​Grit:  The Power of Passion and Perseverance
Author:  Angela Duckworth
ISBN:  978-1-44344-231-2
 
APA Style Citation
Duckworth, A. (2016). Grit:  The Power of Passion and Perseverance.  Toronto, Ontario, Canada.  Harper Collins Publishers. Ltd.

Book Description
 
The long-awaited book from Angela Duckworth has finally arrived.  If you are feeling like you have already read much about the idea of Grit and are wondering if this book is worth your time, the answer is a definitive “yes.”  Duckworth explains in far more detail than other publications the specific details of Grit, how to grow Grit and develop Grit in others. 
 
Early in her career, Duckworth was a math teacher.  She indicates that initially talent blinded her view of her student’s abilities, but eventually she saw a connection between students that did well and students that worked hard regardless of their original level of talent.  It was the students who worked hard who ultimately became more successful.  One student, David, was not an outstanding math student at first.  David completed his homework each night with great care, and eventually, Duckworth moved him into a higher-level math class.  By senior year, David was taking honors calculus and more recently graduated from UCLA with a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering.  So, the student who initially began in a lower level math class became a “rocket scientist” through hard work and much effort.
 
The history of intelligence was born from the belief that intelligence was inherited not learned or created.  Eventually, this idea morphed into the belief that there are limits to intelligence determined by the bounds of genetics.  Duckworth examines the upper limits of talent and advocates that with hard work and determination these limits are quite malleable. Duckworth argues that effort may count twice as much as talent in determining one’s success.  She references the work of outstanding athletes, those who compete in the Olympics and other world class competitions and argues that most of their work in done in grueling early morning workouts in which athletes attempt to beat their best performance without any other competition and without any fanfare.  They work to be their own best, and while their moment in the spotlight is impressive, it is only a glimpse into the often unglamorous work that goes into the training of an athlete.  Without all of the prior hard work, their accomplishments would not be possible even with outstanding talent.  Still, many people want to attribute great accomplishments exclusively to talent, but Duckworth believes that talent and effort create skill while skill plus effort create achievement.  Talent may accelerate the pace of this achievement, but the effort should not be underestimated. 
More important than talent is the consistency over time in reaching a goal.  Duckworth notes that children often try many different activities throughout their formative years.  Experimenting with a variety of activities during childhood is healthy and normal, but not necessarily “gritty”. Grit occurs as the result of sticking with a particular activity over a long period.  People are less likely to quit an activity in which they have invested much time and effort if the effort is deliberate practice to improve areas in which that individual is not particularly strong, grit is occurring.  Duckworth states, “enthusiasm is common, endurance is rare.” In addition to the ability to stick with a task, one should have a guiding principle or philosophy that provides an overall purpose for one’s work.  Having purpose creates a unifying goal rather than simply having a number of small low-level goals that may or may not be connected to one another.  A challenge that many successful individuals face is deciding what NOT to do rather than accepting every opportunity that comes their way because if an individual accepts all of the offers posed to them, they will often be sidetracked from their larger goal.  Those who can reject smaller offers are more likely to reach a larger goal they care about more. 
 
According to Duckworth’s research, Grit does seem to increase as people age.  She interviews many experienced individuals who report that being a promising beginner is less gratifying than being a well-practiced expert.  People perform better when they pursue careers that match their personal interests. Unfortunately, many people today are engaged in work in which they are actively disengaged, they are in careers for the money or have selected a career without much thought, or rely on someone else’s guidance.   Engagement in work creates passion.  That passion is what allows people to dive deeply into their work and becomes experts who can tease out the nuance that others may miss.  Passion sets one on a path to continuous improvement which the Japanese refer to as ‘Kaizen.'  Passion often leads work to transform from a job to a calling.  No matter what someone does for a living they can find meaning and a larger purpose to their work, which will make their work more personally meaningful and deepen the richness and pleasure they derive from their respective careers.  Duckworth identifies her passion as “using psychological science to help kids thrive.”  This relates to her research, writing, and her speaking.  Duckworth asks readers to contemplate how the work that they are already doing can make a positive impact on society, which may help them find the larger meaning in their work.
 
Others like Anders Ericsson who is known for writing about experts needing 10,000 to rise to the top of their field support Duckworth’s findings that hard work and personal perseverance are keys to becoming an expert regardless of the field one pursues of their innate talents.  Experts who strive for mastery create a stretch goal which deliberate practice can help them to achieve.  They must focus on their weaknesses and seek to improve those deficits no matter how small.  Contrarily, the novice has any number of areas in which they may improve and even without deliberate practice; they are likely to get better. Deliberate practice is hard, and even world-class performers can only take about an hour before they need a break. 
Duckworth addresses how hope can impact Grit and cites the seminal work of Martin Seligman and his learned helplessness studies with dogs; she goes on, however, to also discuss Seligman’s later work with learned optimism by demonstrating that behaviors can have a positive impact on one’s environment.  Duckworth also cites the work of Carol Dweck who has demonstrated that children can be coached into creating a growth mindset, which will allow them to learn more and gain more meaning in their educational life and beyond. 
Duckworth believes that parenting also plays a large role in the creation of Grit, by encouraging children to try new activities and stick with at least a few of them even when things get hard.  Parents can create circumstances in which children will develop ‘grittiness.' Parents can encourage children to stick with at least some of the activities they begin.  The activity matters less than the hard work that goes into doing a task to the best of one’s ability.  That task may be athletics, schoolwork, music or anything else that requires deliberate practice to improve.  This work ethic can then transfer to nearly any other task.  Duckworth addresses creating a culture of Grit in business, in a classroom at home in which hard work, deliberate practice and Kaizen (continuous improvement) are a part of everyday life.  Duckworth believes that as more people are aware that talent does not determine one's worth or the outcomes of one's life,  and that if they are willing to do the hard work necessary to master a task, they will set themselves up for a future of meaningful work and passion to something important to that person, this seems like a goal worth fighting for. 
 
Other Related Resources
 
Book Website
http://angeladuckworth.com/grit-book/
 
TED talk:  Angela Duckworth
Grit:  The Power of Passion and Perseverance
https://www.ted.com/talks/angela_lee_duckworth_grit_the_power_of_passion_and_perseverance?language=en
 
Author Angela Duckworth’s Webpage
http://angeladuckworth.com
 
The Grit Scale
http://angeladuckworth.com/grit-scale/
 
The Guardian:  Is Grit the True Secret of Success?
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/may/07/is-grit-the-true-secret-of-success
 
Journal of Personality Processes and Individual Differences:
Grit:  Perseverance and Passion for Long-term Goals
https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~duckwort/images/Grit%20JPSP.pdf
 
Freakonomics radio:  How to Get More Grit in Your Life
http://freakonomics.com/podcast/grit/
 
The Atlantic:  Is Grit Overrated?
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/05/is-grit-overrated/476397/
 
The Bregman Leadership Podcast
http://peterbregman.com/podcast/angela-duckworth-grit/#.WA0NnFeCNFI
 
Geoffery Canada TED talk
https://www.ted.com/talks/geoffrey_canada_our_failing_schools_enough_is_enough?language=en
 
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi  TED talk on Flow
https://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow
 
Psychological Figures and Concepts
Aristotle
Albert Bandura
Aaron Beck
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Charles Darwin
Angela Duckworth
Carol Dweck
Anders Ericsson
James R. Flynn
Sir Francis Galton
William James
John Stuart Mill
Martin Seligman
John Watson
Authoritarian Parenting
Bobo Doll Study
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Flynn Effect
Flow
Genius
Goal-setting
Grit
Heritability
Intelligence
I.Q.
Learned Helplessness
Learned Optimism
Limbic System
Mindfulness
Mindset (Fixed v. Growth)
Myelin
Nature v. Nurture Debate
Perseverance
Positive Psychology
Prefrontal Cortex
Resilience Training
Self-fulfilling Prophecy
Twin (Monozygotic and Dizygotic)
Wechsler Intelligence Scales

Blog Contributor: Jessica Flitter
West Bend East High School
[email protected]
 
Great Myths of Education and Learning
Author: Jeffrey D. Holmes
ISBN: 978-1-118-70939-9 (Paperback)
 
APA Style Citation
Holmes, J. (2016). Great Myths of Education and Learning. Chichester, West Sussex:
Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Book Description
How many times have you heard something about using learning styles or being too left-brained? Sometimes components of researching findings become pervasive in the world of education even though they lack sound scientific research.  This book looks at sixteen popular myths concerning education and learning.  The content is dense and various studies are presented, addressing both sides of the myth.  A scientific claim should not be based on the finding of a single study, but rather a combination of studies all of which find fairly consistent results.  Existing studies should be combined through meta-analysis to find reliable patterns and limit potential bias. Through this sound research method, hopefully, a more complete picture is formed regarding a specific scientific claim. The summaries below provide a basic understanding of the findings presented in the book. 
 
Myth 1: Students are accurate judges of how much they know
Have you been told to empower your students and ask them how they learn best? Student empowerment is important but students, especially low-achieving students, tend to be overconfident and do not recognize what learning strategies are most effective. When material feels easy and quickly comes to mind, students falsely believe they understand the information well.  In addition, after reviewing assessments, they fall victim to hindsight bias.  Familiarity increases their confidence, leading to a false assessment of their knowledge.  Without an accurate ability to gauge performance, students are less efficient and do not study effectively.
 
Myth 2: Students learn better when teaching methods are matched with their learning styles
We have all sat through an in-service that demands we learn our students’ learning styles, but does it really matter?  A common claim supported by educators, parents, and students is that instruction which matches students’ learning preferences leads to more successful learning. To date, over 71 different learning style models have been identified, and the most common ones include the senses (visual, auditory, and kinesthetic). However, few scientifically sound studies support matching instruction to these preferences.  The studies lack reliability and appropriate assessments. Rather than using specific sensory modes to store content, most successfully learned memories are semantic in nature.  It has been found that students can use many different learning strategies when the specific content calls for it.
 
Myth 3: Lecturing is broadly inferior to other teaching methods
We are told, “Stop lecturing!” yet our students beg for it.  Should we lecture? Lectures compared to alternative teaching methods often reveal no significant difference in learning.  Many arguments center on the loss of attention span after 10-15 minutes.  However, few scientific studies support this statement.  A quick resetting of attention can easily get students back on track.  The lecture actually offers several advantages, including its efficiency for significant amounts of novel material.  On the contrary, lectures lack effectiveness when it comes to attaining applied skills or communication skills. It should be noted that classroom research is challenging due to a lack of control and experimenter bias. Also, lecturing is very difficult to define operationally.
Interestingly, instructors often negatively associate lectures with effectiveness. In contrast, students view lecturing as one of the most effective learning strategies. Studies reveal that high achieving students prefer lectures. In addition, structured lectures seem to help low-achieving students, as well as those students with high anxiety. While preferences are not the best evaluation tool, student perception does play a role in a successful classroom. Ultimately, effective teaching is partly the teaching method and the preferences in the classroom.
 
Myth 4: Using PowerPoint in the classroom improves student learning
PowerPoint has become the new overhead projector, but does it really work? Many students believe that PowerPoint leads to effective learning, but studies find no significant advantage compared to other presentations.  When students focus too much on elaborate slides, PowerPoint can actually hurt student performance.  However, students report the method as being more interesting, more organized, and more enjoyable.  They believe they take better notes and have increased confidence.  Interestingly, this increased confidence leads to a halo effect and improves students’ perception in other areas of the course as well.  There is little empirical evidence that PowerPoint affects student learning, but once again it is necessary to take student perception into account. 
 
Myth 5: Minimally guided instruction is superior to traditional direct instruction
How many times have you heard that you should be using problem-solving learning? Minimally guided instruction is founded on the constructivist learning philosophy. According to this theory, it is believed that knowledge must be based on personal experiences in the world, not gained through direct instruction.  However, there is no empirical evidence that leaving students to their own devices provides more effective learning.  Studies have found that direct instruction can be successful for students at all levels, for verbal and social skills, and increased performance on immediate and delayed tests.  Problem-solving teaching strategies utilize a very limited working memory.  When one’s ability to problem-solve is at capacity students will struggle with learning.  This is especially true for low-achieving students.  Most likely a balanced approach of direction instruction and discovery would work best. 
 
Myth 6: Rewards always undermine students’ intrinsic motivation
Has your school been consumed by a Positive Behavioral Intervention and Supports (PBIS) plan? Various empirical findings support that rewards can increase intrinsic motivation, but with certain contingencies.  As is stated by the overjustification hypothesis, expected tangible rewards for simply engaging in an activity of high interest reduces intrinsic motivation.  While this is true, it has been found that intrinsic motivation actually increases with verbal praise.  Also, an expected tangible reward is not detrimental if it is based on the quality of the task as opposed to participation.  However, research has found that rewards for simply performing the task actually increases intrinsic motivation for low-achieving students. Lab research does not always generalize to the classroom; however, researchers agree that rewards do not always reduce intrinsic motivation.
 
Myth 7: Multitasking does not inhibit academic performance
How many of your students are addicted to their cellphone? Technology is everywhere, and young people are easily tempted by it. Some argue that young people, born since 1980, may be able to multitask more efficiently than members of past generations.  Young people believe they can successfully multitask.  Some even think it helps them focus and complete homework.  However, none of these statements are supported by research.  Switching tasks results in slower performance and increased errors. Completing homework with the TV on in the background takes longer.  It was also found that students watching other students multitask learned significantly less than those who could not see other students multitasking.  When others control the content, multitasking is even more challenging.
While multitasking, performance usually declines as the difficulty of the task increases.  However, one study found that multitasking students took longer to read, but did not have lower performance. While learning may not be affected, few high school students have the extra time that it takes to multitask.
 
Myth 8: People are either left-brained or right brained
I am sure you have heard of the vocabulary learning technique that utilizes both sides of your brain; self-made definitions invoke the left-hemisphere, while drawings activate the right hemisphere. Many educators support the claim that differences in hemispheric dominance can explain learning differences.  Early research grabbed everyone’s attention but lacked the ability to generalize to the general population. Early split-brain research utilized unique brains and usually had very limited sample sizes.  Current research with brain-imaging technology supports that both hemispheres are necessary for various functions.  Greater hemispheric lateralization has been found only in people of low-achieving ability.  Furthermore, the statements supporting a brain dichotomy are often oversimplified, and neuroscience has been incorrectly applied to the world of education and business. 
 
