I’ve been thinking a lot lately about recreational fear. (See my first writing on the topic posted in October 2023). As a newly-minted honorary member of the research team at the Recreational Fear Lab at Aarhus University in Denmark (thank you Mathias Clasen!), I’ve had even more reason to think about recreational fear. Proof of my honorary membership to the Recreational Fear Lab research team   According to a national survey of Intro Psych instructors, 64% of us cover emotion (Richmond et al., 2021). For the third who don’t, I encourage you to give covering it some consideration. If the theories of emotion don’t do much for you, leave those out. In other blog posts, such as this one from September 2022, I’ve discussed covering emotion regulation strategies. There are plenty of examples of people making poor emotion regulation choices, such as frustrated Denver Nuggets player Jamal Murray throwing a heat pack onto the basketball court as an opposing player drove for a layup (Li, 2024). Helping students understand the different types of emotion regulation strategies might help them make better emotion regulation choices. (There’s an empirical question worthy of study.) Here are the five emotion regulation strategies (McRae & Gross, 2020). Situation selection: choosing situations to elicit or not elicit specific emotions Situation modification: changing an existing situation to elicit or not elicit specific emotions Attentional deployment: shifting attention in an existing situation to elicit or not elicit specific emotions Cognitive change: reframing an existing situation or its elements to elicit or not elicit specific emotions Response modulation: employing behavior that reduces the strength of a specific emotion once it has occurred One way to help students understand emotion regulation strategies is—after explaining the strategies—to ask students to think about those strategies in terms of recreational fear, which we can loosely define as fear that is fun. Let’s use horror movies as an example of recreational fear. Situation selection. We watch horror movies in order to experience fear in a safe space where there is no actual danger from a murderer with a chainsaw. Situation modification. While watching a horror movie, we may cover our eyes during some scenes in order to reduce the amount of fear we experience. Attentional deployment. Rather than focus on the action in a particular scene, we may pay attention to the quality of the cinematography or admire the skill of the makeup artists. Or take the opportunity to fish out the last milkdud stuck to the bottom of the box. Cognitive change. “I’m not scared. I’m excited to see what is going to happen next!” Response modulation. “I am scared out of my mind right now. I’m going to take some deep breaths to reduce the intensity of what I am experiencing. If your students seem into the topic of recreational fear, give them the opportunity to explore the topic further. Here are some possible discussion questions. What are some other examples of recreational fear?   Some people enjoy some types of recreational fear more than others. Why might that be? Might there be personality differences? If so, what might those be? Are all horror the films the same? Or are there different types of horror films? If so, how do they differ? When does recreational fear cross the line into being real fear?     References Li. (2024, May 7). Denver Nuggets star Jamal Murray throws heat pack on court during game, slammed as “inexcusable and dangerous.” NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/sports/denver-nuggets-star-jamal-murray-throws-heat-pack-court-game-slammed-i-rcna151021 McRae, K., & Gross, J. J. (2020). Emotion regulation. Emotion, 20(1), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000703 Richmond, A. S., Boysen, G. A., Hudson, D. L., Gurung, R. A. R., Naufel, K. Z., Neufeld, G., Landrum, R. E., Dunn, D. S., & Beers, M. (2021). The Introductory Psychology census: A national study. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 7(3), 163–180. https://doi.org/10.1037/stl0000277       ... View more

With the NCAA women’s and men’s basketball tournaments behind us, the NBA playoffs coming up, and the WNBA season starting soon, here’s a timely research paper on free throw shooting (Büttner et al., 2024). While most basketball play involves interactions between players, the free throw is unique. Everything comes to a standstill while a player—with all eyes on them—attempts to make a basket from 15 feet away.  While waiting to make the free throw, players have time to think. That’s not a good thing in a sport that relies on a brain that automatically runs programs for particular sets of muscle movements. Of all the activities in basketball—because of the time to think—the free throw may be the most susceptible to stress-induced errors. If stress can impact free throw accuracy, Christiane Büttner (University of Basel), Christoph Kenntemich (Universität Koblenz-Landau), and Kipling D. Williams (Purdue University) wondered if social support could reduce the stress thereby increasing accuracy (Büttner et al., 2024). Read  their paper on ResearchGate. The researchers had three hypotheses, but for the purpose of this activity, let’s focus on this one: “Only after missing the first free throw (but not when the first free throw was successful), does being touched by more (vs. fewer) teammates increase the likelihood of success with the second free throw” (Büttner et al., 2024, p. 2). If basketball is not your sport, this video will help you understand what the post-free-throw touching looks like. During the third quarter of the Iowa-UConn women’s NCAA 2024 final, UConn’s Aaliyah Edwards was fouled. She went to the line for two free throws. (Watch video.) After missing the first one, One of the two teammates in front of her (#25) tap her hands. Edwards turned around, and the two teammates behind her tap her hands. When Edwards turned back toward the free throw line, the teammate who missed the tap (#10) was standing there waiting to do her tap. That’s all four teammates. Edwards stepped to the line for her second shot. (Spoiler alert!) She made it. Was Edwards’ experience typical? Do hand taps following a missed free throw predict a made free throw on the next shot? To do this study, the researchers took an archival approach. Using the recordings of 50 Division I Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) women’s basketball games, they measured several variables with the key measures being the outcome of the first and second free throws (they only looked at free throws that came in pairs) and the number of hand taps after the first free throw. They observed 699 pairs of free-throws. They found that if a player missed the first free throw, the more teammates who tapped their hand, the greater the chance that the player would make their second free throw. If a player made the first free throw, the number of hand taps did not predict the making of the second free throw. Ask your students to determine if this was a correlational study or an experiment. How do they know?  The researchers wrote: “[W]e do acknowledge that our findings are correlational and the caveats that come with that” (Büttner et al., 2024, p. 6). Teams were not, for example, randomly assigned to tap the hand of the free-throw shooting player zero to four times. Unfortunately, this doesn’t stop the researchers from making a causal statement in the next paragraph: “Physical touch by teammates boosts performance in one of the most stressful athletic tasks imaginable: Succeeding with a free throw in basketball after already missing one” (Büttner et al., 2024, p. 6). They do, however, encourage experimental research: “Future experimental research should determine whether physical touch improves performance as an active ingredient or whether more frequent touch is a symptom of better team cohesion and, consequentially, better performance under pressure” (Büttner et al., 2024, p. 6). After sharing this study with students, there are a couple of different directions you could take this. Choose your own adventure. Option 1: Experiment. Ask students to work in small groups to design an experiment that would test this hypothesis: “Only after missing the first free throw (but not when the first free throw was successful), …being touched by more (vs. fewer) teammates increase[s] the likelihood of success with the second free throw”(Büttner et al., 2024, p. 2). Participants would need to be randomly assigned to conditions. Students should identify the independent variable (including its levels) and the dependent variable. Ethics add-on: If this experiment were done with real teams—assuming it could be done without the participants being influenced by knowing the hypothesis, discuss the ethical implications of a study that may cause a team to score fewer points. Option 2: Correlation. Ask students to work in small groups to design a correlational study that would test this hypothesis: “[M]ore frequent touch is a symptom of better team cohesion” (Büttner et al., 2024, p. 6). First, create a measure of team cohesion. (Some research has been published in the context of work teams. One alternative is to ask students to do some research and adapt something that has already been created.) Next, describe how you could use that measure to test the hypothesis.     Reference Büttner, C. M., Kenntemich, C., & Williams, K. D. (2024). The power of human touch: Physical contact improves performance in basketball free throws. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 72, 102610. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2024.102610       ... View more

