​Range:  Why Generalists Triumph in A Specialized World
Author: David Epstein
ISBN:978-0735214491
 
APA Style Citation
Epstein, D. (2019). Range:  Why Generalists triumph in a specialized world.  New York, NY:  Riverhead books.
 
Buy This Book
https://www.amazon.com/Range-Generalists-Triumph-Specialized-World/dp/0735214484/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=range&qid=1578144141&sr=8-1
 

​Book Description
We live in a world of hyper specialization.  Children often start their violin or piano lessons as young as age 3 or 4.  They start their preferred sports often just as young, and by the time they reach high school, teenagers are told they must concentrate on what they want to do in the future and focus all of their effort in one particular area.  If people realize they have gone down the wrong path, they are often told that they must persevere for fear of “being behind” if they switch areas of study or they just stick with it because of all of the work they have already put in.  David Epstein, the author of Range, believes that this advice is misguided.  Epstein argues that the greatest triumphs come from having experience in multiple fields and casting one’s net widely so as to draw upon different sources when trying to solve a problem.  Epstein believes the benefit of Range rather than hyper specialization is that it can give people a different perspective and approach that those in a single area of specialization are not able to see.  This can result in great insight and more thorough and complete decision-making.

Those who specialize later are often better suited for the careers they eventually select, and as a result, they are also generally more passionate and productive in their roles.  Epstein presents many examples of how experience in a single field can limit how one approaches a new problem.  The need for conformity and groupthink can limit consideration of all possible outcomes in a situation and can, in cases such as NASA's space shuttle Challenger explosion, lead to deadly results.  Epstein cites examples of fire firefighters who lost their lives fighting fires because their specialized training taught them never to drop their equipment, but when fighting a fast-moving fire, dropping one’s equipment might actually save their life.  

Epstein points to Tiger Woods, who seemed to be a child prodigy at golf, as an example of early and focused practice.  Many parents use this example to apply to their own children, but they overlook other athletes such as Tom Brady, who participated in football, baseball, basketball, and karate as a child and then had to choose between playing college football or basketball.  Often those with specialized early training peak early or move away from their area of specialization because their parents selected their instrument/sport/activity for them rather than the child selecting their specialty based on experimentation in many different fields.  Epstein challenges the 10,000-hour rule by arguing that the amount of practice time is not a good measure of exceptionality, in music, for example, those who know how to play multiple instruments can draw on their knowledge from their different experiences to add depth to their performance.  Epstein argues that the “sampling period” in which one explores many different interests will serve people well in future unknown situations.  Many jazz musicians or musical improv masters never had formal training in music but learned from watching others and then experimenting.  This experimentation necessitated intense and conscious thought about what was working (or not), but because of the lack (at least initially) of formal training, there was never a single “correct” way of doing things which allowed for more creativity later in their work.  

Epstein does not dismiss the importance of expertise but rather presents situation after situation in which someone with a different perspective who challenged the conventional wisdom. Individuals with diverse backgrounds are often able to see a situation in a new light and offer a solution that in many cases is successful and one that the “experts” could not see.  Epstein points out that scientists who have been inducted into the highest national academies are likely to have hobbies and interests outside of their field of study.  “Nobel laureates are at least twenty-two times more likely to partake as an amateur actor, dancer, magician, or other type of performer.”  This breath can support new insights that those obsessively focused on a single area may miss.  Epstein cites Steve Jobs, who took calligraphy courses, which ultimately informed his design aesthetics and fonts that would become part of the now infamous Mac design.  These individuals avoid cognitive entrenchment by applying their knowledge in one area and applying it creatively to another.  

Nearly 75% of today’s college students will go into a career unrelated to what they studied in college.  Epstein’s argument takes on more importance as those with a wide array of experiences should allow them to be better equipped to adapt and adjust to novel problems and situations.  Epstein applies his findings to classroom environments and suggests that in many classrooms, teachers are making learning “too easy” by giving students hints towards the right answer without having them work through the frustration of not knowing and having to figure something out on their own.  Epstein also recommends ‘interleaving’ in which instructors demonstrate (or ask students to) look for connections between different units of study or even across disciplines.  