Myth 9: There are many independent varieties of intelligence
The number of intelligences has been debated for years.  Sir Francis Galton was the first to talk of general intelligence, but it was Charles Spearman that was able to identify it statistically through factor analysis.  The g factor is probably one of the most studied traits in the history of intelligence in psychology.  Several theorists have offered opposing models supporting specific intelligences.  Howard Gardner’s theory has caught on with educators due to its ability to identify all children as being special.  However, the theory has several pitfalls.  It utilizes eight criteria to find separate intelligences, but they are not always consistently applied.  Also, there is no specific assessment that can measure each specific intelligence.  Currently, most tests are based on self-report and still measure general intelligence.  Empirical evidence does not support the existence of many separate intelligences.   
 
Myth 10: Self-esteem improves academic performance
In order to excel you have to feel good about yourself, right? There is a small, positive correlation between self-esteem and academic performance. However, it often shrinks when other environmental factors are controlled.  Self-esteem is studied most often in the United States, an individualistic culture.  One strategy, self-evaluation educational interventions, needs to be used with caution because it can actually reduce performance. Interestingly, Americans have enjoyed increased self-esteem scores in recent decades but have witnessed a decrease in the average SAT score. Research supports that academic self-concept is a better predictor of performance than self-esteem.
 
Myth 11: Repetition is a highly effective study strategy
Tight on time before a test? Everyone has probably utilized the study strategy of rereading a text, and it can enhance learning to a degree.  The benefits of rereading are greatest the first time the content is reread and immediately tested, but little enhancement is achieved when testing is delayed after rereading content.  In addition, high-achieving students benefit the most from rereading a second time.  Most of these findings have been found in the laboratory and need to be questioned before being generalized to the classroom. 
While rereading is not that effective, there are study methods to increase performance. The most effective method is the testing effect.  Practice testing leads to better performance on similar future tests than restudying the content. The benefits of practice testing can occur using a variety of test formats, even when the final test is a different format. This finding has held up across a wide range of ages and abilities.  Two additional effective study methods include elaborative interrogation and self-explanation.  Both are effective but require more time.  Students have limited time, but will hopefully recognize the powerful ability of practice testing to increase retention.
 
Myth 12: Multiple-choice exams are inferior to other exam formats
Essay exams take time to grade and have concerns of inter-rater reliability, but can a multiple-choice test really measure all aspects of student knowledge?  Even though students are exposed to misinformation via the multiple-choice format, the testing effect is increased by providing feedback no matter if it is immediate or delayed.  Scientific studies find that both testing formats, multiple-choice and essay, assess similar abilities and students perform at similar levels on both parts of an exam. 
Many concerns with multiple-choice tests are not supported by scientific findings. It is believed that essay tests measure higher levels of thinking, but often they do not. Before we abandon multiple-choice tests, let’s make sure that the new exam format actually provides a better performance indicator. 
 
Myth 13: Students should not change answers on multiple-choice exams
Many of your students have probably heard of the first instinct fallacy; once you select an answer on a test, it is best not to change it.  Scientific studies show that usually students, especially high-achieving students, benefit from changing their answer as long as they are not just guessing.  If you re-evaluated or better understand the questions, then the odds are in your favor to make the change.
As is often the case, students’ perceptions do not match the research.  Even when trained to change their answers, they still believed that it would lead to a lower exam score.  The circumstance when changing your answer did not work is more memorable thanks to the availability heuristic.  Don’t stress your students out during the exam, but share the possible benefits of changing answers well in advance.
 
Myth 14: Coaching produces large gains in college admission test scores
As any high school student wanting to attend college knows, the SAT and ACT are a common hurdle one must first pass.  Studies suggest that coaching can increase student SAT scores.  However, there are many confounding variables. Coaching time becomes confused with coaching methods.  In addition, a certain type of student seeks academic coaching.  These concerns, as well as a lack of random assignment, call these scientific findings into question.    
 
Myth 15: Standardized tests do not predict academic performance
We have all heard that story about a young person who did poorly on the SAT or ACT but excelled in college. The problem is that story is not the norm and only shows that the correlation is not perfect.  Almost all studies support that there is a significant positive correlation between standardized tests for college admission and first-year college GPA.  Critics question the validity of the assessment due to range restriction and reliability. However, after correcting for these issues, as well as socioeconomic status, the SAT still had predictive validity.
 
Myth 16: Standardized ability tasks are biased against some minority groups
The average group differences in IQ has spurred concerns about cultural bias in testing.  If a test measures different things for people within different groups, it is biased.  However, research has not been able to find anyone, including experts that can find biased test items based on content.  In addition, the claim that tests underpredict for minority members has not been demonstrated.  Studies have actually found an overprediction for most minority groups.  The origin and meaning of intelligence is a complex issue that is heavily debated.  To date, empirical evidence does not support a testing bias against minority groups.
 
 
Psychological Figures and Concepts
Paul Broca
Sir Francis Galton
Howard Gardner
Jean Piaget
B. F. Skinner
Charles Spearman
Roger Sperry
L. L. Thurstone
Achievement Test
Aptitude Test
Availability Heuristic
Cognitive Psychology
Cohort Effect
Confirmation Bias
Confounding of Variables
Correlation (Positive, Modest)
Creativity
Critical Thinking
Cultural Bias
Dichotic Listening Study
Distributive Study
Divergent Thinking
EEG
Efficacy
Empirical Evidence
Experimenter Bias
Experimental Control
Expressive vs. Receptive Language
Factor Analysis
General Intelligence
Generalizability of Research
Halo Effect
Hemispheric Dominance
Hindsight Bias
Individualistic Cultural Belief
Intelligence
Inter-Rater Reliability
Intrinsic Motivation
Lateralized
Learning Styles:  Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic
Longitudinal Data
Meta-analysis
Metacognition
Motivation
Multitasking or Task Switching
Neuroscientific Research
Operational Definition
Overconfidence
Overjustification Hypothesis
“Psychological Refractory Period”
Positive Emotions- Left Hemisphere
Predictive Validity
 “Prodigy” or “Idiot Savant”
Psychometrician
Random Assignment
Repetition
Replicate
Scaffolding
Self-Efficacy
Self-Esteem
Self-Report Measure
Semantic Memory
Sensory Memory
Split-Brain Operation
Statistical Significance
Test Bias
Testing Effect
Visual Field Study
WISC
Working Memory
 
 
Other Related Resources
 
Great Myths of Psychology Series
Erber, J. T., & Szuchman, L. T. (2014). Great Myths of Aging. Chichester, West Sussex:
Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN: 978-1-118-52145-8
 
Hupp, S., & Jewell, J. (2015). Great Myths of Child Development. Chichester, West
Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN: 978-1-118-52122-9
 
Jarrett, C. (2014). Great Myths of the Brain. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell.
ISBN: 978-1-118-62450-0
Johnson, M. D. (2016). Great Myths of Intimate Relationships: Dating, Sex, and
Marriage. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN: 978-1-118-52128-1
 
Lilienfeld, S. 0., Lynn, S. J., Ruscio, J., & Beyerstein, B. L. (2009). 50 Great Myths of
Popular Psychology: Shattering Widespread Misconceptions About Human Behavior. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN : 978-1-4051-3112-4
 
Series Website www.wiley.com/go/psychmyths
 
Podcast
Britt, M. A. (2009, December 27). Episode 113: Interview with Scott Lilienfeld on the 50 great myths of popular psychology [Audio Podcast]. Retrieved from http://www.thepsychfiles.com/
 
Articles
Willis, J. (2015). The High Cost of Neuromyths in Education. Edutopia, http://www.edutopia.org/. Retrieved on July 26, 2016, from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/high-costs-neuromyths-in-education-judy-willis
 
 

​Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being
Author:  Martin E.P. Seligman
ISBN:  978-1-4391-9076-0
 
APA Style Citation
Seligman, M. (2011).  Flourish: A visionary new understanding of Happiness and Well-being.  New York, Atria Paperback.

​Book Description
Flourish is a narrative reflection regarding Seligman’s chronicle of work (and the work of many others) towards improving the well-being of others.  Seligman opens Flourish by discussing his training as a therapist.  During his education and early practice as a therapist Seligman learned that in order to help those who were mentally ill or suffering from some other emotional ailment, the goal was to remove one’s suffering.  Seligman contends that there is far more to life than the lack of suffering.  He advocates for acting in a more proactive manner, which he argues could potentially prevent many ailments altogether.  Seligman also argues that treatment should work towards helping clients to thrive rather than just removing their pain.  Seligman is frustrated that much of current research and practice in psychotherapy focuses on drug therapies, which mask rather than treat the problem from which a client suffers.  Many drugs blunt the feeling of emotion, however feeling emotions is part of the human experiences and should be felt even if they are sometimes painful.  Seligman in large part has been able to do work in the field of Positive Psychology because of generous grants, which were provided from an initially anonymous source to fund the research.  It is this funding which has allowed Seligman to make efforts toward revolutionizing the field of psychology from a focus on illness to a focus on well-being.
 
Seligman makes a distinction between happiness, which he considers a mood and well-being which he considers a state of being.  We describe happiness when we are feeling cheerful or merry.  Seligman argues that this term is so overused as to become almost meaningless.  Well-being, however, is a way of thinking and behaving in order to live one’s best possible life. A focus on well-being may not lead everyone to “happiness” as there are many individual differences concerning happiness and one’s subjective experience of when they are feeling “happy.”  For example, introverts generally report lower levels of happiness than extroverts, but both can pursue and achieve well-being in relatively similar levels.  According to Seligman, authentic happiness also involves engagement (flow), a complete loss of time when engaged in an activity in which one is completely absorbed in a meaningful activity. 
 
The elements of well-being are slightly different than happiness and include positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and achievement.  Seligman uses the anagram of PERMA to describe the characteristics of well-being.  Flourish’s main emphasis is to provide the reader with recent and ongoing research regarding how to improve PERMA in specific populations. 
 
What follows is a description of the components of PERMA.  Positive Emotion is the cornerstone of well-being as well as life satisfaction. Engagement addresses the issue of flow, losing one’s self in a task for which one is completely engaged.  One finds their flow when an individual’s strengths are used when challenged to the limits of their ability.  These first two elements are pursued for their own sake rather than to gain some other benefit or external “prize”.  Resiliency is the ability to bounce back from failures and regroup in the face of setbacks.  Meaning refers to working for something that is larger than one’s self and may be completely different from positive emotion.  For example, Abraham Lincoln, who famously experienced periods of depression also experienced great meaning in his work feeling that he was doing something that would impact the nation in a positive fashion for years to come.  Finally, Accomplishment is pursuing a goal for its own sake. 
 
Seligman makes many recommendations regarding how one can improve well-being.  He is forthcoming about the fact that he does not always use these in his own life but that he strives to do better.  He is a self-described “curmudgeon” and states if he can do this so can anyone else.  His family, who are now well versed in the elements of well-being call him out if he violates his own advice.  In one example, Seligman advises a gratitude visit in which one writes a letter and personally delivers it to someone to whom they are thankful.  He also recommends keeping a daily gratitude journal and after completing a task assessing the result in a ‘what went well exercise.'  Seligman describes the work of Angela Duckworth (a graduate of MAPP Masters of Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania) who has done much research of the resiliency portion of PERMA, her research into Grit indicates that those who can pick themselves up after failures and continue to be motivated even in the face of setbacks will experience more ‘success’ than those who give up more easily. 
 
The remainder of the book describes how Seligman and others have created a Master’s of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) program at the University of Pennsylvania and other activities in which Seligman and others have made efforts to share positive psychology with as many people as possible. Seligman describes the many varied people from salespeople to CEO’s, teachers and “coaches” who have benefitted from this program by capitalizing on their strengths and employing PERMA in their lives.   
Perhaps two of the most exciting endeavors that positive psychology has taken on thus far are pushing the characteristics of positive psychology into classrooms in Australia and implementing a positive psychology program in the military to build up the resilience and emotional well-being of soldiers and their families. The military has long been one of the most underserved populations regarding mental health and some military traditions have made it difficult to discuss emotional issue or struggles with others who serve in the military.  Seligman worked with members of the armed forces to create a program that seeks to change the awareness of illnesses such as PTSD and to make those serving more aware of the resources they have to assist them with both their physical and mental health, the reports which Seligman mentions suggest that the program has been quite successful and because of the large number of trainees will eventually produce the largest body of data thus far collected regarding the outcomes of well-being training.  Seligman refers to the training as creating a psychologically fit army.  The program identifies one’s personal social, spiritual and family fitness to determine one’s strengths and also to identify those who may be more vulnerable to emotional illness and to provide more proactive targeted in those areas.  The program has also looked at the potential ways in which trauma can be channeled into growth.
 
Seligman address those who have dismissed his work with Positive Psychology such as Barbara Ehrenreich who published, Bright-Sided:  How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking has Undermined America, she claims that she was told if she thought more positively, her breast cancer would go away, and she blames relentless optimism on the 2007 housing market because people believed that things would simply continue to get better in perpetuity.  Seligman believes this criticism is misguided and cites his research with PERMA as evidence-based while still admitting that much work is ongoing.  Seligman is careful to say that the research on positive psychology is not perfect and not plentiful but building. 
 
Seligman explores how well being can improve not only emotional health but also physical health.  Optimists have better cardiovascular health, less body fat and less death by cancer than their pessimistic counterparts.  Seligman created the signature strengths inventory to determine areas in which one excels.  Please see the activity to find your own signature strengths and use this to determine the activities for which you will likely excel and then try to find activities in which these strengths can be employed.  Seligman believes that everyone can increase their levels of well being they just have to opt in, and one method of beginning is to take the signature strengths inventory.
 