This is the most horrifying thing I have read in some time: Nearly two-thirds of women in [Indiana University’s Debby Herbenick’s] most recent campus-representative survey of 5,000 students at an anonymized “major Midwestern university” said a partner had choked them during sex (one-third in their most recent encounter). The rate of those women who said they were between the ages 12 and 17 the first time that happened had shot up to 40 percent from one in four [from four years ago] (Orenstein, 2024). Nearly two-thirds of the women at this “major Midwestern university.” Let’s say that your students are no different than these “major Midwestern university” students. Let’s say you have 500 students a year. About 60% of college students are women (National Center for Education Statistics, 2023a). During the 2020-2021 academic year, 80% of bachelor’s degrees went to women (National Center for Education Statistics, 2023b). If you teach mostly Intro Psych, the number of women in your classes may be closer to 60%. If you teach mostly upper division courses for the psych major, the number of women in your classes may be closer to 80%. For illustration purposes, let’s split the difference and say that 70% of your 500 students are women. That means that you teach 350 women each year. If “nearly two-thirds” of those women have been choked during sex, that comes out to 231 of your students. “Nearly” half of your students. Are being choked. Actually, the number is likely higher than that. “[W]hile undergrads of all genders and sexualities in Dr. Herbenick’s surveys report both choking and being choked, straight and bisexual young women are far more likely to have been the subjects of the behavior; the gap widens with greater occurrences” (Orenstein, 2024). Men, too, have been choked, just not in the same numbers. “[W]hile the act is often engaged in with a steady partner, a quarter of young women said partners they’d had sex with on the day they’d met also choked them” (Orenstein, 2024). I had just gotten accustomed to a world where apps like Tinder make it easy for complete strangers to have sex—and that many young people were, indeed, using those apps to do just that. But 25% of the women in those same-day sexual encounters are being choked?! “No wonder that, in a separate study by Dr. Herbenick, choking was among the most frequently listed sex acts young women said had scared them, reporting that it sometimes made them worry whether they’d survive” (Orenstein, 2024). No wonder, indeed. Also, oxygen deprivation is bad for the brain. According to the American Academy of Neurology, restricting blood flow to the brain, even briefly, can cause permanent injury, including stroke and cognitive impairment. In M.R.I.s conducted by Dr. [Keisuke] Kawata [an early researcher on NFL concussions and CTE] and his colleagues (including Dr. Herbenick, who is a co-author of his papers on strangulation), undergraduate women who have been repeatedly choked show a reduction in cortical folding in the brain compared with a never-choked control group. They also showed widespread cortical thickening, an inflammation response that is associated with elevated risk of later-onset mental illness. In completing simple memory tasks, their brains had to work far harder than the control group, recruiting from more regions to achieve the same level of accuracy (Orenstein, 2024). And while we’re here, despite what students might have seen on TikTok, “There is no safe way to strangle someone” (Orenstein, 2024). Believing that there is a safe way to choke would be an Internet fact, not an actual fact (Frantz, 2024). “Among girls and women [Orenstein had] spoken with, many did not want or like to be sexually strangled” (Orenstein, 2024). I guess that’s the good news. But why is it so dang common—and becoming more popular? Here’s where I suggest we turn this article into a class or small group discussion (in person or online) as part of the social psych chapter in Intro Psych. Instructions: Read this New York Times opinion piece of April 12, 2024 titled “The Troubling Trend in Teenage Sex” by Peggy Orenstein, and then answer the following questions. From the article, quote a sentence that illustrates the social pressure women feel to allow choking during sex. Have you seen this social pressure within your own friend group? If so, give an example. From the article, quote a sentence that illustrates the social pressure men feel to engage in choking during sex. Have you seen this social pressure within your own friend group? If so, give an example. From the article, describe how choking during sex became popularized through observational learning, starting with its beginning in porn. The article describes how oxygen deprivation can negatively impact the brain. Identify at least five of those effects. Which one do you find the most concerning? Why? The article suggests language that sexual partners can use to make clear what is okay and what is not okay during sex. What is that language? Consider a friend of yours. Do you believe they would be comfortable saying that to a sexual partner? Why or why not? In BDSM, consent—and the ability to withdraw consent (commonly with a safe word)—is paramount. Is choking someone because you think they want to be choked enough to establish consent? Why or why not? If someone gives their consent to be choked but then decides to withdraw their consent, can they do that if they cannot breathe and are losing consciousness? Why or why not? If someone has not given their consent to be choked, can the person doing the choking be charged with assault? Why or why not? If the person being choked experiences permanent damage to their brain or dies, can the person doing the choking be held liable? Why or why not? What was the most surprising thing you learned from this article? Explain.     References Frantz, S. (2024, March 22). “Internet fact or actual fact?” Macmillan and BFW Teaching Community. https://community.macmillanlearning.com/t5/psychology-blog/internet-fact-or-actual-fact/ba-p/19976 National Center for Education Statistics. (2023a). Postbaccalaureate enrollment. Condition of Education. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/chb National Center for Education Statistics. (2023b). Undergraduate degree fields. Condition of Education. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cta/undergrad-degree-fields Orenstein, P. (2024, April 12). The troubling trend in teenage sex. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/12/opinion/choking-teen-sex-brain-damage.html   ... View more

Introduction to Psychology is the hardest course we teach because we are unfamiliar with so much of the course content (Frantz, 2024). We rely heavily on our textbooks to tell us what we—and our students—need to know about the field. This creates an unfortunate feedback loop that is difficult to break. Let’s take the personality chapter as an example. I am not a personality researcher nor did I take a personality course as an undergrad for my major. Yet, here I am teaching Intro Psych, and it seems like personality is a pretty important topic, so I’m game for teaching it. Step 1. I read the personality chapter in the Intro Psych textbook I have adopted. “This must be what Intro Psych students should know about personality.” Step 2. The personality chapter spends a lot of time on the history of personality theory, so I spend a lot of time lecturing on the history of personality theory. Repeat Step 2. Every term. For years. One day, the personality researchers were asked, “What should we teach Intro Psych students about personality?” They said, “Please focus on today’s personality research, and stop teaching the history of personality theory.” (See pages 8 to 16 of the 2017 Division 1/Division 2 Joint Task Force Report on Introductory Psychology.) Step 3. Authors of Intro Psych textbooks listen to the personality researchers. The authors greatly pare back the coverage of the history of personality theory in the personality chapter. Step 4. The publishers of those Intro Psych textbooks send the personality chapters out for review. They ask people who use the textbook—or who might one day use the textbook—what they think of the chapter. Step 5. The reviews come back. The personality researchers who review the chapter are thrilled! “Finally,” they say, “Intro Psych students are going to be learning about what we are really doing in the field.” Everyone else, though, is ticked off. “Wait! Where is the coverage of Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis?! Where is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs?! You can’t take that content out! I teach that!!” Let’s stop here for a minute to reflect. Why am I teaching the history of personality? Because many, many years ago when I first started teaching Intro Psych, the personality chapter in the textbook I used devoted many, many pages to the history of personality. That’s it. I don’t have any independent knowledge of personality. Because this is what I have always taught, this is what I think should be taught. Step 6. The publishers read the reviews. There is a very short stack of reviews saying, “Yay! Thanks for taking the history out of the personality chapter!” Those are primarily the reviews from the personality researchers. There is a very tall stack of reviews saying, “WTH?! Put the history back into the personality chapter, because I teach that!” Those are reviews from everyone else, including the neuroscientists, developmental psychologists, and cognitive psychologists. Step 7. The publishers tell the Intro Psych textbook authors, “Look at all of these instructors who won’t adopt our book, because this chapter doesn’t cover what people want. You have to put the history back in.” Step 8. The Intro Psych textbook authors respond with, “But… But…” And the content goes back in. As someone who has reviewed plenty of Intro Psych textbook chapters, I own that I was part of the problem. In retrospect, I should have said, “I know you want me to review five chapters, but I’m really only expert in two of these: research methods and social.” If they insisted that I pick three others, I should have said, “Okay, I will also review neuroscience, sensation and perception, and personality, but understand that I will defer to what the experts in those areas think should be in the chapter. For example, yes, I cover dark adaptation in the S&P chapter, but if the S&P researchers don’t think that’s important, I’m fine not covering it.” (And, indeed, S&P researchers do not think coverage of dark adaptation is particularly important. See page 7 of the 2017 Division 1/Division 2 Joint Task Force Report on Introductory Psychology. If you ever heard Scott Lilienfeld’s talk on Intro Psych, you’ll remember he had a great story about a reviewer’s thoughts on his dark adaptation coverage in his textbook.) “Yes, I teach that, because… well… I guess because I have always taught that.” Psychology is a dynamic field. Is having taught particular content a good enough reason to keep teaching it?  Or should what we teach be just as dynamic as our science?   Reference Frantz, S. (2024, April 4). Intro Psych: The hardest course we teach. Macmillan and BFW Teaching Community. https://community.macmillanlearning.com/t5/psychology-blog/intro-psych-the-hardest-course-we-teach/ba-p/20067   ... View more