Epstein refutes the old adage of “winners never quit," he believes that if something is not interesting or if one is not passionate about a particular area, they should pursue something new. The “late bloomers” may actually prove to be the most well-suited for the area they finally land on, and their earlier experiences may give them a leg up even on those whose sole focus has been single-mindedly on one area of study.  

Other Related Resources
Book website
https://www.davidepstein.com/the-range/

An introduction to Range by David Epstein
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmoMmK7qKt4

Epstein and Gladwell discuss Range at MIT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cQJH3aj4YY


Psychological Concepts and Figures

Charles Darwin
Angela Duckworth
James Flynn
Daniel Gilbert
Daniel Kahneman
Walter Mischel
Amos Tversky

Analytical thinking
Catharsis
Chunking
Cognitive bias
Conformity
Congruence
Creativity
Distributed practice
Functional fixedness
Groupthink
Incongruence
Lateral thinking
Raven’s Progressive Matrices
Statistical significance
Tabula rasa (blank slate)
The Ebbinghaus illusion
The Flynn effect
The Marshmallow Test
Trial and error 
Savants

​Modern Romance (An Investigation)
Authors:  Aziz Ansari, Eric Klineberg
ISBN: 1-59420-627-9
 
APA Style Citation
Ansari, A and Klineberg, E. (2015). Modern Romance (an Investigation).  Penguin; Random House.

​Book Description:
Ansari’s experience as a stand up comedian makes this book about how we find love an amusing read full of humorous anecdotes and revelations of his own dating mishaps.  He does, however, work with sociologist Eric Klinenberg to be certain that he has data to support his musings on love.   Klinenberg and Ansari conducted focus groups and interviews to determine how dating varied in different parts of the country, across generations, and in other countries.
 
Ansari opens with a description of a woman named Tanya with whom he had gone on a date and was interested in seeing again.  He struggles with the decision of whether to call or text or send a smoke signal to her, but ultimately decides on texting (with a cute joke included) to see if she wants to meet up for dinner.  He waits a few minutes, a few hours, and eventually a few days with no reply.  This is the impetus Ansari needs to explore issues of dating and relationships in the modern world.  
 
Ansari begins his exploration with interviews at senior centers to get a better idea of how people met, dated, and potentially married in the past.   Most older people with whom Ansari spoke indicated that they met their significant other because they "lived in the same building" or "were friends of the family."  14 of the 36 people with whom Ansari spoke married someone who lived within walking distance of their childhood home.  A study conducted by James Bossard at the University of Pennsylvania in 1932 reinforces these findings.  The study found that one-third of all married couples lived within a five-block radius of each other before they got married.  One in six lived on the same block, and one in eight lived in the same building.
 
Some of the women in these groups indicated that they got married to get out from under the rule of their parents, only to find themselves under the rule of their husbands.  When divorce became more acceptable, some of these women found a way out of these types of marriages.  Even those who were happy in their marriages indicated they wanted their daughters and granddaughters to approach marriage differently.  People got married not because they had found their soulmate but because they could raise a family together.  They were looking for a “good enough” marriage.
 
Marriage for generations was about bonding two families and creating financial and personal security.   Thoughts about who one married were more practical than romantic.  This began to change in the 1960s and 70s when people began to demand a closer bond with their marriage partner.  Today, this trend continues in large part because people marry later and often spend their twenties in the time period currently referred to as “emerging adulthood."  A generation before, they would likely have been married off nearly a decade earlier.  People today move in and out of relationships in their twenties and often prioritize career, and education before relationships.  In addition, these life experiences connect people to many different groups with whom they may eventually find themselves romantically connected (rather than their childhood neighbor).  
 
But finding one’s soulmate can take an awful lot of work and sometimes too much choice leads to a paralysis of choice or unhappiness after a decision has been made because one considers that there could be someone else out there who is a better match or who is "the one."    Even in the past few years, the dating game has changed dramatically; no longer do people call one another, even for a first date.   58% of teens today indicated that they would ask someone out via text; in 2010 this percentage was 10%.  In a recent survey, 67% of teens indicated they had been asked to prom via text.  Texting may create less anxiety than calling, but now those who call seem brave.  MIT sociologist Sherry Turkle believes that texting allows people to gather their thoughts and plan out what they want to say, but this may leave their spontaneous speaking skills lacking.  The dependency on texting also allows teens to go over and over the meaning of a given text, and without an immediate response, this can easily leave people wondering the level of interest of the other person.  There seems to be a whole new set of rules regarding how long to wait before responding to a text, what to do if the person does not respond, are they busy? Not interested?  Playing hard to get?  When someone responds positively to our text messages, we get a shot of dopamine, which can be quite addictive, but when this reward is uncertain, the anticipation might be more addicting than the actual response.  This is similar to behavior found in gambling.
 