Resources
TED talk:  the new era of Positive Psychology
https://www.ted.com/talks/martin_seligman_on_the_state_of_psychology?language=en
 
Positive Psychology Center:  University of Pennsylvania
http://www.positivepsychology.org/people/martin-ep-seligman
 
University of Pennsylvania:  Authentic Happiness website
https://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu
 
Huffington Post:  The Father of Positive Psychology and his two Theories of Happiness
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sze/the-father-of-positive-ps_b_7600226.html
 
Harvard Business Review:  Building Resilience
https://hbr.org/2011/04/building-resilience
 
The New Yorker:  Trying to cure depressions but inspiring torture
http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/theory-psychology-justified-torture
 
PERMA model
http://positivepsychologymelbourne.com.au/perma-model/
 
The Irish Times:  Can You Teach Well-being?
http://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/health-family/can-you-teach-wellbeing-martin-seligman-thinks-so-1.2544072
 
Edge:  The Third Culture (a talk with Martin Seligman)
https://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/seligman04/seligman_index.html
 
VIA Institute on Character:  Strengths Test
http://www.viacharacter.org/www/Character-Strengths-Survey
 
 
Psychological Terms and Concepts
 
Charles Darwin
Angela Duckworth
Charles Murray
Tom Rath
Anxiety Disorder
Control/Experimental Group
Depression
Duchenne Smile
Extrovert/Introvert
Flow
GRIT
Immune System
Independent Variable
Learned Helplessness
Lymphocyte
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
Optimist/ Pessimist
Parasympathetic Nervous System
Positive Emotion
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Psychotherapy
Self-consciousness
Signature Strength
Well-Being
 
 

Ambler Warning
Author:  Robert Ludlum
ISBN:  978-0312990695
  
APA Style Citation
Ludlum, R. (2006).  Ambler Warning. New York, New York:  St. Martin’s Paperbacks.

​Blog Contributor: Joseph Swope, PhD
Institution: Northwest High School
Germantown, Maryland
Website:  http://swopepsych.com/
Email:  [email protected]

Book Description
This is a fiction book that explores and uses many of the concepts in a psychology class to hook the reader.  Imagine Paul Ekman and Jason Bourne combined into one super spy.
People are communicating machines.  More than any other trait it is our ability to communicate that defines us.  While language is critical, what about the other messages, signals, and signs that help us read each other?  Paul Ekman has spent his career showing us that our facial muscles are hardwired to our emotional processing modules of our brain.  Most people have some ability to read the expressions and thus the emotions of others.  What if there was a person who was so good at it, so intuitive, he could read others’ intentions before they consciously knew what they themselves were going to do?
 
Hal Ambler wakes up in a psychiatric hospital designed for former clandestine agents who are deemed too unstable to walk free with government secrets.  Worse than the restraints and forced medications is the fact that he has no memory of himself or why he is trapped.
Using his gifts at reading peoples’ expressions, body language, and voice cues, Hal Ambler begins to unlock not only the cause of his confinement but also the reason for his amnesia.  With each question answered more spring up until he doubts his name, his recently uncovered memories, and even his very sense of self.  Did his amnesia come from a past event or was it forced upon him by those who don’t trust him?  For a man who can read others effortlessly, having no knowledge of himself is torture in and of itself.
 
Note: While this was ghost written and probably not the best book with Ludlum’s name on it if you want a great read that might also hook your students, this book is fun.
 
Note: This book does not explicitly teach psychology to the reader. Still, for students who want to see what might be possible by applying concepts in their textbook, this book could be the hook that draws the into the curriculum.

Other Related Resources
http://www.paulekman.com/micro-expression-training/
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Loftus
 
Psychological Figures and Concepts
Paul Ekman
Brain Washing
Amnesia
Bottom-Up Processing
Deduction
Display Rules
Duchenne Smile
Emotional Control
Implanted Memory
Intuition
Involuntary Committal
Micro Expression
Mirror Neuron
Neuroleptic
Psychiatric Hospital
Retrograde Amnesia
Somatic Nervous System
Stockholm Syndrome
Top-Down Processing

​Emotions Revealed:  Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life
Author:  Paul Ekman
ISBN:  978-0-8050-8339-2
 
APA Style Citation
Ekman, P. (2003).  Emotions Revealed:  Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life; Owl Books, New York, New York.

Book Description
Paul Ekman has long been known for his contributions to the universal facial expressions of anger, sadness, contempt, disgust, surprise, happiness and fear.  In Emotions Revealed, Ekman explains each of these, how they are displayed, how to identify them in others and finally, how to better deal with someone who is experiencing these emotions.  Ekman’s cross-cultural work grew out of his research in Papua New Guinea.  Ekman believes that by identifying emotions in ourselves and others, we may be able to control and deal with negative emotions which if left unaddressed can cause difficulties in both personal and professional relationships.  Ekman also addresses deceit in emotions and provides clues on how to identify micro expressions and “hot spots” which can give away clues to whether a person is being honest.
​
Ekman has expanded on the early work on emotions conducted by Charles Darwin who believed that the ability to recognize emotions in others may lead to an increased chance for survival and reproduction.  Ekman also believes that emotions are a combination of one’s individuals experiences as well as our shared ancestral past.  Ekman conducted his cross-cultural studies by showing individuals from different cultures photographs of people making different facial expressions.  He then asked the participants to identify the facial expression that was displayed.  While Ekman found universal emotions, he also found that how and when the emotions displayed differed based upon the respective countries display rules.  The earlier an emotional response is displayed, the more likely that emotion is innate. 

Ekman and his colleague Walter Friesen spent years attempting to make each of the potential 10,000 identifiable facial expressions.  When they could not make a given expression, they used a needle to activate the muscle(s) needed and ultimately created the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) which is used today to measure facial expressions by many scientist and researchers.  Ekman believes that if we can learn what each of the different facial expressions feels like when we are displaying the emotion, we can have better control over our emotions and start to learn which ‘triggers’ precede that emotion.  If these emotions are ones we do not want to display (anger) it may be possible to avoid those triggers in the future.  Ekman refers to this process as reflective appraising and one must consciously consider the emotions they are experiencing at any given time in order to understand and modify how we respond to these triggers in the future.  Recalling highly emotional events may be one way in which different emotions can be more purposely created.  Ekman spends the remainder of the book providing information on each of the universal emotions as well as pictures that provide weak to strong images of each emotion.  He explains how to manipulate the face for each respective emotion and if this is not possible for some people asks them to recall a time in which they felt the emotion.  He also encourages readers to stand before a mirror to become more familiar with what each facial expressions looks like to more easily recognize these expressions in themselves and others.
 
Sadness
Ekman describes sadness as a passive emotion with elements of both resignation and hopelessness.  Sadness often occurs when we feel that there is nothing that we can do to change the outcome of a situation. The death of a loved one or sudden bad news can initiate sadness.  Sadness is created by dropping the mouth open, pulling the corners of the lips down, and looking downward while the eyelids droop.
 
Anger
The origins of anger may come from frustration, control issues, contempt, retaliation or efforts to punish someone.  Anger can arise quickly and the behavior can be unpredictable, making this an emotion that may lead to regret.  Resentment is a type of anger that festers over time and may linger for long periods.  Those who express high levels of anger are generally less well liked than others and this emotion is displayed more often in men than women.  While some seek to avoid anger at all costs, others seem to enjoy hostile attacks and some even enjoy physical altercations. To make the facial expression for anger, pull the eyebrows down and together, with the inner corners going down towards the nose.  Open the eyes wide so the eyelids are against the brows and press the lips together without puckering. 
 
Surprise and Fear
Surprise is a difficult emotion to catch in photographs without being posed on purpose because it occurs infrequently and is very brief in duration, it lasts a few seconds at most.  Ekman differentiates between a startle surprise, a startle being a respond and surprise being an emotion.  Other emotional researchers do not believe that surprise is a universal emotion, and Ekman did not capture photographs of surprise during his research in Papua New Guinea, but he continues to believe it is a universal facial expression. 
Fear is caused by the possibility of pain, physical or psychological but pain is not considered to be an emotion because it is too specific.  Fear can vary from mild concern or worry to terror.  To show the facial expression of fear, raise the upper lids of your eyelids as high as possible, follow this by raising the eyebrows as high as possible and let the jaw drop open. Emotions may intermingle with one another which makes them more difficult to identify, for example, it is common to feel fear and anger together when threatened. 
 
Disgust and Contempt
Feeling an aversion to something, perhaps something you have tasted and want to spit out will provide a good sense of disgust.  Violations of social norms or behavior we find offensive may also cause the emotion of disgust (see book review on That’s Disgusting).  We can also feel disgusted when we believe others are stonewalling.  In sexual situations or parenting situations which may involve exchanges of fluids that would normally cause disgust, this emotion is temporarily suspended.  While those who feel extraordinarily high levels of disgust may suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder, we all feel levels of disgust in situations that are novel or offensive.  The emotion of disgust looks much like anger but with a nose that is retracted and pulled up and way from the mouth.  Contempt occurs when we believe that we are better than others, and they are not worth our time, and this may often occur along with anger. 
 
Enjoyable Emotions
Happiness, joy, contentment, excitement and relief are all emotions in which cause positive feelings.  Ekman explains why some of these feelings are emotional responses (happiness) and others sensory experiences.  While most people experience pleasurable emotions frequently, those with anhedonia have a disorder which prevents them from feelings of pleasure.  Ekman sites that positive states such as optimism correlate to living longer.  Those extroverts and those with high emotional stability also report greater feelings of happiness than others who are lower in these characteristics.  Ekman sites the research of French neurologist Duchenne de Boulogne who discovered how the true enjoyment smile differs from the miserable or the polite smile.  He indicated that the key difference is in the eyes which are activated in the true smile but not in the others.  For this reason, Ekman has named the genuine smile the Duchene smile. 
 
Micro Expressions
Ekman’s final chapter relates to lying and micro expressions for which his research is well known.  He has trained governmental agents, police officers, lawyers and many others to identify microexpressions which he believes make it possible to identify if someone is lying.  He believes that micro expressions are incongruent with the rest of the emotion displayed by the face and the leakage of these micro expressions make it possible to identify a liar from someone telling the truth.  He calls these potential signs of lying “hot spots”, which are not sure signs of lying but indicate that one may be trying to hide or cover up an emotion.  The duration of the emotion is also important and abrupt changes in facial expressions may also be another sign of deceit.  
 
Emotions Revealed is intended to help individuals become more aware of their own emotions and the emotions in others.  This awareness allows one to cognitively appraise an emotional situation before doing or saying something they may later regret.  Ekman even recommends keeping an emotional diary of the emotional episodes one regrets in an effort to avoid the same instances in the future.  The appendix contains much practice in identifying subtle facial expressions and is an introduction to the Facial Action Coding System (FACS).  The corresponding activity is an effort to recreate the ability to recognize different facial expressions. 
 
Resources
Paul Ekman’s website: Discusses his work including his research and collaborations with Lie to Me and a parent’s guide to Inside Out.
http://www.paulekman.com
 
Face it:  Paul Ekman’s Blog
http://www.paulekman.com/blog/
 
The Role of Emotion and Deception:  Paul Ekman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9i-9_QuetA
 
Emotions revealed Photo set (15 free posed pictures)
http://www.paulekman.com/product/emotions-revealed-photo-set/
 
Human Lie Detector:  Fast Company
http://www.fastcompany.com/1800709/human-lie-detector-paul-ekman-decodes-faces-depression-terrorism-and-joy
 
All about body language
http://www.all-about-body-language.com/paul-ekman.html
 
The Science of Inside Out
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/05/opinion/sunday/the-science-of-inside-out.html?_r=0
 
Brain Science:  Inside out
https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/uk/15/09/brain-science-inside-out
 
You Can’t Lie to Me
http://www.lyintamer.com/author-new-york-times-best-selling-author-unlocks-the-truth-to-your-success/you-can-t-lie-to-me
 
Psychological Figures and Concepts
Gordon Allport
Duchenne de Boulogne
Charles Darwin
Paul Ekman
Walter Friesen
John Gottman
Carol Izard
Jerome Kagan
Richard Lazarus
Paul Rozin
Silvan Tompkins
Robert Zajonc
 
Anhedonia
Antisocial Personality Disorder
Autonomic Nervous System
Catharsis
Display Rule
Emotions:  Anger, Contempt, Disgust, Fear, Happiness, Surprise
Facial Action Coding System (FACS)
Facial-Feedback Hypothesis
Microexpression
Mood v. Emotion
Natural Selection
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Prepared Phobia
Reflective Appraising
Unconditioned Stimulus

​Scream: Chilling Adventures in the Science of Fear
Author:  Margee Kerr
ISBN:  978-1491529966
 
APA Style Citation
Kerr, Margee (2015). Scream:  Chilling Adventures in the Science of Fear.  New York: Perseus Books Group.

​Book Description
If you are looking for a fun addition to your motivation and emotion unit, look into Scream:  Chilling Adventures in the Science of Fear.  The book follows sociologist Margee Kerr, Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania who works as a professor at Robert Morris University, Chatham University, and the University of Pittsburgh and who also consults for ScareHouse, a popular haunted attraction in Pittsburgh. She has used her research at ScareHouse and the information she accumulated on a worldwide tour designed to challenge her personal expectations about fear to create an exciting account of physiological, social, and cultural factors that influence the emotion of fear.  Scream takes the reader along for the ride as the author encounters some of the world’s most terrifying experiences.  Some of the experiences include spending the night in an abandoned prison, confronting personal fears about death in Japan’s notorious “suicide forest”, participating in a ghost hunt, riding terrifying roller coasters, and circling the outside of a high building at the CN Tower EdgeWalk in Toronto, where participants are tethered to the skyscraper for an outdoor walk 116 stories off the ground.  According to Kerr, her world tour of scary places led to a broader understanding of the emotion of fear “I learned how much we grow when we push ourselves beyond our comfort zones. I really did experience a personal transformation, and I want everyone to do something they are afraid of to see what happens as these emotions develop in the moment." She explores the appeal of horror films, skydiving, bungee jumping, diving with sharks, and roller coasters by engaging in many of these activities personally.  
 
The book also discusses the negative aspects of fear, most notably PTSD.  According to Scream, approximately 50-60% (estimates vary greatly) of Americans will experience a traumatic event, but only about 8% will develop PTSD.  The research shows that biological differences among individuals may explain why most individuals recover.  It has been hypothesized that those individuals who recover from trauma may have stronger connections between their prefrontal cortex and their emotional limbic system.  Genes also are likely to be involved, in particular, a gene called FKBP5.  Studies indicate that individuals who possess a particular expression of the FKBP5 gene were more likely to develop PTSD.  Individuals who can more easily produce neuropeptide Y, which turns off the fight-or-flight reaction in the brain when a crisis is resolved, are better able to handle stress. Heritability likely accounts for about 40% of the variance in who will develop PTSD according to twin studies.
 