My first full-time job was at a small college. I was both the psychology and the sociology department—although after a year or two I convinced them to hire a sociologist. In college, I minored in sociology and my graduate degree was in social psychology, but the two disciplines look at the human condition very differently. Anyway, that’s just to explain why the head of the social sciences division (the closest thing we had to a department chair) was from accounting. One day while we chatting, she told me that she believed that anyone can teach an intro course in anything. All they need is a good intro textbook. In my memory, my first thought was, “Please don’t ask me to teach Introduction to Accounting.” My second thought was, “What a weird way to insult my expertise.”  But now, 30 years later, I’m thinking she may have been right. To a point. Introduction to Psychology is the hardest course in the psychology curriculum we have to teach. That’s only because, as instructors, we don’t know most of the content of the course. The first time I taught Intro Psych, I was a third-year social psych grad student. I had a solid handle on three chapters: “Welcome to Psychology,” research methods, and social psychology. Now, what about those other 11 chapters? As an undergrad (three to seven years earlier), I had taken biopsych, development, learning, memory and cognition, and abnormal psych. With those five chapters, I had a fighting chance. I was familiar enough with most of the concepts, that I could relearn them without too much trouble. Although, admittedly with some concepts, I only fully grasped them when I had to teach them to my students. And, also admittedly, not always the first, second, or even third time around. (To all of the students I had in my first few years of teaching, I’m sorry!) If you have been keeping track at home, you know that I felt competent—or reasonably competent—in eight of 14 chapters. That leaves sensation and perception, consciousness, intelligence and language, emotion and motivation, personality, and therapy. Here’s an idea. What if I just don’t cover some of those? In a survey of 814 Intro Psych instructors (Richmond et al., 2021), the chapters taught by over 90% of the respondents were learning, neuroscience, personality, abnormal, memory, social psych, and development. Six of those seven I felt pretty good about teaching. What about the chapters I was less comfortable with? What percentage of my fellow Intro Psych instructors taught those? Perception: 78.1%; therapy: 77.2%; sensation: 75.6%; consciousness: 71%; intelligence: 64.2%; emotion: 64.1%; motivation: 60.3%; language: 41.4%. I encourage you to look at the survey’s results for each Intro Psych content area. The chapters most of us teach are courses that are typically part of the core for the major. The chapters in the second tier are typically second tier courses for the major. The chapters we’re commonly excluding are typically electives for the major, if they are offered at all. Maybe I wasn’t the only one teaching Intro Psych content that I was most familiar with. As a newly-minted Intro Psych instructor, I relied heavily on the textbook I adopted to teach me what I needed to know in all of those chapters where I felt, frankly, incompetent. The textbook wasn’t my only source, though. A grad student ahead of me in my program was headed off to a job in industry, so she gave me her hand-written Intro Psych lecture notes to get me started. Someone also gave me this nugget of advice: get a high-level Intro Psych textbook, and use that for your lecture material. During the recording of a Psych Sessions podcast (Landrum & Nolan, Feb 29, 2024), I learned that I wasn’t the only one who got that advice. In some ways, my first division chair was right. When we teach Intro Psych, we are learning the course content from our textbooks as we go. For high school teachers who teach Intro Psych—especially AP Psych—they may not have a background in psychology at all, so they are absolutely learning as they go. And the AP Psych instructors don’t have the luxury of not teaching chapters they’re not comfortable with. The students need all of the chapters in preparation for the AP exam. Some of the best Intro Psych instructors I know teach AP Psych. In a recent conversation with one of those best AP Psych instructors, she said that she feels like she has just the surface of the field, not the depth. I countered that college instructors have just the surface, too, except for their area of expertise. The more education we get, the narrower our knowledge becomes. There is one exception to the narrowing of knowledge: research methods. That is one way where my division chair was wrong. Through my BA and graduate training, I became well-versed in the research methods we use in psychology. Research methods underpins everything we do; it is our way of knowing. While an accountant would struggle to wrap their head around how psychological researchers do science, a scientist from a different field might have an easier time. Science is science. Our methods may differ, but the basics—and the values—are the same. To everyone who is teaching Intro Psych for the first time, if you feel incompetent in most of what you are teaching, it is because you are. But you are not alone in that experience. And it will get better. Every time you teach the course, you will learn more.   References Landrum, E., & Nolan, S. A. (Feb 29, 2024). STP and new challenges, with guest Sue Frantz (Beyond Teaching S6E4) [MP3]. https://psychsessionspodcast.libsyn.com/beyond-teaching-s6e4-stp-and-new-challenges-with-guest-sue-frantz Richmond, A. S., Boysen, G. A., Hudson, D. L., Gurung, R. A. R., Naufel, K. Z., Neufeld, G., Landrum, R. E., Dunn, D. S., & Beers, M. (2021). The Introductory Psychology census: A national study. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 7(3), 163–180. https://doi.org/10.1037/stl0000277   ... View more

Walking in nature is good for us, but what if we’re looking at our phones while we’re walking in nature? Is that walk still beneficial? Researchers Randi Collin and Elizabeth Broadbent at the University of Auckland recognized that this was an empirical question (Collin & Broadbent, 2023). If you’d like to give your students some experimental design practice when you cover stress and coping, ask your students to work in small groups to design an experiment that would test one of Collin and Broadbent’s hypotheses: “phone walking would cause stooped posture, slower walking, lower arousal, and worse mood and affect than walking without a phone.” Students should identify their dependent variables and the experimental and control conditions of their independent variable, including operational definitions. Because this is an experiment, remind students that in their proposed study, participants will need to be randomly assigned to conditions. Invite each group to share their designs. As a take-home assignment, ask students to read Collin and Broadbent’s freely available research paper and answer these questions: The researchers had two hypotheses. One we discussed in class: “phone walking would cause stooped posture, slower walking, lower arousal, and worse mood and affect than walking without a phone.” What was their second hypothesis? What was the study’s independent variable? Identify the experimental and control conditions. What operational definitions for each did the researchers use? When identifying participants for their study, researchers had two requirements that participants had to meet. What were they? When identifying participants for their study, researchers had two things that would exclude a volunteer from their study. What were they? From the “measures” section of the article, identify all of the dependent variables the researchers measured. What operational definitions for each did the researchers use? For each dependent variable, describe whether the researchers found any statistically significant differences between the two conditions. (The article refers to significant differences, but it is understood that they mean statistically significant differences.) Near the end of the discussion section, the researchers identify several limitations in this study. Each limitation is effectively a hypothesis and an invitation to other researchers to test these hypotheses. Choose one of their identified limitations, create a hypothesis based on that limitation, and then design an experiment to test that hypothesis. Identify your dependent variables and the experimental and control conditions of your independent variable. Be sure to include operational definitions.     Reference Collin, R., & Broadbent, E. (2023). Walking with a mobile phone: A randomised controlled trial of effects on mood. Psych, 5(3), 715–723. https://doi.org/10.3390/psych5030046     ... View more

