s research on laser-focused achievement drive (grit) and on self-control over distracting temptations. . . and how to bring these concepts into the classroom. In the same issue, I reflect on “The Psychology of Extremism.” I describe the social psychological roots of extreme animosities and terrorist acts, including a description of Michael Hogg’s work on how people’s uncertainties about their world and their place in it can feed a strong (even extreme) group identity. ... View more

Originally posted on April 2, 2015. Facebook, Google, and Twitter, among others, are enabling psychologists to mine giant data sets that allow mega-scale naturalistic observations of human behavior. The recent Society of Personality and Social Psychology convention offered several such “big data” findings, including these (some also recently published): “Computer-based personality judgments are more accurate than those of friends, spouses, or family.” That’s how Michal Kosinski, Youyou Wu, and David Stillwell summed up their research on the digital trail left by 86,220 people’s Facebook “likes.” As a predictor of “Big Five” personality test scores, the computer data were more significantly accurate than friends’ and family members’ judgments. (Such research is enabled by the millions of people who have responded to tests via Stillwell’s myPersonality app, and who have also donated their Facebook information, with guarantees of anonymity.) Another study, using millions of posts from almost 69,792 Facebook users, found that people who score high on neuroticism tests use more words like “sad,” “fear,” and “pain.” This hints at the possibility of using social media language analysis to identify people at risk for disorder or even suicide. Researchers are also exploring Smartphones as data-gathering devices. Jason Rentfrow (University of Cambridge) offers an app for monitoring emotions (illustrated here), and proposes devices that can sense human behavior and deliver interventions. In such ways, it is becoming possible to gather massive data, to sample people’s experiences moment-to-moment in particular contexts, and to offer them helpful feedback and guidance. Amid the excitement over today’s big data, psychologist Gary Marcus offers a word of caution: “Big Data is brilliant at detecting correlation....But correlation never was causation and never will be...If we have good hypotheses, we can test them with Big Data, but Big Data shouldn’t be our first port of call; it should be where we go once we know what we’re looking for.” ... View more

Originally posted on April 7, 2015. The April APS Observer is out with an essay by Nathan, “The Truth About Trust.” Drawing from the work of Paul Van Lange, it identifies principles of trust—as learned, socially received, reasonable, and constructive. The essay also offers three easy classroom activities that engage students in thinking more deeply about trust. In the same issue, my essay on “How Close Relationships Foster Health and Heartaches” suggests how instructors might engage students’ thinking about everyday stress and social support.  It then summarizes, from the work of Karen Rook, the benefits and costs of social relationships, and how relationships impact our health and well-being, for better and for worse. ... View more

Originally posted on October 14, 2015. I am just back from a fourth visit to China, where I enjoyed generous hospitality and have again spoken to colleagues and students in China’s fast growing social psychology field. My task was to speak at a Shanghai conference focusing on how the information age is transforming culture, in China as elsewhere. And what transformational change there has been in but a thin slice of history! The world now has nearly 5 billion mobile phone users (including more than 90 percent of the Chinese population—triple the 30 percent in 2005). And nearly 45 percent of humans are now Internet users (including just over 50 percent in China, compared to fewer than 10 percent in 2005). Of particular interest to social psychologists is the upsurge in social media. Although blocked in China (as is Google, YouTube, and the New York Times), Facebook now has 1.5 billion subscribers and in late August experienced 1 billion users in a single day—a milestone towards its mission: “to make the world more open and connected.” My mission in China was to review the benefits, costs, and research opportunities of today’s networked world. The net is shrinking the global village; connecting us with distant family, friends, and colleagues; enabling time-saving e-commerce and telecommuting; and giving us easy access to incredible amounts of information. Of particular interest to psychologists, the Internet is also becoming a vehicle for self-improvement, skills training, and even finding romantic partners. I admit to being surprised (see the data below) by how many people today find their allied spirits and eventual partners, enabled by the Internet (including my co-author, Nathan DeWall and his wife, Alice Rudolph DeWall). On the Internet, looks and location matter less to initial relationship formation, and self-disclosure and kindred attitudes and beliefs matter more. From Myers & DeWall, Psychology, 11th Edition, Presenting National Survey Data from Rosenfeld & Thomas, 2012 But these many benefits come with some costs. Anonymity can enable bullying and sexual exploitation. The Internet time-suck drains time from the face-to-face interactions for which we humans are designed. At its extremes, Internet addiction (including to gambling and pornography) may undermine relationships and productivity. Of greatest interest to me, however, is the Internet as echo chamber—its facilitating the self-segregation of like minds and the resulting group polarization. The Internet indeed has great potential to connect us, but also to deepen social divisions and to promote extremist views and acts. But what a boon the Internet is to us researchers, which I enjoyed illustrating from colleagues’ harvesting of “big data” from the archives of the U.S. Social Security system, the sporting world, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and national and world surveys. All this (plus the easier availability of diverse research participants thanks to www.ProlificAcademic.co.uk and www.mturk.com) is wonderful. But as Richard Nisbett reminds us in his new book, Mindware: Tools for Smart Thinking​​, “A very large N (number of data) may simply make us more confident about a possibly wrong result.” As he cogently illustrates, when it comes to discerning causation, big data archives, even with control variables and mediational analyses, are no substitute for the most powerful instrument in our psychological toolkit: the simple experiment. ... View more

Originally posted on March 21, 2016. The Sanders v. Clinton and Trump v. others debates offer, as do others, clashing arguments regarding free trade agreements: Anti-trade agreement argument: “Free trade” agreements, such as NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), benefit corporations at the expense of American workers. Competing with low-wage foreign workers means lost American jobs and lower wages. Pro-trade agreement argument: Ending free trade would raise the prices we pay for goods and would harm American companies (and workers) seeking to export products. The TPP eliminates many tariffs that other countries impose on American exports Social psychologists have offered another consideration. In the long-term, is an economically interdependent world a safer world? We know from social psychological research that sharing “superordinate goals” promotes peace., Muzafer Sherif’s classic boys’ camp experiments used isolation and competition to make strangers into bitter enemies. But with superordinate goals (restoring the camp water supply, freeing a stuck truck, pooling funds for a movie), he then made enemies into friends. Other research suggests that superordinate goals are not mere child’s play. From Amazon tribes to European countries, peace arises when groups become interconnected and interdependent and develop an overarching social identity (Fry et al., 2012). Economic interdependence through international trade also motivates peace. “Where goods cross frontiers, armies won’t,” noted Michael Shermer (2006). With so much of China’s economy now interwoven with Western economies, their economic interdependence diminishes the likelihood of war between China and the West (from Myers & Twenge: Social Psychology, 12th edition) What do you think: Is a world with free trade (rather than isolationism) a safer world? And here’s an ethical question: Whose economic well-being should we care more about protecting—Americans’ or everyone’s? To assess the extent to which people see themselves as “belonging to one human family”—an attitude that distinguished those who rescued Jews from the Nazis—social psychologist Sam McFarland developed an “Identification with All Humanity” scale, which is now supplemented by other measures of global human identification. What do you think: Should our circle of “moral inclusion” include all “God’s children”...or is it natural and appropriate to prioritize our national ingroup? ... View more