This unknowing can lead to a strong romantic attraction as we often find we want resources that are scarce.  If people make themselves too available, it may be a turn off for some as the person may come off as desperate.  So texting less may actually be better for creating a high level of attraction.  However, the reciprocity principle indicates that we will like people who like us.  Women seem to be slightly more responsive to this than men, but it is difficult to know when scarcity will work versus when reciprocity will be more effective in finding a mate.  
 
Online dating has introduced endless options to the dating scene.  By 2005 the website Match.com had registered over 40 million people.  There are now dating sites for farmers, those who are Jewish, older, gay, etc.  There are dating sites, hook up sites, and the list goes on.  Some are free; some charge a large fee, which can create very different populations in the dating circles to which one is exposed.  To realize just how quickly dating has changed, roughly one-third of people who got married between 2005 and 2012 met on an online site; this is more than twice the percentage of those who met in any other way (work 14%).  Even with this success, using algorithms to find a marriage partner is not always the best method.  People can have similar interests, backgrounds and families but like someone else "just because."  No algorithm can perfectly plan for this.  In fact, knowing too much about someone from his or her dating profile can make a first date much harder than in the past because they already know so much about the person and the normal first date “chit chat” becomes moot.  On the other hand, online dating may also cause safety concerns for people who do not feel like they know their potential partner well enough to be alone with them. People can become addicted to these apps, swiping through hundreds of people in a single day without giving them so much as a second glance and potentially missing out on people with whom they might be quite happy.  
 
Barry Schwartz wrote The Paradox of Choice, which states that too much choice may paralyze many people when making a decision. Instead of looking for a good match, people look for a perfect match and wind up being disappointed.  It is good to have some choice but having too many options actually decreases decision-making.  Even after a decision is made one often feels like maybe there was a better choice out there and they wind up less happy with the decision they have made.  Schwartz finds this is true with buying jams, and selecting a job, Ansari believes it is also true in finding love.  This might mean that those in large cities like New York and Los Angeles wait longer to find love because there are so many options. People in Wichita, Kansas felt like they had exhausted all of their potential options earlier tended to marry before those in larger cities.  
 
Ansari also investigates love in different cultures, those in France seem less concerned if their marriage partner takes on a lover whereas many in Tokyo are often not interested in marriage or sex because they are focusing on career and building their financial capital. The “herbivore man” is a term used to describe Japanese men who are very shy and passive and 60% of men in Japanese men in their 20s and 30s describe themselves this way.  In Buenos Aires, the opposite is true; passion and sex infiltrate many aspects of society.  Men are vocal about their interest in women and many hotels “telos” or love hotels that rent by the hour are acceptable places to go to consummate a relationship.  People are known to have many relationships at the same time. Casual sex is an expected part of life and romantic partnerships.
 
Once one does find love, their brain actually changes.  Ansari discusses how love moves from passionate to companionate love over the length of long-term relationships.  The physiology of the brain changes from lighting up the pleasure centers of the brain to over time lighting up the calming centers of the brain.  Those long-term relationships may lack passion, but generativity is more satisfying because it involves being part of a long-term, nurturing relationship.  The typical American now spends more time single than married as people get married later, or some opt never to marry either because they never find the right person or because they never actually make a choice to be with someone long-term.  Finally, Ansari advocates for embracing the mere exposure effect.  “Someone who just seems just “all right” at first may grow on you over time, give them a shot”, and it could lead to the most important relationship of your life.
 