In season three/episode four of the Andy Griffith Show (first aired October 22, 1962), Opie advises his father, Andy, not to lick the tip of the pencil he’s about to write with. Opie says, “It’s an indelible pencil. If you lick indelible, you die in a minute and a half.” His father asks Opie who told him that. “Johnny Paul Jason.” This is after Opie has shared a few other similar ‘facts’ that Johnny Paul Jason has uttered. Andy replies, “Boy sure is a gold mine of made-up facts.” Johnny Paul Jason would be right at home with today’s Internet. I visited with a friend last week at a conference. He told me that upon someone telling his daughter, Melina Gurung, something that sounded questionable, she replied, “Is that an Internet fact or an actual fact?” What a great response! The subtext: “That sounds like a bunch of baloney. Have you checked the source to see if it’s legitimate? Or are you just repeating it?” Isn’t Gurung’s phrasing beautifully concise? It immediately puts the onus back on the speaker: “Is that an Internet fact or an actual fact?” The speaker has to stop and consider the source. Back in the 1960s, Opie’s father would have asked, “Is that a Johnny Paul Jason fact or an actual fact?” Just a couple of days ago I learned that today’s Johnny Paul Jasons are sharing tax advice on TikTok (Dietz, 2024). No, creating a limited liability company (LLC) does not mean you can deduct your groceries from your taxes. No, as a business owner, you cannot list your 4-year-old as an employee. If the person giving you tax advice is a tax attorney or an accountant, you can give what they say some credibility. But a seemingly random person? Is that really a good idea? When it comes to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS), actual facts are less likely to land you in hot water than are Internet facts. Have you seen the photo of the British Airways plane with a flock of birds in the foreground? (Shout out to Linda Woolf for sharing this with me.) The Internet fact says that smuggled exotic birds were on the plane, and that’s why the wild birds swarmed it. (Who makes this stuff up?) The good folks at Snopes.com, who have been sorting Internet facts from actual facts since 1995, discovered the actual fact (Liles, 2024). Adam Samu took the photo on June 15, 2004, and he confirmed that the birds were not near the plane. It’s an optical illusion. The birds are starlings that “range in size from 19 to 23 centimetres” (7.5 to 9 inches). The birds simply happened to be in the foreground when he took the photo. Many years ago, I had a Johnny Paul Jason in class. I’m sorry I didn’t take the time to write down the Internet facts he shared—always uttered with complete conviction. One in particular I remember. He said that dolphins can identify humans who were born underwater. We took some class time on that one to design an experiment that would test his claim. While that was a useful activity, I’m now ready for my next Johnny Paul Jason. “Is that an Internet fact or actual fact?” Thank you, Melina Gurung!   References Dietz, M. (2024, March 18). Ignore this tax advice from TikTok. Lifehacker. https://lifehacker.com/money/ignore-this-tax-advice-from-tiktok Liles, J. (2024, March 15). Pilot reacted emotionally when he realized why birds were flying alongside his airplane? Snopes. https://www.snopes.com//fact-check/pilot-emotional-birds-plane/   ... View more

My favorite conference activity is attending poster sessions. I love talking with students. They are always enthusiastic about their research. The poster topic doesn’t matter to me, although I tend to favor the topics I know very little or nothing about. The student presenters get to experience what it’s like to be the experts and in a position to teach someone else not only about their study but about the topic more generally. Last week, I attended the Southeastern Psychological Association (SEPA) conference. Whenever I had free time, I popped into the posters and wandered around until I found a poster where the presenters were not currently speaking with anyone. “Hi! Tell me about your poster,” I say. The first poster I went to, the students surprised me, though. One student looked at my name badge, and said, “Oh! Sue Frantz. We read a couple of your papers.” I haven’t published much in journals and what I have published was not related to their poster topic, so this was especially surprising. Of course, I asked what they had read. It took them a bit to remember, but they got there. One was a paper on how Intro Psych can dispel myths (McCarthy & Frantz, 2016), and the other was the Intro Psych pillars article (Gurung et al., 2016). Once we had that sorted, I asked why they read those articles. They said that their professor asked them to read one to three articles written by each of the invited speakers in preparation for coming to SEPA. Brilliant! I quickly looked at their poster to find their affiliation: Covenant College. I asked for the name of their professor: Carole Yue. Later that afternoon, I gave my talk on the need to give careful consideration to what we cover in Intro Psych. After the talk, two students came up to me. They said that they needed to interview one of the invited speakers and would I be willing to take 10 to 15 minutes to answer their questions? My first thought was, “I have no idea what questions you are going to ask, but there is no way I can answer them in 15 minutes.” And that was okay by me since I had nowhere in particular I needed to be. But what I said was, “Are you from Covenant College?” Yes, yes, they were. After our conversation—which took at least 30 minutes—I asked that if they see me and their professor, Dr. Yue, in the same room, to please introduce me. I remember my very first conference: Eastern Psychological Association (EPA), Buffalo, NY, 1989. Or at least I’m pretty sure about the location, but the year could have been 1988. That was a long time ago. Anyway, I remember seeing someone whose work I had been reading for a research project I was working on. I wanted to say hi, but I didn’t have any words for after “Hi.” Yue’s students have something to say after “Hi.” The next day, Carole Yue found me, and I learned more about what she does to ensure her students get the most out of their conference experience. I was so impressed, I asked her to email me with what she does because I wanted to share it with all of you. At Covenant College, students can enroll in Psy310: Psych Field Trip. This course was created decades ago by Yue’s predecessor, Mike Rulon. Yue reports that Rulon graciously shared everything with her when she took over the course, and she has since revised it. Here’s the catalog description. The psychology department arranges and sponsors field trips to various professional psychology conventions. The conventions attended in the past have included the Southeastern Psychology Association (SEPA), the Christian Association for Psychological Studies (CAPS) and the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR). By these means, students are able to gain a wide sampling of the range of topics, issues, controversies and personalities in psychology today. A travel fee is individually set for each field trip (based on distance, housing, etc.).   This year’s trip fee was $600, “but presenters get a 50% scholarship. We've been fortunate that the administration has been willing to largely subsidize the trip for students (over half the total cost)” (C. Yue, personal communication, March 18, 2024). For context, Covenant College is near Chattanooga, an 8.5-drive to Orlando where this year’s SEPA conference was held.   Students needed to prepare for SEPA by doing the assigned readings (one to three articles by each invited speaker) and discussing some of those articles with one to three other SEPA attendees. Yue ensures students get exposure to what’s new in a breadth of topics. She divides psychology into eight broad areas (e.g., clinical/counseling/addiction/therapies, neuroscience/cognitive neuroscience/neurology, industrial-organizational/human factors/forensic). Students need to identify one session in at least five of those eight categories that they plan on attending. Yue writes, While at the conference, students check in with me around 8am and receive their per diem for food…They conference all day, and we meet for dinner each night…We then have debriefing meetings after dinner where each student shares about their day. Even though it makes the days very long, students also generally appreciate having the debriefing because they get to reconnect and hear about talks they didn't get to, unusual experiences, or interview/presentation tips. At some point during those two days, students need to find and interview (or have a substantial conversation with) a psychologist. I give them some interview guidelines and suggested questions/topics, but I do encourage them to think of it as a professional fact-finding mission and tailor questions to their own interests (C. Yue, personal communication, March 18, 2024). After the conference, students write about their experiences. Yue writes, Their post-SEPA writings are reflections/summaries of their experiences…I've divided it up into one for each day (Thursday and Friday), as well as a summary of their concentration…They do a summary of their interview, and they do a final reflection of the trip in the style of a letter to a future student who might be considering attending SEPA… Students also submit a list of "Five 5's" in which they tell me 5 things they thought were unusual or surprising (behavioral or content-based), 5 applications they want to implement, 5 memorable events, 5 ideas/concepts they want to remember, and 5 suggestions to me.  