[net-gold] [socialpsy-teach] TSP Newsletter - Vol. 9, No. 8
- From: "David P. Dillard" <jwne@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: Net-Gold <Net-Gold@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Temple University Net-Gold Archive <net-gold@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Temple Gold Discussion Group <TEMPLE-GOLD@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Net-Gold <net-gold@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Sean Grigsby <myarchives1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Educator Gold <Educator-Gold@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Educator Gold <Educator-Gold@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, K12AdminLIFE <K12AdminLIFE@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Net-Platinum <net-platinum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "Net-Gold @ Nabble" <ml-node+3172864-337556105@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, MediaMentor <mediamentor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Digital Divide Diversity MLS <mls-digitaldivide@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, net-gold@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, NetGold <netgold@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2010 17:54:13 -0400 (EDT)
.
Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2010 16:39:18 -0500
From: Jonathan Mueller <jfmueller@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: socialpsy-teach@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [socialpsy-teach] TSP Newsletter - Vol. 9, No. 8
Teaching Social Psychology Newsletter
Vol. 9, No. 8
April 30, 2010
the e-mail newsletter accompanying the Resources for the Teaching of
Social Psychology website at
http://jonathan.mueller.faculty.noctrl.edu/crow
The Social Psychology Network has created a map of the research centers
and groups around the world studying social psychology. Click on it to
narrow down to specific locations. Very nice.
http://www.socialpsychology.org/maps/researchgroups/
I mentioned in the last Newsletter addendum that subscriber Amy Hackney
asked: "I have a request...I'm wondering if/how other social
psychologists are discussing in class the passage of the health care bill,
the polarized attitudes, the visceral rhetoric, etc." Here are a couple
responses to Amy's request.
Subscriber Sam Sommers said: "I don't have any great answers to Amy's
question, though I've been pondering the same myself. I just wrote a PT
blog on that very question, namely what does all this mean and how we
understand it from a psychological perspective
(http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/science-small-talk/201003/the-not-so-great-debate).
Again, the post doesn't really offer much in the way on concrete answers,
but it's my effort at least to start such a conversation with my students
(and in my own head). I pass it along in case the link is of use/interest
to anyone."
Subscriber Nancy Ashton said: " I mentioned a political email that I got
asking me to go to a website related to the Health insurance bill and
affix my name....and we discussed it in terms of sequential compliance
strategies---if I go to the site, they have my name and may hit me with a
second larger request (foot in the door) and if I don't go, they may ask
me to do something less public and "smaller" , reacting to the "door in
the face" that they got from me. There is ALWAYS lots of interesting stuff
in Washington and other political circles---on attitude change,
persuasion, compliance, conformity etc. In a couple of week when my class
gets to the aggression chapter, perhaps, among other things, we'll discuss
some for heated actions this week....threats, as some aggression."
Activities and Exercises
http://jonathan.mueller.faculty.noctrl.edu/crow/activities.htm
Social Psychology Network Action Teaching Award Winners for 2010
http://www.socialpsychology.org/action/2010recipients.htm
As many of you know, for several years now the Social Psychology Network,
through the work of Scott Plous, has sought nominations and awards prizes
for the best examples of action teaching in social psychology. You can
read more about the award and action teaching at the above link. But, on
with the awards.
Greater Good Web Site - Winner
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/
I have mentioned and commended this site in past issues. Lots of good
articles and ideas for promoting the greater good.
Understanding the Dynamics of Criminal Jury Trials - Honorable Mention
http://www.socialpsychology.org/action/2010honor5.htm
An in-class activity and a field experience in a courtroom
Social Judgment: Making attributions
http://www.thefirefly.org/Firefly/html/News%20Flash/2010/February%202010.htm#activities
The creator of this activity misrepresents the fundamental attribution
error, but he does provide some interesting scenarios that can be used to
talk about types of attributions we make as well as alternative
explanations for behavior. H/T subscriber Marianne Miserandino!
And here's a completely different activity your students could try!