 
Other Related Resources
Ansari’s article with TIME: 
http://time.com/aziz-ansari-modern-romance/
 
How is Technology Shaping Romance?
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_is_technology_shaping_romance
 
The Guardian: What effect has the Internet had on finding love?
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/may/01/online-dating-untangling-the-web
 
Aziz Ansari’ Love Lessons Good Morning America
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuXyKPgw0Ys
 
Aziz Ansari stand up on Love Madison Square Garden (warning:  Language)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2LwGqDSpL4
 
TED talk: Helen Fisher, Technology Hasn’t changed Love here’s Why  
https://www.ted.com/talks/helen_fisher_technology_hasn_t_changed_love_here_s_why
 
Sternberg’s Triangular Theory of Love
http://www.robertjsternberg.com/love/
 
Psychological Figures and Concepts
Daniel Gilbert
Barry Schwartz
Robert Sternberg
Algorithm
Aron and Dutton Shaky Bridge Study
Companionate Love
Dopamine
Emerging Adulthood
Generativity
Mere Exposure Effect
Monogamy
Passionate Love
Reciprocity
Reward Uncertainty
Romantic Love
Scarcity

​Author:  Carmine Gallo
ISBN: 978-1-250-04112-8

APA Style Citation
Gallo, Carmine (2014). Talk Like TED:  The 9 Public-Speaking Secrets of the World’s Top Minds.  New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Buy This Book
​​www.amazon.com/Talk-Like-TED-Public-Speaking-Secrets/dp/1250041120

Book Description
The TED Conference, which stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design, has been around since 1984 but did not become well known until they began posting videos of their trademark 19-minute presentations online for free.  Author Carmine Gallo is a communications expert and the author of the bestselling book, The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs.  Gallo examined over 500 TED presentations and added insights from research on persuasion and communication to generate a list of the critical aspects of highly engaging presentations. Talk Like TED offers nine key public-speaking tips utilized in some of the most well-known presentations.  The tips for giving great talks are organized into three broad categories:  Emotional (they touch the heart), Novel (they teach something new), and Memorable (they present ideas in a unique manner).  As teachers, we frequently deliver content to students in a presentation form, and this book can provide a variety of tools to use to increase student engagement and learning.  Each chapter describes a method used in the most successful TED talks including specific examples and insight from the speakers. One of the best aspects of this book was stopping periodically to watch the amazing TED talks discussed in the book!
 
EMOTIONAL
The first third of the book is devoted to the three tips in the category related to emotional factors that “touch the heart.”  In chapter one, “Unleash the Master Within,” the author discusses the importance of choosing topics to discuss in which you have personal passion and interest.  According to the author, “the first step to inspiring others is to make sure you are inspired yourself.”  An excellent example of a TED talk that exemplifies passion was given by University of Waterloo Economics professor Larry Smith titled, “Why You Will Fail to Have a Great Career.”  Smith discusses that although college students are told to pursue their passion most will not because “You’re afraid to pursue your passion.  You’re afraid to look ridiculous.  You’re afraid to try.  You’re afraid you may fail.”
https://www.ted.com/talks/larry_smith_why_you_will_fail_to_have_a_great_career
 
Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor gave one of the most watched TED talks of all time (about 20 million views).  The talk illustrates how having a strong emotional connection with the material leads to increased audience engagement.  Bolte Taylor’s talk is compelling because it involves a personal connection and exceptional storytelling.  TEDster Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor offers advice for teachers and other presenters, and that is to tell a story and demonstrate your passion for the topic. According to Bolte Taylor, “When I was at Harvard, I was the one winning the awards.  I wasn't winning the awards because my science was better than anyone else’s.  I was winning because I could tell a story that was interesting and fascinating and it was mine, down to the detail.”
http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight 
 
 
Chapter two discusses how to “Master the Art of Storytelling” by illustrating how effective speakers utilize narratives to make an emotional connection with the audience.  For example, TED speaker Brene Brown famously begins her topic by defending qualitative research she conducts with the statement that “Stories are data with a soul.”  Effective storytelling engages each listener individually and allows them to become emotionally attached and to the ideas being presented.  Some of the most effective TED storytellers are discussed in this chapter including Brian Stevenson’s talk, “We Need to Talk About an Injustice” which led to the longest standing ovation in TED history (see earlier Books for Psychology Class post on his book Just Mercy).  The 1,000 attendees at Stevenson’s talk collectively donated $1 million dollars to his nonprofit, the Equal Justice Institute.  Stevenson raised $55,000 for every minute he spoke that day.  This TED talk was given without the aid of a PowerPoint, visuals, or props of any kind – a testament to the power of story. 
https://www.ted.com/talks/bryan_stevenson_we_need_to_talk_about_an_injustice
 