Since we have the evening debriefs and the long bus ride home, we won't meet again this week. I think one of the appealing aspects of the course is that after the trip is done, they're done with the class (C. Yue, personal communication, March 18, 2024).  Based on the interactions I had with four of Yue’s students, there is no doubt in mind that they were well-prepared for attending SEPA. After Yue shared with me how she prepared them, I understood why. Conferences can be overwhelming, especially for first-time attendees. Yue’s students are familiar with the conference program and the invited speakers, and they have goals they want to accomplish. What an amazing experience it must be for them—and for their professor. Yue adds, “[T]his course is only possible because the students really jump into the work, and they're amazing. It's such a privilege to see them stretch themselves and grow into themselves as psychologists” (C. Yue, personal communication, March 19, 2024) If you are interested in exploring similar assignments or a similar course for your students, please download Yue’s Psy310 syllabus, pre-SEPA requirements checklist, concentration plan, and breadth requirements.   References Gurung, R. A. R., 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. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0040012 McCarthy, M. A., & Frantz, S. (2016). Challenging the status quo: Evidence that Introductory Psychology can dispel myths. Teaching of Psychology, 43(3), 211–214. https://doi.org/10.1177/0098628316649470 Yue, C. (2024, March 18). Re: SEPA student assignment [Personal communication]. Yue, C. (2024, March 19). Re: SEPA student assignment [Personal communication].   ... View more

I saw a post about “hanging coffee” come across my social media news feed this morning, and I thought this could be a great activity for our students. It would fit wherever you cover social norms. What’s a “hanging coffee” (also called a “suspended coffee”)? Coffee shops (or other eating establishments) who do this allow patrons to gift coffee (or bagels, or meals, or whatever) to others. While I’ve experienced coffee shop patrons who have paid for the coffee for the next person in line, I haven’t seen this. How it works is simple. I walk up to the counter and order my coffee, but I pay for three coffees. The barista hands me my coffee and then “hangs” the extra two coffees I bought on the wall in the form of receipts or laminated cards. A patron who needs a free beverage takes down the receipt or the laminated card and hands it to the barista. The barista hands them their order. There was an article in the Portsmouth, NH newspaper four years ago describing the practice there (Barndollar, 2020). The norm of social responsibility tells us that we should help others. In fact, helping others makes us feel good about ourselves. Those are two good reasons alone to buy a “hanging coffee.” But what if “hanging coffees” aren’t (yet!) a norm in your community? After covering social norms, invite your students to try to establish “hanging coffee” as a new social norm in your community. Of course, students don’t have to limit themselves to coffee. Is there a staffed laundromat in your community? “Hanging laundry” could become a thing. If your students don’t like the term “hanging”—I know I don’t—or “suspended”—another loaded term, especially for students!—encourage your students to think of another name. Working in pairs or small groups, students are to identify a business establishment where patrons might like to buy something for someone else. (You might want to exclude alcoholic drinks at bars as an option.) If several pairs or small groups identify coffee shops, ask those students to divvy up your local coffee shops. Next, students—again working in those same pairs or small groups—are to speak with the manager about their idea. Students should be prepared to buy the first “hanging <whatever>.” If they don’t have the money, encourage them to bring their friends. Everyone in the group could chip in, say, a quarter to buy a “hanging <whatever>.” To make it easier for the manager to say yes, students should do some reconnaissance first to identify a place where the receipts could be placed and create a sign that could go in that location. If the establishment doesn’t have an empty billboard, students could consider donating one. Creating the board and posting a receipt one time may not be enough to establish a norm. How frequently do students think they will have to “seed” the board before the norm becomes established—perhaps students could encourage faculty to purchased “hanging <whatevers>”? Invite students to report back on their experience. Based on social media responses, some students, managers, and others will be concerned that people would take advantage of the “hanging <whatever>” board. It’s an interesting idea to explore. Plenty of us donate money or food to food banks, and the food banks I’m familiar with don’t ask for proof of need. Might someone who is quite wealthy get free food? Sure. Do I care? Not especially. For all I know, they’re donating thousands of dollars each year to that food bank. As for the “hanging coffee,” I would imagine that social norms would drive not only who donates but who uses it. Having said that, I can imagine a person who is having an absolutely rotten day wanting to accept a coffee bought by someone else as a mood booster. I can just easily imagine that same person coming in a week later and buying ten “hanging coffees” in order to boost the mood of others. If creating a new social norm in the form of “hanging coffees” doesn’t work for you as a class activity, consider suggesting it to the psychology club, psychology honor society chapter, Greek chapters, or other clubs.   Reference Barndollar, H. (2020, January 13). “Hanging coffee” aims to pay it forward. Foster’s Daily Democrat. https://www.fosters.com/story/news/2020/01/13/hanging-coffee-aims-to-pay-it-forward/1909907007/   ... View more

I recently read Henry Winkler’s memoir, Being Henry: The Fonz… and Beyond. Having grown up with Happy Days (first aired 1974-1984), I will always have a soft spot in my heart for the Fonz… and Henry Winkler. People who are more closely in tune with today’s culture than I am—and that’s just about everybody—will know Henry Winkler for his role as the acting teacher Gene Cousineau in the HBO series Barry (aired 2018-2023). In Winkler’s memoir, he opens chapter 11 with this: “I had a shrink for two years. Every week I'd go in and talk about my parents, Stacey [his wife], our children, my troubles getting acting work, and—when I did get work—my continuing problems getting out of my own way” (Winkler & Kaplan, 2023, p. 198) Good for him, I thought. After having read the first 10 chapters, I could see where he could benefit from psychotherapy. Question 1 for your students. When Winkler uses the term “shrink,” what kind of therapist might he be referring to? He doesn’t tell us, but the top three options are psychologist, counselor, and psychiatrist. Although, a life coach is certainly a possibility. After revealing he is seeing a therapist of some kind, Winkler writes, “Then one day my shrink asked me to look at a script he'd written” (Winkler & Kaplan, 2023, p. 198)  <Screeching record noise>. I reread the sentence. No, I did not read it wrong. I immediately began mentally flipping through the American Psychological Association’s (APA’s) ethics code and the American Counseling Association’s ethics code. And then, because I’m not familiar with the American Psychiatric Association’s ethics code, I looked it up. Unsurprisingly, they follow the ethics code of the American Medical Association, although the psychiatrists have a sort of annotated edition for themselves. With a bit of research, I discovered the International Coaching Federation (life and business coaches, not sports coaches) and their ethics code. Question 2 for your students. Review the ethics codes for the American Psychological Association, the American Counseling Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the International Coaching Federation. Do any of them permit a provider to use a client to advance their side gig? If not, which part of each ethics code has been violated? Question 3 for your students. If Winkler wanted to pursue a complaint against this provider, what should he do? [The answer differs depending on the type of provider, the professional association(s) the provider belongs to, and how and where they are licensed.] Winkler seems to have solved the problem to his satisfaction. He writes, “And so I spent a number of years shrink-less” (Winkler & Kaplan, 2023, p. 198)  While I applaud him for walking away, I am reminded of how one bad experience can color a person’s view of an entire profession. We see it in higher ed all the time. I loved chemistry in high school, so when I got to college, I considered majoring in chemistry. I took a chemistry class, and I hated it. More specifically, I hated how it was taught. And that resulted in a full stop to my chemistry exploration. Winkler did see another therapist. While the timeline is unclear, I perceived this therapist as coming after the read-my-script therapist. Winkler’s wife writes, “[H]e asked her at the beginning if she had children, and she said, ‘How will knowing that help you? What would that add to why we’re here?’” (Winkler & Kaplan, 2023, p. 237). What a beautiful way of saying, “We’re here to talk about you, not me.” In this blog post, while I suggest prompting students to look at ethics codes in the context of Henry Winkler’s experience, it is important that students have some familiarity with those codes. Everyone should know that therapists should follow a code of ethics, and if a person is seeing a therapist who violates that code of ethics, what they should do. Even if it is, at minimum, simply walking away.     Reference Winkler, H., & Kaplan, J. (2023). Being Henry: The Fonz . . . and beyond (First edition). Celadon Books. ... View more