Persuasion: New Cheerios!
http://improveverywhere.com/2001/09/22/new-cheerios/
Class Assignments
http://jonathan.mueller.faculty.noctrl.edu/crow/assignments.htm
More of the SPN Action Teaching Awards:
Putting Positive Psychology Into Action - Honorable Mention
http://www.socialpsychology.org/action/2010honor1.htm
A service learning project
The Psychology of Sustainable Behavior: Three Action Teaching Assignments
- Honorable Mention
http://www.socialpsychology.org/action/2010honor2.htm
Financial Education for Refugees - Honorable Mention
http://www.socialpsychology.org/action/2010honor3.htm
A field experience
Mass Violence and Reconciliation in Rwanda and Its Neighbors - Honorable
Mention
http://www.socialpsychology.org/action/2010honor4.htm
An elaborate and interesting field research study
Examples
http://jonathan.mueller.faculty.noctrl.edu/crow/examples.htm ;
Conflict and Peacemaking/Social Judgment: Ingroup bias
http://elections.firedoglake.com/2010/04/08/new-poll-shows-record-low-approval-of-congress/
It used to be that voters would say "throw those bums in Congress out, but
keep mine." Now, even that is changing.
Gender and Culture: Sexualizing women: Children's lingerie line
http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2010/01/noah-cyrus-launches-childrens-lingerie-line/
Helping: Bystander apathy
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/hugo_wouldn_have_done_that_family_FKNTR0IUj3tsYhB5uSzfEL
A very disturbing video -- A man who helped rescue a woman from an attack
was seriously injured in the attack. He is now lying on the sidewalk
dying. Watch the response of passersby. (Passersby - is that a word?)
Social Judgment: Confirmation bias
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/15/stewart-hammers-fox-news_n_538584.html
Oh, I love this one. How does Fox News interpret the Nuclear Security
Summit logo? Jon Stewart explains.
Articles
http://jonathan.mueller.faculty.noctrl.edu/crow/articles.htm
Social Judgment: Priming for God/religion
http://public.gettysburg.edu/~bmeier/Publications/Toburen%20&%20Meier%20(2010)%20-%20God%20Primes%20and%20Anxiety.pdf
http://epiphenom.fieldofscience.com/2010/03/god-prompts-can-scare-us-into-trying-to.html
I've seen a number of studies recently that have primed participants for
God, religion, or other related concepts. In this case, the priming let
to greater persistence on an anagram task and greater anxiety about
completing. However, I just heard some research at the Midwestern
Psychological Association conference (yesterday, in fact) that found that
participants responded differently to primes of "religion" than to primes
of "God." So, there may be confounding effects when multiple religious
terms are used as in the above study. The second link is to a blog entry
about the research.
The Psychonomic Bulletin & Review recently published a special issue on
emerging trends in psychology and law research. You can view the table of
contents and abstracts at
http://pbr.psychonomic-journals.org/content/current. ; U
nfortunately, most of these articles are not freely available on the Web.
But one article that is...
Psychology in the Courtroom: Eyewitness testimony and distance
http://faculty.washington.edu/gloftus/Downloads/Loftus.Legal.2010.pdf
Interesting article that tackles the question of what an expert in
perception could tell a jury about the accuracy of eyewitness testimony,
particularly when that eyewitness is some distance from the alleged
perpetrator.
Topic Resources
http://jonathan.mueller.faculty.noctrl.edu/crow/topics.htm
Aggression/Gender and Culture/Prejudice: "Rescuing girls from sex slavery"
http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/04/29/cnnheroes.koirala.nepal/index.html?hpt=C1
A very compelling story from India
Aggression/Prejudice: Preventing genocide
http://www.ushmm.org/genocide/
The U.S. Memorial Holocaust Museum has put together a good set of
resources on genocide including a description of countries that are at
risk today.
Conflict and Peacemaking/Psychology in the Courtroom: Sharing initial
preferences
http://tinyurl.com/29vxowu
This blog entry summarizes the research by recommending "don't start group
discussions by sharing initial preferences." Why, what happens? Nope,
not going to tell you. You have to go read it.
Conformity: More background on Milgram's obedience studies
http://tinyurl.com/2fxfbwl
Conformity: Cell phone etiquette
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/26/cell-phone-etiquette-15-r_n_514927.html
This list of 15 rules provides a nice example for a discussion of how
norms are formed, transmitted, changed, etc.