Another tip for an effective persuasive presentation according to the author, is to utilize Aristotle’s three components of effective persuasion ethos, logos, and pathos in the most effective ratio. Ethos refers to the credibility and credentials of the speaker, logos is the use of logic and data to make effective arguments, and pathos is the ability to appeal to the emotions of the audience.  When the author of the book analyzed the content of Brian Stevenson’s TED talk, he found it was 10 percent ethos, 25 percent logos, and 65 percent pathos or emotional appeal. Despite being 65 percent of pathos Stevenson’s talk has been rated as one of the most persuasive of all time. One of the ways the book recommends inserting pathos or emotional appeal is by including extreme moments. Dan Ariely, a psychologist and behavioral economist at Duke, introduces his talk on how research shows that people are predictably irrational with a dramatic personal story of his recovery from an injury that left him burned over 70 percent of his body.  Ariely’s talk is an excellent addition to the research unit for illustrating the need to test beliefs that are held intuitively through careful research methods. 
https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_on_our_buggy_moral_code/transcript?language=en#t-102037
 
In chapter three, the author describes how effective TED presenters can use body language and verbal delivery to engage with the audience in a manner that feels authentic and conversational instead of an impersonal lecture to a large group.  The four elements of verbal delivery addressed in this section are rate, volume, pitch, and the effective use of pauses for emphasis.  One of the examples of effective nonverbal communications is a 2012 TED talk by a former Army general and U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell on the importance of providing children with structure early in life.  His speech is broken down to illustrate how particular gestures corresponded with the words he used during his speech. 
 
Another amazing TED talk that powerfully uses gestures to strengthen an argument was given by Ernesto Sirolli titled, “Want to help someone?  Shut up and listen!” is also broken down to highlight the expert use of gestures.  Sirolli’s talk discusses how his failure to listen led to failure for his NGO project designed to help increase food production in rural Zambia.  The project involved teaching people living in southern Zambia to grow Italian tomatoes and other vegetables.  Because the local population was uninterested, the NGO paid them to grow the vegetables.  Sirolli and his team were surprised that agriculture was not being used in this fertile region with excellent weather and soil.  According to Sirolli, instead of asking the people living there why they did not grow crops, they said, "Thank God we're here." Just in the nick of time to save the Zambian people from starvation." The result was that everything grew extremely well and we were telling the Zambians, "Look how easy agriculture is." When the tomatoes were nice and ripe and red, overnight, some 200 hippos came out from the river, and they ate everything. It was then that Sirolli asked the Zambians, “My God, the hippos!" and the Zambians said, "Yes, that's why we have no agriculture here." When Sirolli asked, “Why didn't you tell us?" the Zambians replied, "You never asked."
https://www.ted.com/talks/ernesto_sirolli_want_to_help_someone_shut_up_and_listen
 
NOVEL
The second section of the book explains three aspects that contribute to an effective presentation because it is new and unique.  Kevin Allocca, who studies YouTube trends, stated this perfectly when he pointed out that in an era when two days’ worth of video is uploaded every two minutes, it is only the truly unique and original ideas that capture the attention of the online audience. 
 
The topic of chapter four, “Teach Me Something New,” describes how the best TED talks find a way to introduce new ideas or perspectives.  The author suggests that the titles of some of the most frequently viewed TED talks promise to teach something new such as “Schools Kill Creativity” (Sir Ken Robinson), “How Great Leaders Inspire Action” (Simon Sinek), “The Surprising Science of Happiness” (Dan Gilbert), “The Power of Introverts” (Susan Cain), “8 Secrets of Success” (Richard St. John), and “How to Live Before You Die” (Steve Jobs).  Martha Burns, a professor at Northwestern, teaches how to use neuroscience to be a better educator and highlights the biology behind the “buzz” we experience when learning something in her powerful TEDx talk.  One of the best examples of teaching something novel is Hans Rosling's talk that makes statistics and correlations exciting and meaningful.  Rosling, an expert on global health, animates correlational data regarding health and wealth in a powerful demonstration.  You can view his entire talk at ted.com or view the abbreviated version titled:  200 countries, 200 years, 4minutes.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo
 