In an Optimist Daily article this morning, I learned that there are 54 Taylor Swift songs that have a beat that matches the recommended number of beats per minute for giving CPR (Optimist Daily, 2024). The healthcare professionals who identified the songs think that these songs may be more relevant to younger generations than the Bee Gees Stayin’ Alive. I’m going to digress a bit before getting to the student activity. <DIGRESSION> First digression thread. I cannot think of Stayin’ Alive without first thinking of Saturday Night Fever followed immediately by Airplane!. If you’re desperate for examples of retrieval cues, you’re welcome to use those. I wonder how many of your students know that the “man dancing” emoji (🕺🏻) is John Travolta from Saturday Night Fever. If you’re looking for a light but very entertaining read, check out Surely You Can't Be Serious: The True Story of Airplane!. If you want to give Stanley Milgram’s six degrees of separation some love, I know someone who knew the actor who played the character to first vomit. He obviously knew Leslie Nielsen and Kareem Abdul Jabbar. If you know me, then you are five degrees from them, making you six degrees from just about everybody in the acting world and the sports world. If you and I haven’t met yet, then let’s meet the next time we’re at a conference together. Just say, “Hi, I want to get closer to Leslie Nielsen.” Second digression thread. Ambulances used to be operated by police departments. No treatment was offered along the way. There was one goal: get the injured to a hospital as quickly as possible. One physician—the one who invented CPR—and an all-Black ambulance crew in Pittsburgh changed ambulances into what they are today. For that history, I highly recommend the book American Sirens: The Incredible Story of the Black Men Who Became America's First Paramedics. Third digression thread, which is really a sub-digression. My wife volunteers for the box office—it’s a small table and a laptop—at our local arts theater. One patron who is a frequent attendee has an incredible mental database of actors and movies that he shares snippets from. For example, he recently shared that one actor’s niece and another actor’s daughter appeared in a movie together. Not the movie that was playing that night, mind you, but some other movie. I’m afraid that I don’t remember what cued this particularly memory for him. In my defense, I didn’t know I was going to need a few days later! My first two digressions remind me of this guy. Something cued his retrieval of that movie, and in this blog post, I seem to sharing with you every memory retrieval I am having this morning. Which leads to… …the fourth digression thread. Have you seen the 2024 Oscar-nominated film for Best Picture, American Fiction? That was the movie that was playing the night I met the affectionately named Random Movie Fact Guy. If you haven’t seen American Fiction, I highly recommend seeing it. Be sure to notice the cameo by Kenneth and Mamie Clark’s doll study. < END DIGRESSION> I also learned from the Optimist Daily article that this Taylor Swift/CPR information was delivered at Swiftposium 2024 held Feb 11-13 at the University of Melbourne. It appears that the Swiftposium was an opportunity for the University of Melbourne faculty to share with the University of Melbourne community how their fields intersect with the cultural phenomenon that is Taylor Swift. While I am not a Swiftie—nor am I an anti-Swiftie—I enjoy a good cultural phenomenon. As of December 2023, nine of her songs had over a billion listens on Spotify (Morgenstern, 2023). Whether your students are Swifties or not, a cultural phenomenon is worthy of psychological study. As an activity to wrap up Intro Psych, consider inviting your students to present at their own in-class Swiftposium—posters or presentations, individually or small groups, in-person or online. Do whatever makes the most sense given your course modality and number of students. Even if you don’t do a Swiftposium, this would work as the basis for a written assignment or discussion. Instructions: Identify one concept we covered in this course (in class or in your course readings) and explain how that concept connects to Taylor Swift. The connection could be to just about anything, such as her music, her concerts, her fans, or her relationship with Kansas City player Travis Kelce. Identify the concept, briefly explain the concept, and then draw the connection to Taylor Swift. Here are a few examples. After the Super Bowl, Kelce asked Swift who had flown in from Tokyo for the game, “How do you not have jet lag right now?” She replied, “Jet lag is a choice” (Hanson, 2024). Based on what students have learned about sleep, is jet lag a choice? From what we know about jet lag, what might Taylor Swift have done to minimize jet lag? What behaviors do Swifties engage in to signal in-group membership to other Swifties? Taylor Swift encouraged her fans in an Instagram post to register to vote by going to Vote.org. “Vote.org registered more than 35,000 voters after Swift's post, which was a 22.5% increase from the previous year, organization CEO Andrea Hailey said Wednesday. There was a 115% increase in registrations by 18-year-olds when compared to last year. The organization also helped 50,000 people verify their registration status” (Chasan, 2023). This behavior could be explained by the persuasion principle of liking.     References Chasan, A. (2023, September 21). More than 35,000 people register to vote after Taylor Swift post—CBS News. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/taylor-swift-encourages-voter-registration/ Hanson, H. (2024, February 17). Taylor Swift’s 5-word take on jet lag will have you go, “Hmmm.” Yahoo Entertainment. https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/taylor-swifts-5-word-jet-170134945.html Morgenstern, L. (2023, December 5). Taylor Swift’s 15 most popular songs, ranked (according to Spotify). TheThings. https://www.thethings.com/taylor-swift-most-popular-songs/ Optimist Daily. (2024, February 19). Fearless hearts: More than 50 Taylor Swift songs are perfect for life-saving CPR. https://www.optimistdaily.com/2024/02/fearless-hearts-more-than-50-taylor-swift-songs-are-perfect-for-life-saving-cpr/   ... View more

I have written previously about the fear of needles in the context of COVID vaccine hesitancy. This NPR story got me thinking about this again (Dembosky, 2024). First, we have children who are traumatized by getting shots that their conditioning continues into adulthood with the end result of less likely to volunteer to get important medical care, including vaccines. Second, we have caregivers who are traumatized by their traumatized children. It cannot be easy to know that you are the one who okayed the shot that has resulted into your child screaming. I can’t help but wonder how many people stand behind an anti-vax principle because they don’t want to admit that they are terrified of needles or can’t bear to watch their child be terrified of needles. And third, it’s traumatic for the healthcare professionals, too. In the article, one physician said doing this to children made her decide against going into pediatrics. The major point of the article is that it doesn’t have to be this way. One physician argues that there are a number of things healthcare professionals can do to make getting shots less traumatic. Use a topical numbing cream. Dentists figured that one out a long time ago (thank God!). We’re beyond time for other healthcare professionals to do the same. Numbing cream should be used routinely for children and offered to adults. For babies, while getting a shot, let them breastfeed or give them a sugar-dipped pacifier. Anything that will comfort them will help. For toddlers and older children—and I’d add adults even, distraction, distraction, distraction. The NPR story suggests “teddy bears, pinwheels or bubbles.” They missed an obvious one, though: digital distractions. These include movies, games, and music. I had a dentist who had a ceiling-mounted monitor and headphones. Patients would pick a movie to watch during a dental cleaning or other procedure. After the appointment, the dental staff would write in the patient’s chart where they were in the movie so they could pick up there on their next visit. As another example, I once had to see a dental specialist. The dentist and assistant played classic rock music during my visit—and they both sang along to the music. They were pretty good! The best I could do was sort of hum along—you try humming with your mouth hanging open! They appreciated my participation nonetheless. I never had a reason to see them again, but I would have gone back in a heartbeat. “No more pinning kids down on an exam table.” Their caregiver should hold them. In retrospect, that seems obvious.   