The impact of the environment also plays an important role and the higher rate of PTSD in violent neighborhoods is not likely the result of individuals with the same biological predisposition all coincidently living in the same unsafe neighborhood.  Even if nothing traumatic happens personally to an individual, the impact of living in a constant state of fear (violent neighborhood, abusive home, warzone) is exhausting.  The author recounts her personal experiences living in high crime neighborhoods and how it impacted her well-being.  The constant fight-or-flight hormonal elevation creates a wide range of problems including a weakened immune system, heart disease, weight gain, sleep disturbances, prediabetes, fatigue, irritability, memory problems (the hippocampus can literally shrink), depression, and problems with impulse control.  Scream addresses the interaction of genetic and environmental factors on PTSD and the importance of research in the area of epigenetics.
 
The author does research at ScareHouse, monitoring the reactions of visitors to the attraction and analyzing survey data from customers.  Kerr and others used the data to create an optional experience at ScareHouse for visitors seeking a more one-on-one experience called “The Basement”.  In The Basement visitors are exposed to an interrogation, being shut inside a coffin, and direct interaction with threatening characters. In an attempt to recreate the experience of solitary confinement, she experienced in an abandoned prison, Kerr added a segment to The Basement in which visitors travel in total darkness (including a bag over their head) along a rope of many textures.  During the experience, they are confronted by actors who have numerous instruments (e.g. cold, hot, spiking, sharp) and who make loud sharp noises. The uncertainty created by this isolating experience leads visitors to frequently cite this as the most terrifying aspect of The Basement. There is a safe word and any person in The Basement can be taken out immediately if that is their choice.
 
Kerr’s analysis of the data led to her research on the positive aspects of fear and why individuals voluntarily engage in activities that lead to terror. She has used research and the results of her personal experiences to improve the ScareHouse.   It is her goal to “… scare people in a way that’s going to make them feel good.”  Kerr states that a major reason individuals seek out fear-inducing experiences is that they test one’s ability to overcome obstacles, “You are testing your own resilience. When you come out the other side of a scary movie or haunted house, you have accomplished something. You've tested your will. Even though we know nothing will hurt us, the self-esteem boost is real." Kerr’s book examines how fear can be fun and exciting - "When we know we're not really in any physical danger, we can enjoy the endorphins and the dopamine. That response is similar to being really excited and happy."
 
Fear reactions vary from person to person and are impacted by time and place and many other factors.  There is, however, a universal biological reaction to fear and all animals have threat responses.  The human threat response according to neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux involves a dual pathway process.  In LeDoux’s theory, a potentially dangerous stimulus sends warning messages simultaneously along two pathways. The fast acting low road sends messages directly to the brain’s fear center in the amygdala leading immediately to the activation of a sympathetic nervous system. The slow acting high road is approximately one second slower because it takes a path that involves gathering information from other parts of the brain especially the prefrontal cortex which engages in evaluation and deliberation regarding the potential threat.  The high road may for example, may combine visual information with stored memories to determine if the signal was a false alarm or if the threat reaction is warranted. 
 
According to Kerr, the goal of haunted attractions or extreme adventures is to create scenarios that cause a fight-or-flight reaction for participants.  The observable reactions to fear are shaped by learned reactions, individual genetic makeup, and culture. The fight-or-flight reaction is automatic, but research shows that much of what is feared is learned.  Kerr addresses how research into fear began with Pavlov, Watson, and Skinner.  Fear reactions are also in part cultural and Kerr explores cross-cultural responses to fear.  In individualistic cultures typically progress through the attraction in single file and when startled act in a manner suggesting they are out to save themselves by running and throwing their arms out or to their chest.  Japanese haunted house visitors, as well as those in other collectivist cultures, move through the attraction slowly as part of semi-circular clusters.  When startled by an actor or event these individuals crowd together, emit a soft scream, and crouch lower to the ground. 
 
There are also likely stimuli to which we are “hardwired” to fear. One phenomenon that causes fear reactions is a failure in the prediction system. When predictions do not match up with reality the resulting uncertainty creates fear. For example, if we mistakenly think there is one more stair left as we are going down to the basement the result is disorientation and potentially fear. In addition, the startle reaction triggers a threat response to rapidly occurring or unexpected stimuli (a flash of light) or anything that causes pain. This is why haunted attractions utilize startling noises, fast-moving props, and unexpected visual, olfactory, or tactile effects to create fear in visitors. Kerr uses startling smells to trigger fear, “Smell is such a powerful trigger for memories, if you catch a whiff of gasoline, something associated with being negative, instantly that has you thinking about a chainsaw-wielding maniac."
 
Research has not shown definitively that humans have an evolved fear of specific animals or stimuli but data from fMRI studies indicate that these are likely.  For example, the amygdala reacts if individuals are shown pictures of upside down triangles or the whites of the eyes and researchers hypothesize that even the brief flash up upside down triangles triggers memories of the sharp teeth of predators (think shark teeth).  The activation of the amygdala to the exposure to the whites of the eyes may explain why dolls or animatronics’ with wide-open eyes are used in haunted attractions.  There are also certain images (e.g. snakes) that generate a threat reaction even if they are presented so quickly that the frontal lobes cannot consciously register having seen them. However, research also shows that individuals can rapidly identify modern threats such as gun and needles.  It may be that the evolved fear response occurs as a reaction to threatening characteristics and not specific threatening stimuli.  Humans tend to recognize threats based on relevance more than evolutionary threats.  If a person believes they are more likely to be shot by a gun than bitten by a snake then they will recognize guns faster.
 
The author’s quest to understand the wide range of experiences related to fear led her to several visits to the now closed Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia which was famous for its use of solitary confinement.  The prison is now used as a museum and haunted attraction but much of the facility is in a dangerous state of disrepair and not open to the public.  The author chooses to spend the night alone in a windowless dark underground cell and then later returns with a ghost-hunting team looking for paranormal activity.  She experiences firsthand the well documented negative consequences of solitary confinement. From Pavlov to Zimbardo this book is an adventure into the biological, psychological, and cultural factors that contribute to both the positive and negative aspects of fear.  Be certain to read the footnotes for the author’s informative and often hilarious asides.  Her footnotes also direct the reader to specific books and researchers for specific high-interest topics presented in the text. An added bonus is that the book itself glows in the dark!
 
Other Related Resources
 
Author’s Website
Author Margee Kerr’s website provides information about her research, teaching, and work in the haunted house industry.  The site also includes photos and blog postings by the author during her research. She has an interesting post titled, Why We Love Serial Killers that explains the public fascination have for scary television shows and films about such horrific killings.
http://www.margeekerr.com/
 
ScareHouse
The website for the haunted house in Pittsburgh that includes photos, videos, and behind the scenes stories including the haunted history of the building that houses the attraction. 
http://www.scarehouse.com/about/the-science-of-fear
 
Things That Go Bump In The Lab: Halloween And The Science Of Fear
NPR story from the Hidden Brain series discussing why individuals love haunted houses featuring the author Margee Kerr from October of 2015.
http://www.npr.org/2015/10/27/450911424/things-that-go-bump-in-the-lab-halloween-and-the-science-of-fear
 
Karen Thompson Walker’s TED Talk - What Fear Can Teach Us
Author Karen Thompson Walker examines the connection between fear and the imagination and how fear can be channeled for positive uses.
https://www.ted.com/talks/karen_thompson_walker_what_fear_can_teach_us?language=en
 
Psychological Figures and Concepts
Paul Ekman
Ivan Pavlov
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
James Randi
B.F. Skinner
John B. Watson
Philip Zimbardo
Acrophobia
Amygdala
Autonomic Nervous System (Parasympathetic and Sympathetic)
Anxiety Disorders Treatment
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Collectivist v. Individualist Culture
Conditioning
Deep Brain Stimulation
Depression
Dopamine
Electroencephalograph (EEG)
Endorphins
Epigenetics
Epinephrine
Evolution and Fear
Fight-or-Flight Response
Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)
GABA
Galvanic Skin Response Device (GSR)
Hippocampus
Informed Consent
Low and High Roads to Fear
Mindfulness Training
Mirror Neuron
Operant Conditioning
Opioid
Oxytocin
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Prefrontal Cortex
Proprioception
Prozac
Psychosurgery
Rumination
Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor (SSRI)
Sensory Deprivation
Serotonin
Solitary Confinement
Stanford Prison Experiment
Temporal Lobe
Terror Management Theory
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS)
Universal Emotions
Vestibular Sense

The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work
Author:  Shawn Achor
ISBN:  9780307591548
 
APA Style Citation
Achor, S. (2010). The Happiness Advantage: The seven principles of positive psychology that fuel success and performance at work. New York: Broadway Books.

Book Description
According to Shawn Achor, the traditional idea that if you work hard, you will be more successful, and have higher levels of happiness is contrary to the reality of how our brains work. Research on happiness has demonstrated that if you achieve success, your brain will simply move the goal post for “success” farther away.  As a result, true and lasting happiness can never be found at the end of achievement because the reverse is true.  If an individual is happy he or she will be more likely to achieve. Happiness actually increases levels of success by making our brains more innovative, resilient, effective, and productive.  Happiness is the cause of success rather than the result.  Happiness and optimism generate a competitive edge that the author calls the Happiness Advantage and the book outlines countless studies from neuroscience, economics, and business that demonstrate how happiness leads to success. Happy people experience a 23% reduction in stress, 39% better overall health, 31% greater productivity, and a 34% increase in positive social interactions.  The book outlines not only the enormous advantages associated with a positive mood but also how it can be achieved. 
 
Achor effectively makes the case for how we can program our brains to increase positivity in the present and consequently improve performance across in many areas including work, health, relationships, creativity, and energy levels.  The book focuses on seven specific principles that individuals can use to generate a happiness advantage and maximize their potential. 
 
Principle #1: The Happiness Advantage
Positive mood makes individuals more productive, engaged, creative, and efficient.  Research indicates that a variety of intentional activities can increase personal happiness such as meditation, thinking about a positive future event, doing conscious acts of kindness for others, exercise, and utilizing a signature strength.  Signature strengths are the positive and productive personality traits that are strong in a particular individual (see accompanying activity).  Happiness levels are increased dramatically when individuals engage in activities that are directly related to signature strengths.
 
Principle #2: The Fulcrum and the Lever
The title of the principle comes from a quote by Archimedes, the ancient Greek mathematician who said, “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.”  For the author, brains work in a similar fashion.  The power to maximize individual potential is based on the length of the lever (the amount of potential and control an individual believes they have) and the location of the fulcrum (the mindset of an individual). Psychologist Ellen Langer showed the power of mindset (fulcrum) in her 1979 experiment that involved a group of 75-year-old men on a week-long retreat.  During the retreat, the men were asked to pretend that the year was 1959 and were aided in the illusion by period clothing and materials. After spending a week in 1959 (when they were 20 years younger), the participants were significantly more flexible, had improved hand strength and posture, and showed an improvement in vision of almost 10 percent.  They also showed improved memory capacity and intelligence scores.
Achor recommends that managers ask themselves three questions every Monday to help them refocus on a growth mindset (fulcrum) to allow their beliefs about the potential of their employees take effect.  These same three questions can be used by teachers to motivate students. 
 
    1.  Do I believe that the intelligence and skills of my students are not fixed, but can be     improved with effort?
    2.  Do I believe that my students want to make that effort, just as they want to find     meaning and fulfillment in their assignments?
    3. How am I conveying these beliefs in my daily words and actions?
 
According to the author, when we recognize that our reality is contingent upon our viewpoint then the idea that external events comprise only about 10 percent of our personal happiness becomes less surprising. 
 
Principle #3: The Tetris Effect
The Tetris Effect is a phenomenon that results when an individual spends so much time on a particular activity, such as the video game Tetris, that the result is that the pattern impacts the person’s cognitions, dreams, and imagery.  The phenomenon was discovered when individuals who devoted a large amount of time to playing Tetris found that they would often think about how objects in the real world would fit together as spatial objects in the game.  According to the author, the Tetris Effect can either reduce or increase subjective well-being.  For example, an individual may find that through practice they begin to scan the world for the negative become less and less happy.  The Tetris effect can also be used to maximize happiness by training the brain to seek out, notice, and take advantage of opportunities and possibilities that arise instead of automatically seeing limitations.  The difference between a negative and positive Tetris Effect was demonstrated effectively by Richard Wiseman in a study in which participants were instructed to look through a newspaper and count how many photos appeared.  The participants who identified themselves as ‘lucky’ were able to finish the task in seconds while those who felt that they were ‘unlucky’ took two minutes on average.  On the second page, there was a large headline stating “Stop counting, there are 43 photos”, those who considered themselves to be ‘unlucky’ were far less likely to notice this clue.  Additionally, about halfway through the paper was another message stating “Stop counting, tell the experimenter that you have seen this and win $250”, but again the individuals who considered themselves ‘unlucky’ missed this opportunity.   This study illustrates how training the brain to scan for the positive can improve both happiness levels and success while a negative Tetris Effect (believing one is unlucky) can cause an individual to miss opportunities.
 
Principle #4: Falling Up
In this principle, the idea is to find ways to turn setbacks into opportunities for growth which Achor calls capitalizing on downs to build upward momentum.  This principle relates to developing resiliency and the psychological idea of post-traumatic growth.  Frequently, traumatic events such as loss, chronic illness, displacement, and assault have also led to positive growth. After horrible events, some individuals experience increases in kindness, compassion, overall life satisfaction, self-confidence, and personal strength.  Research into post-traumatic growth is filled with individuals who describe themselves as “bouncing forward” not merely “bouncing back”.  Falling up provides examples from research on posttraumatic growth and cognitive psychology to help individuals facing a challenging situation at home, work, or school emerge from the situation stronger than ever. 
 
Principle #5: The Zorro Circle
In the Zorro Circle, the emphasis is on learning to focus on small manageable steps in order to build the momentum needed for larger goals. The belief that one is in control of one’s own life at work, school, and home is one of the strongest predictors of well-being and performance.  In one example, researchers found that allowing nursing home residents to have more control over some of the aspects of their daily lives—like caring for plants—not only did their levels of happiness improve, but their mortality rate actually dropped in half. Psychological research in goal-setting theory recommends setting goals of moderate difficulty allow individuals to have success and develop a sense of control.  A practical application of the Zorro Circle can be seen in a study discussed in Malcolm Gladwell’s book, The Tipping Point regarding New York City officials focusing on small manageable goals to combat the rising crime rate of the 1980’s and 1990’s on subways.  The problem was approached by using the Broken Windows Theory devised by sociologists James Q. Wilson and George Kelling which states that minor acts of vandalism would, if left unaddressed, spiral out of control into more serious crimes.   New York City officials decided to work on eliminating graffiti and cleaning up trains.  Ultimately, by cleaning up the trains, one by one, officials saw positive results in the form of reduced subway crimes as the Zorro Circle spread outwards. 
 