Genes, Gender, and Culture: Where do sex differences come from?
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-truth-about-boys-and-girls
Interesting article in Scientific American Mind: "Experience itself
changes brain structure and function. Most sex differences start out
small—as mere biases in temperament and play style—but are amplified as
children’s pink- or blue-tinted brains meet our gender-infused culture."
Genes, Gender, and Culture: "Blondes paid more than other women"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/7552146/Blondes-paid-more-than-other-women.html
It's about tim...oh, they're just talking about women.
Genes, Gender, and Culture: Hong Kong police recruit "pretty" women
http://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/police_recruit_pretty_women-03182010143456.html
Genes, Gender, and Culture: "Causes and correlates of girls' delinquency"
http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/226358.pdf
Genes, Gender, and Culture/Prejudice: "Iceland: The world's most feminist
country"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/mar/25/iceland-most-feminist-country
I think it would be interesting to ask students or anyone what they think
would make a country "female-friendly." Or male-friendly. Or
possum-friendly.
Helping: Reciprocal altruism in infants?
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/183341.php
"We are usually eager to assist people who have helped us in the past.
These reciprocal relationships are an important part of adult interactions
and foster cooperation in society. New findings, reported in Psychological
Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggest
that this reciprocal behavior may have early beginnings and can be
demonstrated in children as young as 21-months-old." Am I allowed to call
21-month-olds infants? My rule of thumb: If a baby can point to another
baby and call it a baby, it is no longer a baby.
Persuasion: War propaganda
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/?source=rss&aim=/opinion/greenwald/
This column from Glenn Greenwald prompts questions as to what is
propaganda, and what happens when people keep getting told that this is
the critical event, until they are told the next one is actually the
critical event. Is there research on that?
Persuasion: Intuitive understanding of persuasion
http://tinyurl.com/25tfgxt
http://tinyurl.com/246ecwq
"This research provides the first evidence that people do indeed use their
intuitive understanding of persuasion and the personal characteristics
associated with persuasion, to judge the extent to which persuasive
attempts will be successful." The second link is to another blog entry
about the research -- a bonus one for you,
Dave!
Persuasion: American propaganda?
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/04/05/afghanistan/index.html
Interesting essay suggesting that American citizens are being fed
propaganda about Afghanistan
Persuasion: "Scary health messages can backfire"
http://tinyurl.com/33kgo9l
For some people: "Before gauging the participants' reaction to the article
and its advice, the researchers tested them on a measure of 'cognitive
avoidance'. People who score highly on this personality dimension respond
to threats with avoidance tactics such as distracting themselves, denying
the threat or persuading themselves that they aren't vulnerable."
Prejudice: Arizona's new immigration law
http://www.tolerance.org/blog/arizona-legalizes-racial-profiling?newsletter=TT042710
http://www.azfamily.com/news/91769419.html
The first article is from the Teaching Tolerance site which says that
"Arizona legalizes racial profiling." The second link is to an apparently
disturbing event that occurred a few days before the law was passed.
Prejudice: "The political incorrectness of political correctness"
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/science-small-talk/201004/the-political-incorrectness-political-correctness
This interesting essay by subscriber Sam Sommers could prompt some good
debate in your classroom.
Prejudice: Role reversal
http://ephphatha-poetry.blogspot.com/2010/04/imagine-if-tea-party-was-black-tim-wise.html
If one wants to believe that the U.S. is a post-racist society, one just
needs to substitute a minority group for the majority or powerful group in
certain situations to see the extent of our biases and prejudices. This
blog entry provides an excellent example of that. Provides a good,
provocative prompt for discussion.
Prejudice/Social Judgment: Whom should we screen at airports?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/02/airport-security-checks-r_n_522694.html
"The U.S. government is refining its terror-screening policy to focus on
specific terror threats and not travelers' nationalities. The new policy
replaces a security requirement put in place after the attempted bombing
of a jetliner en route to Detroit on Christmas Day that singled out people
from 14 countries that have been home to terrorists." Which is better?