Following coverage of classical conditioning or during coverage of phobias would both be fine places to discuss this topic with students. Here are a couple possible discussion questions. Have you (or your child) ever been offered a topical numbing cream before getting a shot? If so, what was your experience like? If not, would you consider asking for a topical numbing cream next time? We discussed a few different distractions that could be useful with children and adults. What other distractions can you think of that may be helpful for children, yourself, or other adults? The NPR story ends with suggesting that these techniques could also work with people with dementia who, like children, have no idea why someone is hurting them. There is reason to believe that the same anti-pain techniques would work with this population, too: “Numbing cream, distraction, something sweet in the mouth and perhaps music from the patient's youth that they remember and can sing along to.”  The article ends with this quote from one of the doctor’s interviewed for the story: “It’s worthy of study, and it’s worthy of serious attention.” If you’d like to give your students a little experimental design practice, divide students into small groups. Give each group a specific intervention: numbing cream, distraction, something sweet in the mouth, music from a patient’s youth. The population they are looking at are people with dementia. Students should keep in mind that dementia is not inevitable with aging (Fishman, 2017), so as they think about their sample and their intervention, they should focus on dementia, not age. Groups should identify and operationally define their dependent variable as well as identify and operationally define their independent variable. Students also need to consider the ethical challenges in conducting research with participants who are unable to give their consent to participate. Ask students to review section 3.10 of the APA ethics code and be sure to include in their study description how they would handle informed consent (American Psychological Association, 2017). After discussion, invite volunteers from each group to share their designs.   References American Psychological Association. (2017). Ethical principles of psychologists and code of conduct. https://www.apa.org/ethics/code Dembosky, A. (2024, February 13). Shots can be scary and painful for kids. One doctor has a plan to end needle phobia. NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/02/13/1230448059/shots-needles-phobia-vaccines-pain-fear-kids Fishman, E. (2017). Risk of developing dementia at older ages in the united states. Demography, 54(5), 1897–1919. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-017-0598-7   ... View more

If I were a manager or business owner needing to hire someone, the number one characteristic I would want in a new employee is conscientiousness. That Big Five trait predicts job performance in, well, just about every job (Wilmot & Ones, 2021). I was reminded of this after reading a recent Ars Technica article about spreadsheet errors (Thorne, 2024). More accurately, the article is about humor errors in spreadsheets that led to, well, bad things. While the article cited several examples, the one that made me choke on my coffee happened at Crypto.com in 2021 (Taylor, 2023). Thevamanogari Manivel moved from Malaysia to Australia in 2015 to escape “controlling relationship with her husband.” By 2018, she had saved up enough money to bring her oldest of three children to Australia. In 2020, she met Jatinder Singh who became her boyfriend. He was interested in cryptocurrency. He signed up for a Crypto.com account, but used Manivel’s bank account information to transfer $100 (AUD) into his Crypto.com account. Crypto.com said—and rightfully so—because the name on the bank account does not match the name on the Crypto.com account, we can’t accept this payment. So far so good. A Crypto.com employee was tasked with issuing the refund. Before I continue, please put down your coffee or other beverage. You should also swallow that bite of biscotti. Ready? In the Excel spreadsheet, instead of entering “100” in the refund box, the employee entered Manivel’s bank account number. Now, let’s all take a minute to look at our bank account number. Starting from the right and working left, count in two numbers and enter a period. Count in three numbers, and enter a comma. Repeat. Read that number out loud.  Manivel woke up one day to find approximately $10,470,000.00 AUD in her account. This discovery triggered a number of events. When Manivel asked her Singh some version of WTH, he said he won the money in a Crypto.com contest. Singh then said let’s move this money out of this account into an account with a different bank. (Perhaps the other bank had a better interest rate?) And then they begin spending it. Well, sure. Seven months later, during a routine audit, Crypto.com discovers the error. This probably says more about how much money is flowing through Crypto.com than anything else. Over 10 million dollars goes missing, and no one notices. For. Seven. Months. So, what does Crypto.com do? They contact Manivel’s bank asking for the money back. The money’s not in that account anymore. (No, I don’t know why Manivel’s bank didn’t ask questions earlier, like when the $10 million suddenly appeared in an account that likely had no more than maybe a few thousand in it at any given time.) Manivel said she thought scammers were trying to get their mitts on the dough. (Not her wording. But maybe she enjoys a good 1940s noir detective novel like I do. Or maybe not. The sexism can make for a challenging read.) Long story short, Manivel and Singh were arrested and the money was recovered. Manivel was sentenced to 200 hours of community service for her “opportunistic crime” plus time served (209 days). She had been held in custody awaiting trial because she was deemed a flight risk. Given that she was arrested at the Melbourne airport carrying $10,000 cash and a one-way ticket to Malaysia, that wasn’t a difficult call (Beatty, 2023a). Singh, the now-former boyfriend, pled guilty to the theft charge and as of early February, 2024 is awaiting sentencing (Beatty, 2023b). There is no word, however, on what happened to the Crypto.com employee who made the $10 million error. I bet they are no longer employed by Crypto.com. Maybe they are a highly conscientiousness employee who made this error while temporarily distracted. Mistakes happen. And there should certainly be processes in place to catch errors of this magnitude. I cannot even quit MS Word without being prompted to ask if I’d like to save my file before closing it. Having a little pop-up that says, “You’re about to refund $10 million dollars. Are you sure that’s what you want to do?” wouldn’t be hard to program. It also seems that for refunds of any size, a second person should have to approve it. Unless Crypto.com is continually shuffling millions of dollars around accounts. And they may very well be. In any case, all of this* could have been avoided if an employee with a high degree of conscientiousness had—after entering the account number in the refund amount box—reviewed their work before submitting it. Only if they had reviewed their work before submitting it—just as we ask our students to do. There is some evidence that we can up our conscientiousness game. In one study, Nathan Hudson (2021) gave participants a list of 50 challenges and asked the participants to choose up to four challenges for the week, such as “organize and clean up your desk” and “show up 5 min early for a class, appointment, or other activity” (p. 5). (For the complete list of challenges, see the appendix in Hudson et al., 2019). At the end of 16 weeks, those who completed more challenges had a greater increase in conscientiousness. Could such an intervention work with our students? Create a list of, say, 20 course-based challenges that target conscientiousness, such as “show up 5 min early for a class,” “submit a class assignment 24 hours early,” “complete the assigned reading before class,” “attend every class session this week,” “do not look at your phone during any class session this week.” If you’d like to involve your students in creating the list, give them Nathan Hudson’s list of 50, and invite students to work in small groups to choose items off his list (verbatim or revised) and create one or more of their own. Each week, ask students to choose two challenges and report those to you. At the end of the week, ask students to report if they successfully completed one or both of their challenges. Repeat each week. As a dependent measure, you could do a pre-test/post-test conscientiousness score from the Big Five Inventory. Or if you want to go for behavioral impact, choose an assignment from early in the course—before you implemented the challenges—and record when each student submitted the assignment as it relates to the assignment deadline. For example, if an assignment was due at 5pm, assignments that were submitted an hour would get a +60 (minute) score. Assignments that were submitted a half hour late would get a -30 (minute) score. For the week that your last assignment is due, do not run any challenges and calculate the “deadline score” for each of our students. Next, calculate a “deadline progress score” by subtracting the first assignment’s deadline score from the last assignment’s deadline score. A student who submitted their last assignment two hours early (+120) but submitted their first assignment 10 minutes early (+10), would have a difference score of +110, meaning they picked up 110 minutes worth of conscientiousness from the start of the challenges to the end. Similarly, a student who submitted their first assignment 15 minutes late (-15) and submitted their last assignment 15 minutes early (+15) picked up 30 min worth of conscientiousness. If you decide to do this research in your class, follow your institution’s IRB guidelines and report your findings in the Teaching of Psychology, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, or at conference, such as the Society for the Teaching of Psychology’s Annual Conference on Teaching.     