Principle #6: The 20-Second Rule
The 20-second rule uses psychological research to help eliminate bad habits and establish positive ones by reducing the barriers to making changes. The 20-second rule involves lowering the amount of energy required for habits you wish to foster and raising the amount of energy required for habits you wish to break.  For example, this means putting barriers in the way of bad habits and making activities that you want to increase easier to start.   If you want to eat healthier keep the junk food out of your house or in the most inconvenient location in your kitchen so that it would require more energy, even as little as 20 seconds, to reach. If you find that you waste too much time checking email, looking at Facebook, or checking specific websites Achor advises that you create barriers that make these activities more difficult for you to reach.  For example, eliminate the automatic password and login, take the shortcuts off the desktop, remove Facebook and email from your phone, and removing distracting websites from your homepage or favorites.  This according to Achor essentially buries your online distractions in the electronic equivalent of Russian stacking dolls. Cutting the activation energy required to start a new positive habit, even by as little as 20 seconds can also have a big impact. For example, the author discusses how he used the 20-second rule to build the habit of working out in the morning before work.  To reduce the effort required and distractions that could prevent him from running he decided to sleep in his gym clothes with his running shoes right by the bed.  This allowed him to decrease the amount of activation energy required in the morning to go run; he just needed to roll out of bed and put on his shoes.  This simple first step was how he was able to build a habit of morning exercise.  According to the athletes and non-athletes, he has talked to worldwide say that just the act of putting on running shows triggers your brain to believe that it is easier to work out right away than to go through the hassle of taking off your shoes.  Despite the fact that taking off one’s shoes is clearly easier Achor states that, “the brain, once it has tripped toward a habit, will naturally keep rolling in that direction, following the path of perceived least resistance.”  This idea can work with other types of changes individuals want to make – it is simply a matter of determining how to “just get your shoes on” for tasks related to work, school, or other interests.  The less energy needed to get started (even 20 seconds) the easier it will be to make a good habit lasting. 
 
Principle #7: Social Investment
One of the strongest influences on happiness is the strength of one’s social network.  The happiest 10 percent of individuals are most clearly distinguished by the strength of their interpersonal relationships.  Individuals who have strong social support networks are more productive, engaged, energized, and able to handle setbacks.  Achor compares an individual’s support network to the way an offensive line protects the quarterback. One of the most important areas for social support is the relationship between an employee and a supervisor or in the case of education, teacher and student.  A bad relationship between an employee and a supervisor can be destructive to both happiness and overall physical health.  According to Achor, “A bad relationship with your boss can be as bad for you as a steady diet of fried foods—and not nearly as much fun.”
 
The Happiness Advantage ends with the Ripple Effect or how one individual’s mindset can have an impact on coworkers, friends, family members, and communities.  Emotions, both positive and negative, can be contagious.  Daniel Goleman describes how negative emotions from one individual can almost immediately infect a group, “Like secondhand smoke, the leakage of emotions can make a bystander an innocent casualty of someone else’s toxic state.”  But the happiness advantage also means that positive emotions are contagious as well, making them a powerful tool for improving performance in the classroom or workplace. According to Shawn Achor, “Each tiny move towards a more positive mindset can send ripples of positivity through our organizations, our families, and our communities.”
 
Other Related Resources
 
Shawn Achor – The Happy Secret to Better Work
Shawn Achor’s TED talk, which has had over 11 million viewings to date, is an incredible introduction to positive psychology which students will find engaging and inspiring.
http://www.ted.com/talks/shawn_achor_the_happy_secret_to_better_work?language=en
 
Goodthinkinc.com
GoodThink is Shawn Anchor’s company website that has the seeks to find ways to apply academic research in cognitive and positive psychology to real world situations.  Goodthink Inc. is a team of world-renowned researchers, speakers, and trainers who deliver information to organizations around the globe.
http://goodthinkinc.com/
 
Martin Seligman and New Era of Positive Psychology
Martin Seligman, the founder of positive psychology discusses the overall field of psychology.
https://www.ted.com/talks/martin_seligman_on_the_state_of_psychology?language=en
 
Center for Healthy Minds – University of Wisconsin, Madison
Founded by Dr. Richard Davidson, the Center for Healthy Minds conducts research on the neural bases of emotion and methods that promote well-being and human flourishing.
http://centerhealthyminds.org/
 
Website for Dr. Richard Davidson
The website of Richard Davidson, PhD of the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
http://richardjdavidson.com/
 
 Psychological Figures and Concepts
Carol Dweck   
Viktor Frankl
Daniel Gilbert
Malcolm Gladwell
William James
Abraham Maslow
Robert Rosenthal
Martin Seligman
Active Listening
Altruism
Anchoring
Dopamine
Emotional Intelligence
Endorphins
Explanatory Style
Facial Feedback Hypothesis
Fight-or-flight Response
Inattentional Blindness
Learned helplessness
Locus ofCcontrol
Mindset
Mirror Neuron
Neuroplasticity
Oxytocin
Posttraumatic Growth
Principles of Psychology
Priming
Pygmalion Effect
Reverse Placebo Effect
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Serotonin
Signature Strength
Stereotype Threat
Subjective Well-Being
Theory X and Theory Y

​Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness
Richard H. Thaler and Cass S. Sunstein
ISBN:  978-0-300-12223-7
                                              
APA Style Citation
Thaler, R. and Sunstein, C (2008).  Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness.  New York:  Penguin Group.

​Book Description
Richard H. Thaler and Cass S. Sunstein were both professors of Economics at the University of Chicago at the time of the publication of Nudge.  Sunstein went on the work at the White House as the Administer of Information and Regulatory Affairs while Thaler remains at University of Chicago.  The authors use Nudge to pose the idea of Libertarian Paternalism, which they describe as a type of choice architecture.  They combine the fields of Economics and Psychology to describe how anyone from cafeteria workers to governmental agencies can present choices in such a way to help guide (nudge) people towards better choices while still giving them complete control over those same choices.
 
Thaler and Sunstein begin with a cafeteria manager who realized students purchase more of items presented close to the beginning of the cafeteria line.  If desserts were presented first, students ate more desserts, if fruit was presented first, students ate more fruit. The manager could use this knowledge to make more profit for herself, but Thaler and Sunstein suggest that the paternalism component of libertarian paternalism should provoke her to arrange the healthiest food items first to encourage students to eat as healthy as possible.  Students are not forced to choose the first items presented and the manager has not limited the student’s choices, but she found that the arrangement of food items changed the sales of items by up to 25%.  Hopefully this finding will be used by others to encourage students to make healthy decisions regarding their food selections.
 
Thaler and Sunstein recognize that many people will oppose this type of paternalism because it does exert some control over people’s choices and may not always be used in ways that are in the best interests of the average American.  They counter by indicating that libertarian paternalism is only intended to look out for the best interests of as many people as possible.  They explain the difference between “econs” who would always look at the world objectively without emotion to make the best decisions for themselves and their families and “humans” who are impacted by emotions and busy lives and as a result do not always make the best choices for themselves or their families. Because most of us are “humans”, they argue, libertarian paternalism becomes a helpful necessity.
 
In many cases libertarian paternalism attempts to encourage humans to make good financial choices.  Thaler and Sunstein describe how their University retirement system had individuals opt in each year even if they had been in the system the prior year.  Many employees did not think about retirement during the year and forgot to opt in for the upcoming year during the open period.  They then had to wait until the following year to opt in again.  By speaking with school administrators (none of whom had remembered to opt in) they were able to change the default to remain in the system and only to opt out if they wanted to make a change to their retirement contributions.  With this type of choice architecture, far more people participated in the retirement plan at the University.  They recommend the same type of programs for new hires who will be automatically entered into a savings system unless they decide to take action and opt out.  The idea is that people know they should be saving for retirement but often do not get around to actually taking the action necessary to get started.  The State of Illinois has created a default program to become an organ donor and saw a dramatic increase in those donating, presumably saving thousands of lives each year.
 
Thaler and Sunstein credit Daniel Kahneman for his work with biases and heuristics in which people use a rule of thumb based on prior experiencing or knowledge to make decisions, which often turn out to be erroneous.  They use an example of an anchoring heuristic in which people attempt to guess the population of the city of Milwaukee.  It is unlikely that people know this answer outright so they will use their own frames or reference to determine the best response.  If someone from Chicago were asked the question, they might know that Milwaukee is the largest city in Wisconsin but not as big as Chicago, so they may say about a million since Chicago has about 3 million and it is perhaps about 1/3rd the size.  People from Green Bay Wisconsin might estimate that Milwaukee is about three times as large as Green Bay causing them to guess around 300,000.  The actual population is about 580,000 but the anchoring bias of each person’s hometown caused them to guess either too high or too low.  Thaler and Sunstein explain how these and other heuristics such as the availability and representiveness heuristics can lead to overconfidence in any types of choices and decisions.
 
Some of the most important decisions we make in our lives are often the result of little thought or effort.  Most people never change the accounts in their retirement savings or their prescription drug plan even as their lives or health change.  Thaler and Sunstein examined individuals on Medicare and found that most people would have been better served by a different plan, but the people either found the change too complicated or had not given much thought to making a change because they “had health insurance” even if it was not doing them much good.  The libertarian paternalism model would create a system in which those running the system would examine each person’s health and prescription needs for the past few months to determine the best plan.  This would become their default plan and at least would be correct until their health needs changed.
 
Conformity also plays a role in the decisions we make.  By following what everyone else does, we assume what everyone else does must indicate the best restaurant or the best concert often without giving much thought to what we believe.  We can see this evidenced by watching people who eat together match how much they eat to the others they are with.  In another study, college roommates often study as much as one another.   People recycle more if they are informed that most others do the same and pay their taxes if their tax bill indicates that a high percentage of people also pay their taxes.  Energy bills have taken this lead and now often compare each bill payer to their neighbors along with a smiley or frowny face to indicate their level of efficiency.  Thaler and Sunstein cite the work of Solomon Asch who tested whether individuals would conform to the perception of line length falsely reported by confederates.  Asch found that participants would often go along with a clearly incorrect response if they majority of others in the group did.  Asch also found that once a person committed to a response in writing, they were more likely to stand by that response.  Campaign officials have replicated this by demonstrating that if people sign a pledge card regarding their intention to vote, they are far more likely to follow through.  This method has also worked with blood drives and commitments to healthy eating. 
 
Even human factors psychology plays a role in the design of products that can keep people safe and help them interact with products in a healthier fashion such as stove tops that clearly indicate which on/off knob goes with which burner.
 
Thaler and Sunstein believe that we need nudges most when the choices we are faced with are complex or ambiguous.  Credit card statements do not use nudge tactics and often wind up a poor option for people because the anchoring heuristic is the minimum balance on the payment slip without any indication of how much one will pay in the long run if they only pay the minimum payment.  By including this information, Thaler and Sunstein suggest that credit card debt could be substantially decreased.  They are convinced that by implementing paternalistic libertarianism, people can do good and do well.
 
Other Related Resources
Nudge Blog:  For sharing ideas about Libertarian Paternalism
http://nudges.org
 
Forbes:  What it Really Means to Nudge
http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterubel/2015/02/20/q-a-with-richard-thaler-on-what-it-really-means-to-be-a-nudge/
 
The Observer:  Has Push Come to Shove for a Fashionable Theory?
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jun/01/nudge-economics-freakonomics-daniel-kahneman-debunked
 
The Economist:  The Limits of Nudging
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2015/07/behavioural-economics
 
Nudge Theory Explanation: Business Balls
http://www.businessballs.com/nudge-theory.htm
 
Psychological Figures and Concepts
Solomon Asch
Muzafer Sherif
Availability Heuristic
Anchoring Heuristic
Commoner’s Dilemma
Conformity
Elimination by aspects
Framing
Human Factors Psychology
Incentives
Loss Aversion
Mere-Exposure Effect
Overconfidence
Peripheral Route to Persuasion
Positive
Priming
Representativeness Heuristic
Self-Serving Bias

Boost:  Create Good Habits Using Psychology and Technology
Author:  Max Ogles
ISBN:   13: 978-1505245059

APA Style Citation
Ogles, M.  (2014).  Boost:  Create Good Habits Using Psychology and Technology.  

Book Description
Situations Matter:  Understanding How Context Transforms Your World, by Sam Sommers of Tufts University is an excellent source of supplemental material to make the emotion and social psychology units especially relevant and engaging for students.  The book provides research and personal examples illustrating how behaviors and mental processes are strongly influenced by one’s current environment.  Included in the text are a wide variety of brief, high-interest analyses of significant psychological studies including Asch’s conformity study, Milgram’s obedience study, and the Schachter-Singer research on the two-factor theory of emotion. The book stresses that although we like to think we objectively make decisions based on our individual personalities, we, in fact, are profoundly influenced by the situations in which we find ourselves. The goal of Situations Matter is to help individuals understand and predict the actions of others and evaluate how the power of the situation influences one’s behaviors.  This book provides an interesting way to link social psychology concepts such as attribution theory and the power of the situation to numerous other units including motivation, emotion, and cognition.  
 
The book is divided into seven chapters with distinct themes.  Chapter One, titled WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get), pronounced “wizzy-wig,” demonstrates the tendency of individuals to emphasize dispositional attributions over situational ones. This section addresses cultural differences in attributional tendencies such as the fundamental attribution error and how attributions influence decision-making.  There are also several excellent examples in this chapter of the halo effect.  For example, Sommers references how the halo effect is used by advertisers to add creditability to their products through celebrity endorsements.  The concept of WYSIWYG leads individuals to ignore the power of the situation in explaining why the celebrities are praising the products (they are being paid).  According to Sommers, WYSIWYG allows for rapid impression formation and decision-making because it effectively eliminates many potential variables.  WYSIWYG can however also lead to inaccurate decisions.  The author argues that a greater understanding of this natural tendency to avoid considering situational variables can help individuals make more reasoned and effective choices. 
 
Chapter Two, Help Wanted, highlights research related to how the presence of others impacts individual behavior by increasing inaction.  Help Wanted details important social psychology concepts such as reciprocity, social loafing, the bystander effect, and diffusion of responsibility.  This section includes both the Kitty Genovese and James Bulger murders as examples of the power of the bystander effect.  There is also a detailed account of the Good Samaritan study conducted by John Darley and Daniel Batson, which illustrates a how the variable of time pressure contributes to the willingness of individuals to help others.
 