Psychology in the Courtroom: Eyewitness accuracy
http://tinyurl.com/3665jur
I didn't know that Dan Simon of the inattentional blindness gorilla fame
has a blog. But he does. I'm sure you are just as fascinated as I am.
But anyway, this blog entry is about a staged television crime and the
accuracy of their eyewitnesses.
Social Judgment: "Finding meaning in random sequences"
http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/10-04-07/#feature
More on the power and peril of intuition
Social Judgment: Rational rejection of expert advice
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/cormac/papers/2009/SoLongAndNoThanks.pdf
Interesting article about why it might be rational to ignore many of the
calls for more careful attention to security on your computers
Social Judgment: How do we interpret low-probability, high-impact events?
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/58044/title/Gambling_on_experience
"A growing body of research indicates that people making decisions
interpret the chances of encountering rare events, such as a child
developing tragic complications from a vaccine, in dramatically different
ways."
The Self: Problems with self-construal
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/onlyhuman/2010/04/how-to-read-minds-like-wizard.cfm
"Those who had more psychological distance from themselves had a much more
realistic sense of how others saw them. They were able to see the 'big
picture' rather than focusing on trivial flaws and defects that only a
microscope can detect. In short, they were better mind readers."
The Self: Do the mobile form group identities?
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/onlyhuman/2010/03/american-restlessness-american.cfm
Some in society move quite frequently. Does that prevent or lessen the
likelihood they establish identities around groups they belong to?
The Self: Indirect bragging can be harmful
http://tinyurl.com/2bu3pg9
You may be better off saying "I could be the next prime minister" than
saying "My son could be the next prime minister."
Technology in Teaching
http://jonathan.mueller.faculty.noctrl.edu/crow/technology.htm
Instructional Techniques: Students create their own animated movies
Subscriber James McMinn passed along this excellent use of technology in
his classroom along with some examples of the finished products. I'll let
him tell you about it: "I thought this activity might be of interest to
those looking to incorporate additional technology (at no cost) in the
teaching about stereotyping and prejudice reduction. I ask students to
script a brief monologue or dialogue that focuses on stereotyping or
prejudice reduction. After their scripting, I ask them to create an
account on Xtranormal (www.xtranormal.com) and to turn their script into a
movie. On this website, they can fairly easily create a movie that brings
their script to "life". They choose the features of their characters
(e.g., voice, behaviors), background settings, camera angles, and
music, and then create the action of the script. Even students with
limited technological savvy found this program easy to use, and all
students enjoyed sharing their videos with others in the social psych
class, on Facebook, etc. What I found in their videos was a broad
cross-section of specific prejudices that interest students (I have linked
two videos below), and a fairly good reflection of knowledge about
stereotyping from social psychology. My only caution about Xtranormal is
that though it is engaging for students, it is a free web-based service;
thus, it can be very slow to create movies when the script is created and
it sometimes loses the script if students aren't saving their work
consistently. Despite these drawbacks, Xtranormal is a great technology
to allow students to express their creativity in a way that relates to the
content of their course. ht
http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/6333087/ ;
(gender stereotyping)
http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/6339075/
(a more comical look at stereotyping of those with moustaches)"
How Do You ... ?
Ever wonder how your fellow social psych instructors handle a certain
topic or issue in their courses? Then send me your "How Do You..?"
question and I will try and post it here. If I get some answers I will
post them in the following issue.
Request Line is Open!
Yes, I take requests; in fact, I encourage them. Are there particular
types of resources you would like examples of? Particular topics you are
interested in? Teaching tips? Technology tips? I want to tailor this
newsletter to your needs. So, please feel free to send me your requests,
suggestions, comments and resources. Send them directly to me
(jfmueller@xxxxxxxxxx) or by replying to this message.
The Teaching Social Psychology Newsletter is published monthly (hopefully)
by
Jon Mueller
Professor of Psychology
30 North Brainard St.
North Central College
Naperville, IL 60540
Copyright, Jon Mueller 2001-2010.
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Jon Mueller
Professor of Psychology
North Central College
30 N. Brainard St.
Naperville, IL 60540
voice: (630)-637-5329
fax: (630)-637-5121
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