Novel presentations, according to chapter five, “Deliver Jaw-Dropping Moments,” in which presenters capture the attention and imagination of their audiences by using dramatic demonstrations or surprises.  Some of the most dramatic moments or “hooks” at TED talks have included Bill Gates releasing mosquitos and Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor who opens her talk by holding a human brain that is still attached to the spinal cord.  “Wow” moments can also come from a single shocking statistic.

• “This country is very different today than it was 40 years ago. In 1972 there were 300,000 people in jails and prisons. Today there are 2.3 million.  The United States now has the highest rate of incarceration in the world.”

Bryan Stevenson
 

• “Why are we ignoring the oceans?  If you compare NASA’s annual budget to explore the heavens, that one-year budget would fund NOAA’s budget to explore the world's oceans for 1,600 years.” 

Robert Ballard
 

• “One in a hundred regular people is a psychopath.  So there are 1,500 people in this room. Fifteen of you are psychopaths.”

Jon Ronson
 
Successful TED talks also hook new viewers by creating memorable headlines, which turn into sound bites that are often spread across social media.  TED even has a Twitter handle devoted to the catchy, memorable quotes that are likely to generate public attention (@TEDQuote). 
 

• “There’s zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas.”

Susan Cain
 

• “Don’t fake it till you make it.  Fake it till you become it.”

Amy Cuddy
 

• “Numbers are the musical notes with which the symphony of the universe is written.”

Adam Spencer
 
Chapter six highlights how the ability to “Lighten Up” by using appropriate and genuine humor can increase audience engagement.  The book provides numerous tips for adding humor to presentations, including quotes, short video clips, and anecdotes.
 
MEMORABLE
The final third of the book is dedicated to various ways to make your ideas and your presentation memorable.  Chapter seven, “Stick to the 18-Minute Rule,” explains why all TED talks are limited to 18 minutes.  This key rule was established because it allows enough time for thoughtful analysis, yet short it is enough to maintain audience engagement.  Research shows that information is remembered better if it is organized into related chunks, this has led TED to recommend that presentations be centered around three main areas or points that support one large overarching idea.  This concept can be applied to classroom presentations as well by limiting direct instruction to shorter chunks broken up with time for reflection and formative practice.  The 18-minute rule forces researchers to create a focused message that maintains attention levels, and that does not create what researchers call “cognitive backlog” or the problem in which too much information prevents the successful transfer of ideas.  There are also numerous other TED rules of three such as the Three A’s of Awesome:  Attitude, Awareness, and Authenticity which were shared by award-winning blogger and author of the Book of Awesome, Neil Pasricha in a TEDx talk.  https://www.ted.com/talks/neil_pasricha_the_3_a_s_of_awesome 
Kevin Allocca, a YouTube trends manager studies why some videos go viral, and others do not.  According to Allocca, 48 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, yet only a few will have millions of views.  In Allocca’s TED talk, he explains the three factors that contribute to the success of a video:  tastemakers, communities of participation, and unexpectedness.  Of course, there is also the three-minute TED talk titled “TED in 3 Minutes,” which has been given by individuals such as Arianna Huffington and New York Times tech columnist David Pogue.  The original three-minute talk was given by Terry Moore who showed the audience a better way to tie their shoes, which has been viewed more than 1.5 million times.  The rule of three suggests

1. Creating a Twitter-friendly headline
2. Support the headline with three key messages
3. Reinforce the three messages with stories, statistics, and examples

 
Chapter eight describes how effective speakers can “Paint a Mental Picture with Multisensory Experiences” and engage as many of the senses of audience members as possible.   For example, the best TED talks use memorable images, not excessive text on slides.  One of the major tips is for creating better more effective PowerPoint presentations by avoiding too much text and instead relying more on memorable images and other visuals.  One of the worst ways to present is PowerPoint karaoke in which the speaker reads text aloud off of the screen. The chapter includes several examples of successful TED talks that show the words being used by the presenter alongside a description of the images being displayed to audience members.  A powerful example of how words are delivered alongside dramatic images is Lisa Kristine’s TED talk about the hardships of indigenous peoples and the reality of the 27 million individuals living in modern-day slavery. https://www.ted.com/talks/lisa_kristine_glimpses_of_modern_day_slavery
 
The final tip for making your presentation memorable, “Stay in Your Lane,” is outlined in chapter nine. Staying in your lane means that your presentations need to be authentic and honest and speak from the heart.  One of the tips offered for “staying in your lane” is to practice by giving your presentation to a friend or family member first because when you have a close relationship with someone, you are more likely to show who you are. 
 