Chapter Three, Go with the Flow describes how the presence of others influences the actions of individuals.  This chapter includes research related to deindividuation, social norms, and conformity and begins with the interesting example of Cameron Hughes who is paid to attend sporting events and get the crowd excited.  Situations Matter explains how various theories from social psychology can explain why Cameron Hughes is so successful at his job.  He has been hired to generate crowd excitement for professional teams including the Los Angeles Dodgers, Cleveland Cavaliers, and New Jersey Devils.  In 2010 he was hired to fire up crowds at the men’s and women’s Olympic hockey matches. 
 
Chapter Four, You’re Not the Person You Thought You Were, demonstrates how situations impact self-concept.  The author contends that the idea of a consistent personality is overrated in terms of predicting human behavior.  This section includes an exceptional description of the research done by Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer that led to the two-factor theory of emotion.  Also, in this chapter are studies related to personal happiness and how self-concept is impacted by social comparisons.  There are several short demonstrations in this chapter that can be used to highlight the better than average effect that which can be easily used in a psychology class as a high-interest demo.
 
The final chapters in the book including Mars and Venus Here on Earth, Love, and Hate emphasize how the power of the situation influences relationships with others and the differences between men and women.  Mars and Venus Here on Earth highlights how gender norms are developed and maintained and argue that the differences between the sexes are more closely related to social situations than biology.  Love includes sections devoted to the science of attraction and the importance of similarity, proximity, and reciprocity.  The author even mentions a great article from the satirical newspaper, the Onion with the headline “18-Year-Old Miraculously Finds Soulmate in Hometown” that highlights how little we are aware of the impact of proximity.  (http://www.theonion.com/articles/18yearold-miraculously-finds-soulmate-in-hometown,375/) The chapter also explains how the Schachter-Singer two-factor theory of emotion can be used to explain how individuals in an exciting situation may misattribute the physiological arousal they are experiencing for the emotion of love.  This is demonstrated with the Capilano Bridge study (Dutton and Aron). This activity is provided in the open your class with this document and can be incorporated in either a unit on emotion or attraction. The chapter titled Hate gives an overview of the influence of actual differences in creating hostility and in-group bias.  The author demonstrates through research how easy it is to create conflict in groups even when they are formed arbitrarily.  The text provides a version of the Harvard Implicit Association Test to assess unconscious prejudice that can be easily used in class.  By doing the test together as a class, there are no individual scores which can reduce student anxiety.  The book also provides effective answers for addressing the concerns students typically express about the IAT. A different version of this activity involving stereotype about men and women in the workforce is provided in the open your class with this document on the blog.
 
Situations Matter provides exhaustive evidence regarding the power of the situation to influence human behavior.  The text is witty, intelligent, and engaging and there are numerous sections that could be assigned for supplemental student reading assignments.  The examples and stories can be used to help students find ways to apply psychology to their lives, decisions, and relationships. 
 
Other Related Resources
The following link is to the website of author Sam Sommers for the book Situations Matter that includes two short videos an eighteen minute TED talk.  
http://www.samsommers.com/Situations_Matter/Home.html

The following link is to a Psychwiki that provides additional background information on the Capilano Suspension Bridge Study research into misattribution of arousal that is one of the open your class today activities.  
http://www.psychwiki.com/wiki/Misattribution_of_Arousal_Paradigm

The following video is a reenactment of the original Capilano Suspension Bridge Study which can be used with the open your class today activity on misattribution of arousal.  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0aMEkGlcQE

This article explains five key psychological studies related to the science of attraction and includes the Capilano Suspension Bridge Study as number three.
http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2012/5/17/top-5-classic-studies-in-the-psychology-of-attraction.html

The Annenberg Learner series video on the power of the situation which includes footage of several key experiments into conformity(Asch), the fundamental attribution error, and the Zimbardo prison experiment. 
http://www.learner.org/series/discoveringpsychology/19/e19expand.html

Psychological Figures and Concepts
Solomon Asch
Robert Cialdini
John Darley
Kitty Genovese
Dan Gilbert
Irving Janis 
Stanley Milgram
Bystander Effect
Chameleon Effect 
Conformity 
Cost/Benefit Analysis 
Diffusion of Responsibility
Emotion Theories
Implicit Association Test (IAT)
Innocence Project
Misattribution of Arousal
Obedience 
Prejudice
Proximity
Racism 
Reciprocity Norm
Similarity 
Social Norm
Stereotype
Suspension Bridge Study 

Powers of Two:  Finding the Essence of Innovation in Creative Pairs
Author:  Joshua Wolf Shenk
ISBN:  978-0-544-03159-3

APA Style Citation
Shenk, J. (2014). Powers of Two: finding the essence of innovation in creative pairs. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Book Description
In Powers of Two:  Finding the Essence of Innovation in Creative Paris, author Joshua Wolf Shenk rejects the idea of the lone genius in favor of evidence for the success of cooperative duos.  The book reads like an autobiography of famous historical and contemporary pairs from business, music, literature, sports, art, politics, science, and technology.  Joshua Wolf Shenk is also the author of the book Lincoln’s Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness.  Detailed accounts of famous pairs are woven throughout the book and include John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mohandas Gandhi and Mahadev Desai, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung and Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs.  Thorough research illustrates that many individuals historically perceived as lone geniuses frequently owed their success to close work with one other individual.  

Shenk acknowledges three types of pairs that he describes as star and director, liquid and container, and dreamer and doer.  In the star and director pair, one half of the duo occupies the spotlight, but their success is dependent upon the input of the other half who remains behind the scenes.  Examples of famous star and director creative pairs include Mohandas Gandhi and Mahadev Desai, Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy, Vincent van Gogh and his brother Theo. The dynamic of the liquid and the container refers to pairs in which one individual is drawn to risk and excitement (liquid), while the other individual imposes constraints and introduces necessary order and organization.  The liquid half of a pair typically is often more exciting, energetic, and more likely to take risks.  These individuals work well in pairs when the other half serves as a container offering structure and restraint.  This dynamic in particular according to the author is what gave rise to the romantic tradition of the lone, mad artist.  The mad artist construct however only refers to the liquid half of the duo.  The well-known Apple Computer advertising campaign “Here’s to the crazy ones” dramatically illustrates the lone genius myth “Alfred Hitchcock, John Lennon, Pablo Picasso, etc …the ones who see things differently… while some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius… Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”  According to Powers of Two, these wild geniuses were only successful in making dramatic change because they were partnered with another more grounded individual.  One strong example of liquid and container highlighted throughout the book is the partnership of John Lennon (liquid) and Paul McCartney (container). The section on dreamer and doer pairs is creatively titled Inspiration and Perspiration and separates some famous pairs into the half who envisions new ideas and inspires others (dreamer), and the half who effectively sets priorities and finishes projects (doer).  Examples of this type included in the book are Orville Wright (doer) and Wilbur Wright (dreamer), Jerry Seinfeld (doer) and Larry David (dreamer) andSouth Park’s Trey Parker (dreamer) and Matt Stone (doer). 

The book describes how powerful pairs develop through six stages:  meeting, confluence, dialectics, distance, and the infinite game.  In the process the author provides details about the various manners in which these stages occur through references to psychological studies, interviews, and historical records.   Countless well known pairs are explored in each of the six stages to illustrate common trends among productive duos.  The book is a fascinating analysis of modern psychological research on creativity.  Numerous references are made that apply to a wide range of topics covered in a psychology class including social psychology, biopsychology, motivation, emotion, stress, and states of consciousness, cognition, and development making Powers of Two an excellent resource for supplemental materials for class.   

Other Related Resources
Author Joshua Shenk’s website with information about the book Powers of Two, and his previously released book, Lincoln’s Melancholy.
http://www.shenk.net/powersoftwo/

The following link is to an NPR, All Things Considered Story about the book Powers of Two.
When It Comes To Creativity, Are Two Heads Better Than One?
July 24, 2014 4:21 PM ET
http://www.npr.org/2014/07/24/334903925/when-it-comes-to-creativity-are-two-heads-better-than-one

The following link is to an article published in the Atlantic titled, Creative Pairs, in Their Own Words, which contains a series of quotes from members of famous duos about their partners. 
     “I forged the thunderbolts. She fired them.”
     --    Elizabeth Cady Stanton on Susan B. Anthony
     “All things considered, there is only Matisse.”
     — Pablo Picasso
     “Only one person has the right to criticize me. That is Picasso.”
     — Henri Matisse
     “We often hate each other, but it’s the kind of hatred that’s like flint and steel—the sparks that come out make it worth the while.”
     — Penn Jillette on his longtime partner in magic, Teller

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/07/in-their-own-words/372290/

Psychological Figures and Concepts
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Charles Darwin
Daniel Goleman
Daniel Khaneman
Abraham Maslow
Walter Mischel
Lev Vygotsky
Archetypes
Birth order
Cooperation, competition, and conflict
Creativity
Flow
Fundamental attribution error
Happiness
Hierarchy of needs (Maslow)
Introverts and extroverts
Language
Leadership styles
Narcissism
Neuroscience (creative thought and sleep, introversion, social memory)
Person v. situation controversy
Problem solving
Reciprocity
Social cognition
Social intelligence
Stanford prison experiment
Theory of mind

Reviewer: Katie Karalis
Institution: Northwestern University Student 
Email: [email protected]

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
Author:  Daniel Pink
ISBN: 978-1-59448-884-9

Eat, Move, Sleep: How Small Choices lead to Big Changes
Author(s): Tom Rath
ISBN:  9781939714008

APA Style Citation
Rath, T.  (2013). Eat, Move, Sleep: How Small Choices lead to Big Changes.  Missionday

Book Description

Eat, Move, Sleep is a book for anyone who would like to live a healthier life.  Each chapter is organized into simple sections with a single recommendation for improving one’s diet, activity and rest to conclude each chapter. Regardless of one’s current level of activity and sleep or eating habits, Rath’s ideas can be easily implemented.  There are simple recommendations for each category such as eating more green vegetables like broccoli, sleeping without lights or electronic devices, getting a pedometer or a fit bit (  a wireless electronic device that tracks activity and sleep patterns by computing statistics in real-time such as steps taken, distance covered, calories burned, stairs climbed and active minutes), and trying to be even a little bit more active each day . There are also many apps that will measure steps per day, etc. some of which are free.  Rath describes his own reasons for living a healthy lifestyle; he is prone to small cancerous tumors, which clean living can reduce.  He explains that his desire to live healthier is also about being around for his wife and children for many years. Rath clearly states that he is not a doctor or an expert on nutrition but has gathered research over the past twenty years on how to live a healthier life; it is this research on which the book is based. Rath places an emphasis on the preventable aspects of diseases such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and lung disease, which kill 9 of 10 people.  Implementing even some of the recommendations in the book can make these less likely to happen to you.  A mistake individuals often make is to work on only one of these three modalities (Eat, Sleep or Move) in isolation, Rath poses that it is healthier and actually easier to work on all three at the same time.

Eat

2/3rds of all Americans are overweight or obese; we all need to focus on eating better if this statistic is ever going to change. The quality of what one eats is far more important than the quantity, which is unfortunately what many diets emphasize.  Rath recommends trying to find foods with less fat, sugar and carbohydrates that what you are currently eating. Avoid foods with a ratio higher than five to one carbohydrates to protein and look for foods that have a ratio of one gram of carbohydrates for every gram of protein. 

Try to leave fruits and vegetables in places where you can easily see and access them and place junk food in places that are less accessible.  On average, Americans eat 150 pounds of sugar per year; there are obviously some opportunities to reduce this intake.  Sugar has been called, “candy for cancer cells” and it has been estimated that sugar kills more people each year than cocaine, heroin or any other controlled substance. Sugar is addictive and activates rewards centers of the brain, as we consume more and more sugar, we increase our tolerance and need more sugar to activate those same pleasure areas in the brain.  Recommendations for sugar intake are not more than 6 teaspoons per day for women and 9 for men. 

A great shortcut for eating better is green means “go”, which reminds us that foods like broccoli, bok choy, and celery have a positive impact on health, also red or blue foods like strawberries, blueberries and peppers are good choices.  Rath discusses that each meal can be viewed as either a benefit or a loss.  While coffee is a “net gain”, loading it with cream and sugar makes it a “net loss”; the next time you drink a cup of coffee, try it without any or at least with less cream and sugar.  

Do not be fooled by organic or “whole grain” products which are frequently not any healthier than their “normal” counterparts.  Dried fruits contain little nutritional value and often times more sugar than a candy bar.  Using smaller serving plates will cause people to eat less and using plates which contrast the color of the food also cause people to eat less in a single sitting (30% less).

Planning ahead is also an important fact related to remaining healthy. Rath suggests carrying an apple or a bag of nuts for situations in which one is traveling, driving or in other cases in which health food options may be limited.  Begin by eating the healthiest food on your plate; this will generally lead to eating more of that food and less of the other “less healthy” foods.  Drinking a large glass of water before a meal helps to suppress appetite and cause one to eat less at mealtimes. 

Move

Most people spend more time sitting than sleeping in a given day. Inactivity kills more people than smoking, so any method to be more active will be a net gain.  After 2 hours of sitting, good cholesterol drops by 20 percent so even standing at one’s desk is better than sitting.  Try taking a meeting or a phone call while walking.  Rath wrote this book while slowly walking on a treadmill (1.5 miles per hour) and easily met his goal of 10,000 steps per day (the average American takes only about 5,117 steps per day) while working, leaving him more time to spend with his family at the end of the day. 

Take the stairs instead of the elevator and find small opportunities to build in activity that does not necessarily take time out of what you are doing in your day.  Being active can cause up to a 40 percent reduction in the genetic predisposition for obesity, we do not have to be victims of our genes, Rath is a prime example of this.

The book suggests using a fit bit or one of many free phone apps as an easy way to track activity in a given day and set goals to gradually increase activity. Remaining active throughout the day seems to be more significant than a single workout within a sedentary lifestyle in terms of overall health benefits.  Exercising early in the day has been shown to boost mood throughout the day and doing so before breakfast may also help burn additional fat. 

Moving more seems to increase creativity and building breaks into one’s study time or daily workday seem to help increase brain growth and efficiency.  In a study of over 12,000 adults over the age of 25, each hour of television viewing decreased the viewer’s lifespan by 22 minutes.  Walking, stretching, or exercising while watching television can completely negate these negative effects.  In addition to improving health, physical activity wards off depression and prevents some cognitive disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease. 