References Beatty, L. (2023a, September 8). Thevamanogari Manivel: $10m landed in mum’s bank after Crypto.com bungle. News.Com.Au. https://www.news.com.au/national/victoria/courts-law/thevamanogari-manivel-10m-landed-in-mums-bank-after-cryptocom-bungle/news-story/e5900a5b0a2d89f0f2c6d2b2bad0a19d Beatty, L. (2023b, December 18). Jatinder Singh: Crypto enthusiast ‘knew’ $10m windfall was a mistake, court told. News.Com.Au. https://www.news.com.au/finance/jatinder-singh-crypto-enthusiast-knew-10m-windfall-was-a-mistake-court-told/news-story/8cc90e827e75a9119259d4ea3a7d79d3 Hudson, N. W. (2021). Does successfully changing personality traits via intervention require that participants be autonomously motivated to change? Journal of Research in Personality, 95, 104160. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2021.104160 Hudson, N. W., Briley, D. A., Chopik, W. J., & Derringer, J. (2019). You have to follow through: Attaining behavioral change goals predicts volitional personality change. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 117(4), 839–857. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000221 Taylor, J. (2023, September 24). A crypto firm sent a disability worker $10m by mistake. Months later she was arrested at an Australian airport. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/sep/24/a-crypto-firm-sent-a-disability-worker-10m-by-mistake-months-later-she-was-arrested-at-an-australian-airport Thorne, S. (2024, January 28). We keep making the same mistakes with spreadsheets, despite bad consequences. Ars Technica. https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/01/we-keep-making-the-same-mistakes-with-spreadsheets-despite-bad-consequences/ Wilmot, M. P., & Ones, D. S. (2021). Occupational characteristics moderate personality–performance relations in major occupational groups. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 131, 103655. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2021.103655   *”All of this” includes—but is not limited to—the hours spent by employees at Crypto.com and Manivel’s bank trying to recover the money, the hours spent by the police tracking down Manivel and Singh, the resources spent to keep them in jail while awaiting their time before the judge, the hours spent by the employees of the court system.   ... 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The Freakonomics Radio podcast aired an episode on scientific fraud. While the title of the episode leans toward hyperbole, the discussion is a bit more nuanced. We don’t actually know how much fraud there is, but we know that researchers have many reasons to be tempted to cheat—just like students have many reasons to be tempted to cheat. Here are some discussion or assignment questions based on the podcast. Shout out to Ellen Carpenter for the prompting. *** Listen to or read the transcript of this Freakonomics Radio podcast, Episode 527: Why is there so much fraud in academia? (Dubner, 2024). The podcast host, Stephen J. Dubner, says: “I rarely do this, but today I’m going to start by reading a couple sentences from Freakonomics, which Steve Levitt and I published in 2005: ‘Cheating,’ we wrote, “may or may not be human nature, but it is certainly a prominent feature in just about every human endeavor … Cheating is a primordial economic act: getting more for less.’” Perhaps you have cheated at least once in school, at work, or in a relationship. You certainly know people who have. Describe one of those cheating incidents in terms of “getting more for less.” Explain cheating behavior in terms of positive reinforcement. Brian Nosek, founder of the Center for Open Science, explains why academic fraud is so problematic. One reason he gives is the impact fraudulent research can have on public policy. The reach is greater than that, however. Describe how fraudulent research can affect public views on a topic and how it can affect other researchers in their decisions on what to research. Nosek says, “Publication is the currency of advancement. I need publications to have a career, to advance my career, to get promoted…The reality here is that there is a reward system, and I have to have a career in order to do that research. And so, yes, we can talk all about those ideals of transparency and sharing and rigor, reproducibility. But if they’re not part of the reward system, you’re asking me to either behave by my ideals and not have a career or have a career and sacrifice some of those ideals.” Is the motivation any different from the one that students have to cheat? Explain. While the podcast host tries to pin Nosek down into saying that there is more fraudulent research in psychology—social psychology in particular—than other sciences. Nosek points out that this perception of greater academic fraud in social psychology may be due to two factors. What are they? The issue of academic fraud is certainly not limited to psychology. For example, the journal Science has been addressing this issue. Recent editorials include how “errors, intentional or not erode confidence in science” and how researchers should be able to correct unintentional errors in their published work without stigma (Thorp, 2023, p. 743), the use of an AI tool to detect duplications of or manipulations in images submitted for publication so that questions can be addressed before publication (Thorp, 2024), and the challenges involved in identifying scientific misconduct (Oransky & Redman, 2024).   5. Briefly describe the research that was published in the sign-at-the-top paper. What data had Max Brazerman concerned? How were his concerns about that data alleviated? How did Data Colada know to look at the sign-at-the-top paper? What in the paper concerned Data Colada? 6. What reasons does Simine Vazire give for why a researcher may falsify or misrepresent research data? 7. At state universities, legislatures have substantially cut funding (Marcus, 2019). Colleagues—especially those at R1 and R2 universities—report that they are under a lot of pressure to bring in grant money. To compete for the limited amount of grant dollars available, researchers must have an active research program that produces results. Would there be as much temptation to cheat if everyone could do their research without pressure to publish? Similarly, would students feel less temptation to cheat if their work was lower stakes? 8. The American Psychological Association’s (APA’s) Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct clearly addresses falsification of data in 8.10 “Reporting Research Results” (American Psychological Association, 2017). APA can only hold members of APA accountable for their code of ethics. Frankly, the worst that APA can do is expel members who have been found in violation of the code (American Psychological Association, 2016). Universities have their own ethics committees and wield more power in the sense that faculty found in violation of the ethics code could, ultimately, be fired. What could professional associations or universities do to ensure ethical research practices before fraudulent research is published?     References American Psychological Association. (2016). 2016 APA Ethics Committee rules and procedures. https://www.apa.org/ethics/code/committee-2016 American Psychological Association. (2017). Ethical principles of psychologists and code of conduct. https://www.apa.org/ethics/code Dubner, S. J. (2024, January 10). Why is there so much fraud in academia? Freakonomics. https://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-is-there-so-much-fraud-in-academia/ Marcus, J. (2019, February 26). Most Americans don’t realize state funding for higher ed fell by billions. PBS NewsHour. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/most-americans-dont-realize-state-funding-for-higher-ed-fell-by-billions Oransky, I., & Redman, B. (2024). Rooting out scientific misconduct. Science, 383(6679), 131–131. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adn9352 Thorp, H. H. (2023). Correction is courageous. Science, 382(6672), 743–743. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adm8205 Thorp, H. H. (2024). Genuine images in 2024. Science, 383(6678), 7–7. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adn7530       ... View more

Let’s keep things light and look at some more psychology-related comic strips this week. Whether you use these in lecture, on an exam, or as discussion or assignment prompts, be sure to follow the classroom usage policy set by the comic strip’s licensing agency. If you have any doubts, link to the comic strips instead of using the image. Conformity: Close to Home by John McPherson: December 16, 2023 Identify the factors discussed in class and in your readings that contribute to conformity. In this comic strip, which of those factors are illustrated? Explain.   Operant conditioning: Real Life Adventures by Gary Wise and Lance Aldrich: December 20, 2023 Which of the father’s behaviors is being reinforced? What is the reinforcement? If the father is on a variable ratio schedule of reinforcement, what would need to happen? If the father is on a fixed ratio schedule of reinforcement, what would need to happen?   Operant conditioning: Dog Eat Doub by Brian Anderson: December 29, 2023 Which of the dog’s behaviors is being reinforced? What is the reinforcement? If the dog is on a variable ratio schedule of reinforcement, what would need to happen? If the dog is on a fixed ratio schedule of reinforcement, what would need to happen?   Sleep: Strange Brew by John Deering: December 21, 2023 Research how much caffeine is in a Starbucks venti americano. Site your source. Next, research how much caffeine is considered safe for daily consumption. Site your source. Lastly, explain how caffeine use during the day can affect sleep quality at night. ... View more