Sleep

According to a study from Harvard Medical School, lack of sleep costs the American economy $63 billion per year.  Those driving with a night of sleep loss are the equivalent to a blood alcohol level of 0.19 (more than twice the legal limit) in terms of their ability to react. K. Anders Ericsson, who found that those who performed at the highest level needed 10,000 hours of practice (also see review for The Talent Code), also found that those who performed at the highest level slept for an average of 8 hours and 36 minutes a night (most Americans get just under 7 hours). 

Getting less than 6 hours of sleep a night is a key factor related to burnout on the job.  Losing 90 minutes of sleep reduces daytime alertness by 1/3rd; making it imperative that one has a good night’s sleep.  According to a fourteen day study, those who get better sleep have stronger immune systems and are less likely to get colds or other ailments.  Individuals with lower sleep efficiency were 5.5 times more likely to develop a cold.  Getting a better night sleep will also help cement the items which were learned that day, this is especially effective when the good sleep occurs on a regular schedule. 

In order to get more effective sleep, Rath recommends keeping all types of artificial light out of the bedroom including televisions, cell phones, lamps, iPads, etc., and avoiding exposure to bright light just before bedtime because this decreases the beneficial aspects of melatonin. 

Vigorous workouts shortly before bed are also shown to significantly improve sleep quality.  Maintaining a consistent sleep schedule even on holidays and weekends helps improve the quality of sleep and this is especially important for children and teens.  If you sleep more, you generally remember more and eat less, thus getting more sleep helps in many areas of one’s life. 

Summary
All of these recommendations can help individuals to live a healthier life and all of them can be implemented regardless of one’s current activity level or level of health or age.  Rath’s recommendations are simple approaches to extending and improving life.  This is a book for everyone regardless of his or her interest in Health Psychology, and we can all benefit from the recommendations he makes by adopting even a handful of his useful life changing ideas.  These recommendations need not radically change your daily life, but small changes over an extended period can lead to major life improvements.


Other Related Resources

Eat, Move, Sleep Book Website:  Through this website, you can create a personalized plan (see open your class with this tomorrow activity), link to hundreds of articles which the book references, and download the 30 day challenge.

http://www.eatmovesleep.org
Tom Rath’s website

http://www.tomrath.org/eat-move-sleep/

Facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/eatmovesleep

Office Hours with Daniel Pink:  Podcast with Tom Rath
The following link is Pink’s interview with the author of Eat, Move, Sleep – Tom Rath.
http://www.danpink.com/office-hours/tom-rath/

Forbes interview with Tom Rath on how small changes make all the difference in your life: Focuses on improving one’s work.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/danschawbel/2013/10/08/tom-rath-how-small-changes-make-all-the-difference-in-your-life/

 
Psychological Figures and Concepts
K. Anders Ericsson (10,000 hours)
BMI
Circadian rhythms
Health Psychology
Insulin
Melatonin
Sleep apnea

The Defining Decade:  Why your twenties matter – and how to make the most of them now
Author(s):  Meg Jay, PhD
ISBN:  987-0-446-56176-1

APA Style Citation
Jay, M. (2012). The defining decade: why your twenties matter and how to make the most of them now. New York: Twelve.

Book Description

The Defining Decade:  Why your twenties matter and how to make the most of them is an insightful and research based examination of how the decisions one makes during their twenties have enormous impact on happiness and success later in life.  The author, Meg Jay, PhD is a clinical psychologist with a private practice and a University of Virginia professor. The book is a mix of development, personality, and neuroscience research related to early adulthood.  The book addresses how the important choices individuals make regarding careers and friendships during their twenties can have long-term ramifications.   Although the book is written for individuals in their twenties, it can certainly helpful for high school students. 

The book opens with a quote from linguist Noam Chomsky, “Almost invariably, growth and development has what’s called a critical period.  There’s a particular period of maturation in which, with external stimulation of the appropriate kind, the capacity will pretty suddenly develop and mature.  Before that and later than that, it’s either harder or impossible.”  Dr. Jay considers one’s twenties an example of a developmental critical period because eighty percent of the events which define one’s life (careers, relationships, education, parenthood, etc.) occur before the age of thirty-five.  This book encourages twentysomethings to think seriously about the decisions they are making or putting off.  Research shows that during one’s twenties most of a person’s lifetime wage growth occurs which makes thinking critically about one’s career during this decade vital.  It is during this critical period that career paths are determined and decisions regarding marriage and family are often made.  This period is biologically defined by the final stage of brain growth in the development of the prefrontal cortex, which contributes to the importance of this time period. 

Much of the book focuses on paths to career development during one’s twenties such as developing identity capital and utilizing weak ties. Identity capital, a term used by sociologists, refers to the outcome of the investments individuals make in themselves which can be used like currency to advance careers and find healthy relationships. Identity capital includes education, work experiences, and specific achievements, but it also involves appearance, who we know, interests, and personality traits.  These collective experiences, traits, and achievements determine what we have to offer in the career marketplace and should be carefully considered during one’s twenties because about two-thirds of lifetime wage growth occurs during the first ten years of a career.  The book also encourages individuals in their twenties to utilize weak ties, a term coined by Stanford professor Mark Granovetter as a result of his research into social networks (decades before online social media).  Granovetter found that close friends and family were not the individuals who proved most helpful in job searches and career advancement.  Surprisingly, more than three-quarters of new jobs or major advances in career development were the result of contacts that individuals saw only rarely.  Weak ties include classmates and coworkers you do not know well, friends of parents, or former acquaintances.  One’s closest ties consist of individuals who are most likely very similar to us and thus unlikely to be able to provide new and different opportunities.  Weak ties conversely are more likely to be individuals we do not know very well (or at all) and are very different from us which can generate truly unique opportunities.

According to Dr. Jay, “Claiming your twenties is one of the simplest yet most transformative things you can do for work, for love, for your happiness, maybe even for the world.”  The Defining Decade provides evidence from numerous research studies to provide insights which will help individuals in their twenties make the best possible decisions for future happiness and success in many aspects of their lives including the following. 

·      Career success takes time:  according to research by K. Anders Ericsson this means 10,000 hours (this is also covered in Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers).  Twenty-something individuals should be reminded that it might take about five years of full-time work in their new career before they develop mastery and full confidence. 

·      Personality changes more in one’s twenties than at any other time.  The twenties represent the final period of development for the frontal lobe and behaviors and personality patterns become hardwired for adulthood.  This is the time to change what you want to about yourself. 

·      Romantic relationships are important and the adage that “you cannot choose your family but you can choose your friends” is incorrect because it is during ones twenties that you in fact do choose a family.  According to Dr. Jay, “The best time to work on your marriage is before you have one.”  Invest the same amount of attention and planning in your romantic relationships as you do for your career because decisions in this area have dramatic and long-term impact on your personal happiness and life satisfaction.

Other Related Resources
Meg Jay, Ph.D. – TED Talk
Dr. Jay’s 2013 TED talk “Why 30 Is Not the New 20″ which has been viewed more than 2 million times.
http://www.ted.com/talks/meg_jay_why_30_is_not_the_new_20.html

NPR Podcast
This seven minute podcast from Chicago Public radio includes a short interview with author Dr. Jay and impromptu conversations of twentysomethings on the campus of George Washington University. 
http://www.npr.org/2012/04/22/150429128/our-roaring-20s-the-defining-decade

The Year 25 Series
NPR created a series of interviews called the Year 25 series in which they interviewed several famous individuals about what was happening in their lives when they were twenty five.
http://www.wbez.org/series/year-25

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel at age 25 from the Year 25 Series.
http://www.wbez.org/series/year-25/who-was-25-year-old-rahm-emanuel-108327

Psychological Figures and Concepts
Albert Bandura
Carol Dweck
Erik Erikson
Phineas Gage
Daniel Gilbert
Karen Horney
Adolescence
Big five personality traits
Critical periods
Emerging adulthood
Frontal lobes
Happiness
Identity
Mindset
Neuroticism
Plasticity
Self-efficacy
Similarity and attraction
Ten thousand hours

Contributed and Reviewed by:
Todd Keenan
Gahanna-Lincoln High School
[email protected]

Instant Influence
Author(s):  Michael Pantalon
ISBN: 978-0-316-08334-8

APA Style Citation:
Pantalon, M. (2011).   Instant Influence:  How to Get Anyone to do Anything—Fast.  New York:  Little, Brown and Co.

Book Description:

Influencing someone to change can come in many forms – fear, extrinsic motivation, intrinsic motivation.  The key to successful change/influence comes from getting people to understanding their own reasons for wanting to change.  People are unlikely to perform a behavior because someone of another person’s orders.  An individual will only change for his/her own reasons.  The secret is to get people to discover their own reasons for doing something - even something they thought they didn’t want to do.  As the influencer, you help not by telling them why they should change, but by asking them questions about why they might want to change.

Below are some of the questions that might lead a person to change:

1.     Why might you change?
a.     For example, why might you get a twitter account as a teacher?

2.     How ready are you to change – on a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 meaning “not at all” and 10 meaning “all in”?
a.     This is more so for the person to gauge how motivated they are – likely people don’t say one; therefore the influence will hopefully see they are, in fact, at least a little bit motivated.

3.     Why didn’t you pick a lower number?
a.     Point here is to try to get the person to think about the reasons they are motivated; to show them that it is not all that bad.
b.     If they say one, ask what would it take to move that number to a two?

4.     Imagine you’ve changed. What would the positive outcomes be?
a.     Trying to get the person to see how it would benefit them.

5.     Why are those outcomes important to you?
a.     Trying to make it even more personalized – how they can get something out of it.

6.     What’s the next step?
a.     Trying to put action to words.  At this point your objective is to get the person to exhibit some sort of meaningful action toward change.

Other Related Resources:
GMC weekend clip interview with Michael Pantalon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwJGVBA0Ais

Book Website
http://www.michaelpantalon.com/the-book/

Psychological Concepts and Figures:
·       Motivation
·       Positive Psychology
·       Introspection

How Children Succeed
Author(s):  Paul Tough
ISBN:  978-0544104402
APA Style Citation:
Tough, P. (2013). How children succeed: Grit, curiosity, and the hidden power of character: Mariner books.

Book Description
In How Children Succeed, author Paul Tough challenges the idea that cognitive ability is the most important determinant of one’s future success.  He cites research conducted by Angela Duckworth at the University of Pennsylvania which proposes that optimism, character, and what is described in the book as “Grit” are far better predictors of success in the future than exam scores.  Tough questions the outlook for the future of many upper middle class children who have not experienced failure and cannot regroup in the face of setbacks. He suggests that experiencing failure and learning how to persevere in the face of it is one of the greatest lessons children can learn. 

Tough features Elizabeth Spiegel, a chess teacher at IS 318, a low income public middle school in Brooklyn, as an example of an individual who focuses on teaching perseverance to her students.  Ms. Spiegel has built one of the best chess teams in the nation and recently swept all middle school categories at the national competition.  These are not students who come from advantaged backgrounds, they do not have the highest of IQ scores, and often they struggle in their classes, but they love and thrive in chess.  What Spiegel does at first seems to be cruel to the preadolescents.  She forces each player to walk through each step of a chess match after a failure to determine what they have done wrong in the hopes that they will learn from their mistakes.  She prepares her chess team for failure and focuses on these experiences as a learning opportunity rather than as an end point. 

Another important factor featured by Tough is the attachment between parents and children, which is formed early on in life.  Attachment has long been studied by researchers such as John Bowlby, Harry Harlow, and Mary Ainsworth who determined that early attachment and nurturing from parents actually helps children to become more emotionally healthy later in life (see the review for Love at Goon Park for more on Harry Harlow). A secure attachment is developed when a child is confident their caregiver will be there in a time of need.  If this develops, it (a secure attachment) allows infants to safely explore the world and become more independent and curious.  This research-based evidence seems to support the importance of parenting in helping to encourage independent exploration by the child.

Tough describes a program called “One Step”, which has been implemented on the South Side of Chicago in what was formerly the area of the Robert Taylor homes. The program enrolls disadvantaged children who are shooting for the ”One Goal” of graduating from college.  The are many obstacles which may hinder the success of these children.  Students were selected for this group because of the particular challenges they faced and were tutored after school and given assistance on college applications in addition to their academic courses.  In one featured case study, Tough follows a student named Kewauna who faced tough middle school years and was often in trouble.  As she goes through the “One Step” program she is determined to gain admission to the University of Illinois.  While she is not accepted to the U of I, she is accepted to Western Illinois University and in her first year she learns to take advantage of her professor’s office hours.  Although she had a low ACT score, she was successful because she attended extra tutoring sessions and sought out additional supports and at the conclusion of her freshman year in college Kewauna earned a 3.8 GPA.  Time will tell if Kewauna reaches her goal of graduating from college, but she has already fared far better than many might have predicted, in large part due to her “Grit”. 

Tough acknowledges that much more research needs to be conducted and that there is still much to learn regarding how to teach these skills to children.  He advises parents to be conscious of how important early childhood years can be for forming a strong attachment with a child and encourages educators to examine programs such as “One Goal” or “KIPP” which emphasize character rather than being solely focused on academic success to truly help children find their own way.  This is a great read for parents and teachers and provides thought provoking material to consider not how help children be better test takers, but to help them be more successful in all of their respective pursuits.

Other Related Resources
Book website
http://www.paultough.com/the-books/how-children-succeed/
TED talk Angela Duckworth
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tedtalks/angela-lee-duckworth-tedtalk_b_4277459.html?ir=Parents
What sets High Achievers apart? (APA Monitor:  December 2013)
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2013/12/high-achievers.aspx
Interview with Paul Tough
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRSBz69ubRY
NPR Podcast
http://www.npr.org/2012/09/04/160258240/children-succeed-with-character-not-test-scores
Does Teaching Grit Really Work?  (NPR)
http://www.npr.org/2014/03/17/290089998/does-teaching-kids-to-get-gritty-help-them-get-ahead?ft=1&f=1013

Psychological Figures and Concepts
Alfred Binet
Angela Duckworth
Carol Dweck
Charles Murray
Martin Seligman
Attachment
Character
Dopamine reward pathways
Grit
IQ scores
Mindset (growth vs. fixed)
Optimism
Social Intelligence

David and Goliath:  Underdogs. Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants
Author(s):  Malcolm Gladwell
ISBN:  978-1846145827

APA Style Citation
Gladwell, M. (2013).  David and Goliath:  underdogs, misfits, and the art of battling giants.  New York:  Little, Brown, and Company.

Book Description
The book opens with the story or David and Goliath.  David shocked everyone by slaying the giant Goliath.  Gladwell explains that David’s skill as a slinger actually made it reasonable that he could best the giant .  If we only look at Goliath’s size assuming he will be the victor, we also miss that this can be his downfall because he is also slow and presumably nearly blind.   The story sets the premise for the book , which is based on the idea that underdogs can be victorious because they are not tied to expectations and convention.  Gladwell discusses the inverted U-curve, which stresses that the optimal level of functioning is located at the center of the curve.  These two ideas converge through the stories throughout the book.  It may be important to point out that Gladwell does not sell himself as a researcher or academic, but rather as a journalist.  This being the case, one might argue that some of Gladwell’s reasoning is anecdotal rather than supported by data.  Gladwell sees his work as storytelling and as a way to make some sense of the world through these stories.  The stories may seem unrelated but ultimately they all tie back into the inverted U-curve and optimal performance, even when it is unexpected.  Early in the book Gladwell discusses a group of 12-year-old girls from Silicon Valley who are not particularly gifted athletes.  In order to compete with and ultimately beat teams with clear athletic superiority, the team used a full court press and so disoriented the other teams that they made it to the regional championship. Gladwell states that in wars, the underdog has been victorious 1/3rd of the time. The American Revolution and the Vietnam Conflict are examples in which the fighting moved out of the expected realm causing the superior armies to be  defeated by weaker opponents who were not willing to give up.  Gladwell states, “Desperation is motivation.” 

Gladwell goes on to discuss ideal class sizes and criticizes elite prep schools that claim that their small class sizes and personal attention to students make them the best options for learning.  Gladwell cites responses from thousands of instructors and test results and claims that the ideal class size is around 21-23 students.  Furthermore, he discusses the difficulty of parenting when one has unlimited funding.  Rather than tell a child they cannot have an extravagant gift because there is not enough money, a wealthy parent must tell their child they simply will not have the gift.  He cites that after $75,000 there is no benefit or increase to how well parents can provide for their children.  Gladwell goes on to discuss the success of a number of dyslexic individuals and proposes that facing challenges and working through them made them successful.  Similarly, Prime Ministers and Presidents who have lost a parent far exceed that of the normal population in terms of successes.  Gladwell presents the idea that a difficult childhood can either make one fatalistic or highly determined.  He relates the inverted U to the rule of law in Ireland and the “three strikes and your out” law in the state of California.  Some people believed that putting more people in jail would deter crime, but as he explains in Ireland in the 1950s and 1960s 1 of every 4 adult men were in prison which decreased public trust in the law.  In California, the "three strikes and you are out" law forced some people to go to prisons for crimes such as stealing a piece of pizza while others were in prison for murder.  Under this law the state looked at them with the same severity.  In Ireland, during riots again English rule, one in four Irishmen found themselves in prison.  The police force believed that increased arrests would deter the Irish from protesting, but the opposite happened.  The Irish had no respect for the police force and dismissed their authority in all areas.  Gladwell advocates for a middle ground, the high point of the inverted u-curve to create effective policies to educate children, deter crime, raise successful children, and negotiate difficult situations. 

Other Related Resources
TED Talk: The Unheard Story of David and Goliath
http://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_the_unheard_story_of_david_and_goliath.html

Psychological Figures and Concepts
Robert Rescorla and expectancies
Yerkes Dotson law and the inverted U hypothesis

Gulp:  Adventures in the Alimentary Canal
Author(s):  Mary Roach
ISBN Number:  978-0393081572

APA Style Citation
Roach, M. (2013). Gulp: Adventures on the alimentary canal. New York: W.W. Norton & Company

Book Description
Mary Roach in her usual amusing style approaches the topic of digestion from beginning to end.  She starts by explaining the strong interaction between smell and taste.  She meets with Sue Langstaff, an olfactory expert who can break down the smells of anything from beer to wine to olive oil.  Roach herself however does not fare so well even after training as she attempts to rate different olive oils, but acknowledges the connection between smell and taste.  Visiting a Dutch lab, the book discusses how saliva inside of the body is viewed as normal to digestion, but outside of the body is considered vile and disgusting.  The study of saliva leads to a discussion of digestive enzymes.  In Pavlovian type studies, researchers measure the amount of saliva generated which is then caught by what is known as the “Lashley cup”.  

Roach explains that most people eat only about 30 different foods and that cultural traditions regarding what we eat are passed down from parents to children.  However, if people experienced a wider variety of foods over an extended period, they came to enjoy novel foods more and more (mere exposure effect).  Roach quotes Kurt Lewin, “People eat what they eat, rather than what they like”. She describes situations such as poverty, war, or simple scarcity that caused people to try different foods such as seafood guano (manure).  Another curious digestive, but not time saving technique is that of 'Fletcherism' in which an individual chews each bit of their food until it liquefies.  Horace Fletcher proposed that a man could get by on two-thirds of their required caloric intake by using this system.   Other researchers have found little evidence to substantiate this technique and the act of continual chewing turns out to be rather irritating to both watch and conduct.  

The story of Alexis St. Martin recounts the historic study of digestion in which after St. Martin is shot in the stomach his surgeon William Beaumont leaves a window in which to view St. Martin’s digestion.  All form of trials are described, including one in which Beaumont hangs a piece of meat from a string to determine how long the stomach would take to decompose the meat.  In another case of digestive oddity, Tom Little an Irish laborer is described.  Mr. Little as a child had eaten hot soup that fused the sides of his esophagus together.  In order to actually enjoy his meals, he placed some food into his mouth, spat it out and then placed the remainder into the opening surgeons had made in his stomach, proving that taste not just nourishment is a vital part of enjoying one’s meals.  

Roach cites instances of individual’s eating ridiculous amounts of food such as Ben Monson who ate sixty-five Mexican tortillas in one sitting.  Competitive eaters it turns out practice ignoring their gag reflex to eat more food that thought possible and stretch their stomachs during their “training” binges.  Most commonly these eating binges involve drinking copious amounts of water.  
As Roach nears the end of the digestive process, she addresses the question of the capacity of one’s rectum.  She interviews doctors who have studied the capacity of what the typical individual can hold based on work with inflated balloons.  In a chapter entitled “Up Theirs:  The Alimentary Canal as a Criminal Accomplice," Roach visits a prison to find that the doctor’s ideas regarding this capacity have been far exceeded by prisoners who have smuggled goods into prison.  While these “goods” are usually drugs and cigarettes,  she features one individual known as “Office Max” who in a single attempt to smuggle goods into the prison brought in two boxes of staples, a pencil sharpener, sharpener blades and three jumbo binder rings before being caught.  Like the competitive eaters, these individuals train to be able to hold as much as possible in one trip, resisting the urge to release the goods.  The journey from start to finish is a strange one, but Roach keeps it entertaining throughout. If you have not read anything by Mary Roach be sure to also check out her classic books including Bonk (a scientific study of sex research) and Stiff (a summary of cadaver’s contributions to science).  

Other Related Resources
Website for the book Gulp
http://www.maryroach.net/gulp.html
Quiz on Gulp
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/gulp-the-quiz/?_r=0
Interview with the author of Gulp
http://www.npr.org/2013/04/01/175381702/in-digestion-mary-roach-explains-what-happens-to-the-food-we-eat

Psychological Figures and Concepts
Kurt Lewin
Tom Little
Alexis St. Martin
Digestion
Hunger motivation
Mere exposure effect
Olfaction
Sensory interaction

Top Dog:  The Science of Winning and Losing
Author(s):  Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman
ISBN:  978-1-4555-1515-8

APA Style Citation
Bronson, P., & Merryman, A. (2013). Top Dog the Science of Winning and Losing. New York, NY: Twelve.

Book Description
The quote from President Dwight Eisenhower, “What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight – it's the size of the fight in the dog” sets the stage for the book Top Dog.  This exciting new book was written by the same authors as Nurture Shock: new thinking about children (2009).  The book provides insight into a wide range of research regarding the psychological and physiological factors involved in the differences between winning and losing.  The book focuses on the importance of competition as the most significant motivating force in building excellence and the difference between adaptive and maladaptive competitiveness.  Specific research regarding factors involving competition and success are provided from a wide range of fields including economics, politics, sports, ballroom dancing, business, and engineering.  For example, the common sports analogy of the difference between playing to win and playing not to lose is explained in a case study showing how Swiss watchmakers committed themselves to risk tasking in the face of a huge loss of market share.  Prior to the 1970’s almost all of the worlds watches were mechanical in nature, and manufactured in Switzerland.  As a result of new technology however Swiss watchmakers were left with only 15% of the watch market when companies like Timex and Citizen began producing quartz based watches.  The Swiss fought back by undercutting their competition and creating what would become a prime example of a fighter brand – Swatch watches.  This is just one of many examples of how competition fueled achievement and success discussed in the book. 

In Top Dog a variety of influences on success including expertise, the personality trait of competitiveness, social facilitation, rivalries, awards, prize structures, odds of success, gender, and biological and genetic differences are evaluated.  The book discusses how teams and collaborative work situations often reduce productivity and creativity.  Counterintuitively, Bronson and Merryman show how teams whose members are engaged in intense personal rivalries and persistent arguing are often more productive than harmonious ones.  A variety of interesting research results related to competitive fire are discussed including:
- Why positive self-talk can backfire and how negative self-talk can actually inspire higher levels of achievement in athletes.
-  The N-effect which states that when the number of participants taking part in a competitive task in the same location is higher, individual performance decreases.  This can be seen in terms of SAT performance.  Even after controlling for academic ability, Alabama, Arkansas, and Montana which have the fewest number of individual test takers present at each testing site also have the highest average SAT scores in the nation.
-  How rivalry and physical proximity increases competition and spurs innovation and excellence in college football rivalries, Silicon Valley, and the dominance of the packaging industry by Bologna, Italy.
-  The phenomenon of the near-miss bias or how risk taking increases following an event in which good luck impacted the outcome is explored in the near-disaster story about the founding of FedEx - How One Night of Blackjack Sped up the World Economy. 


Other Related Resources
The video provided below is a 3-minute interview with one of the authors of Top Dog, Po Bronson who discuss how their research poses a challenge to the 10,000 hour theory presented by Malcom Gladwell in Outliers as well as other highlights from the book. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcNB5qwoKt0

This article from the New York Times written by Top Dog authors Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman explains how genetic tendencies influence differences in responses to high stakes testing among teens.  Specifically, research in this article refers to differences in outcomes related to the COMT gene which explains the degree to which an individual is more likely to be a worrier or a warrior with regards to competition and performance. 
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/magazine/why-can-some-kids-handle-pressure-while-others-fall-apart.html?_r=0

Psychological Figures and Concepts
Muzafer Sherif
Norman Triplett
Robert Zajonc
Arousal theory – zone of optimal arousal
Birth order and risk taking 
Creativity and competition
Cognitive biases, overconfidence, and framing effect
Contact theory and superordinate goals
Effects of rewards and motivation on competition
Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and competition
Mirror neurons/mirror processing
Personality traits and competitiveness
Social facilitation
Social loafing
Stress (fight-or-flight and tend-and-befriend)
Influence of brain regions (anterior cingulate cortex, amygdala, and hypothalamus), neurotransmitters (serotonin and         dopamine), and hormones (cortisol, testosterone and oxytocin) on competition and performance.
Positive effects of adrenaline, testosterone, cortisol, and oxytocin on performance. 

The As If Principle:  The Radically New Approach to Changing Your Life
Author(s):  Richard Weisman 
ISBN:  978-1469270142

APA Style Citation
Wiseman, R. (2013). The as if principle: the radically new approach to changing your life. New York: Free Press.

Book Description
Almost a 125 years after the first publication of The Principles of Psychology, modern research is providing evidence to validate the emotion theories of William James presented in psychology’s first textbook.  Richard Wiseman’s book, The As If Principle provides an engaging examination of how the theories of William James are relevant today. James’ theory of emotion states, contrary to common sense, that emotions are the result of actions (laughing results in the emotion of joy vs. the emotion of joy causing individuals to laugh). Therefore, James concluded that if you wanted a have a particular trait, or to experience a given emotional state that one should behave “As If” you already possess it. The As If Principle highlights the decades of research, which support the practical implications of this theory such reducing pain levels in patients post surgery, treating phobias or other anxiety disorders, or reducing hostility. Embedded throughout the book are a variety of short exercises and activities, which can easily be translated into effective classroom demonstrations that provide empirically based method individuals can use to improve their lives and institute positive change.  For example, the short two part activity titled Twenty Pieces offers insight into overcoming procrastination. The activity titled Change4Life, which was used by the author and the British government to encourage healthier behaviors by British citizens using the foot-in-the-door technique can be something students use in their own lives.  The activity titled Thinking Outside the Box provides several simple and engaging activities to boost creativity.  Additionally, the book helps to clarify psychological concepts from a variety of units including social psychology, history, research, motivation and emotion, cognition, learning, sensation and perception, and personality.  The As If Principle provides a large variety of activities related specifically to the topics of motivation, willpower, persistence, procrastination, creativity, and negotiation.

Other Related Resources
A short one minute video describing the basics of the As If Principle.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBRUBrWR2ZE

Author Richard Wiseman’s webpage
This extensive website provides information about other books by Wiseman as well as a link to his fascinating blog which is full of amazing short videos that can be used in a variety of psychology units including biopsychology, sensation and perception, cognition, motivation, and emotion.
http://richardwiseman.wordpress.com/

Psychological Figures and Concepts
Gordon Allport
Raymond Cattell
Kenneth and Mamie Clark
Charles Darwin
Paul Ekman
Jane Elliot’s brown eyes blue eyes experiment
Hans Eysenck
Sigmund Freud
Sir Francis Galton
William James
George Kelly
Roger Sperry
John Watson
Wilhelm Wundt
Philip Zimbardo
Big Five personality traits
Catharsis hypothesis
Happiness research 
Jigsaw method and learning
Mere exposure effect 
Overjustification effect
Prefrontal lobotomies
Persuasion: foot-in-the-door and low ball technique
Robber’s Cave experiment
Systematic desensitization
Two-factor theory of emotion