Talk Like TED is an excellent guide full of practical ideas for making your presentations, activities, and demos more engaging and effective.  The book is also an opportunity to learn about some amazing TED talks you may not have heard of before.  TED talks can be shown in class, assigned as homework to facilitate class discussions or offered as opportunities for students who want to expand their understanding of a particular area of psychology.  Another interesting way to use TED talks is to execute the demos or activities presented by a particular TED talk in class, and then after hooking students on the content, let your students know how to access the entire TED talk. Because many TED presenters are also authors, TED talks can be used to stimulate interest for students to read books related to their favorite TED talks or pursue research projects in areas related to what they watched. 
 
Other Related Resources
 
Author’s Website
Carmine Gallo’s website offers articles, videos, and links to other books.
http://gallocommunications.com/books/talk-like-ted-2/
 
The Top 20 TED Talks of All Time
http://www.ted.com/playlists/171/the_most_popular_talks_of_all?gclid=CjwKEAjwtNbABRCsqO7J0_uJxWYSJAAiVo5LuME8Z7o2-Ki6OahJAA2Liq3mJcpOAdNcrtYR4zRz0RoCKgPw_wcB
 
How to Sound Smart in Your TED Talk
Comedian Will Stephen’s take on how to give a TED talk and impress your audience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S0FDjFBj8o
 
 
Psychological Figures and Concepts
Dan Ariely
Aristotle
Paul Bloom
Jill Bolte-Taylor
Lera Boroditsky
Susan Cain
James Flynn
Daniel Gilbert
Malcolm Gladwell
Sydney Jensen
George Miller
Daniel Pink
Hans Rosling
 
10,000 Hour Rule
Altruism
Amygdala
Analogies
Dopamine
Dual-Coding Theory
Flashbulb Memory
Flynn Effect
Genius
Hippocampus
Imagery
Introversion
Linguistic Determinism
Linguistic Relativity
Magic Number 7 Plus or Minus 2
Multitasking
Neuroplasticity
Nonverbal Communication
Persuasion
Positive Emotion
Self-Esteem
Statistics 

Buy This Book
​www.amazon.com/Animal-Madness-Inside-Their-Minds/dp/1451627017

​

​Behind the Shock Machine:  The Untold Story of the Notorious Milgram Psychology Experiments
ISBN: 978-1921844553
 
APA Style Citation:
Perry, G. (2012). Behind the shock machine: The untold story of the notorious Milgram psychology experiments. Brunswick, Vic: Scribe Publications.

​Book Description
This book will change many notions you have regarding what happened in the now infamous Milgram shock experiment at Yale University in the 1960s. Australian writer Gina Perry ventures to Yale to examine the original transcripts from Milgram’s work. Much has been written regarding the debriefing and reuniting of the teacher and learner before the departure of the teacher from the lab. Perry argues that perhaps as many as two-thirds of participants left the lab, never knowing that they did not harm the learner. Some of the nearly 3,000 participants in the study may not have learned about the results until almost three years after their participation in the study, while other participants were tested. It seems that Milgram was worried about word of the study getting around the relatively small town of New Haven before he concluded his work. He believed the debriefing had the potential to confound the results of the research, and from his perspective was enough of a reason to deny debriefing directly after the experiment ended. Perry interviewed a number of the former participants, many of whom still have particularly bad feelings and recollections about the study. One past participant explains calling all of the local hospitals after participating, believing that he had harmed someone so severely that they must have checked into a nearby hospital. Another describes sitting in his car for an hour after he left the lab, pondering what he had just done and feeling terrible. The wife of one participant describes her despondent husband, who had trouble sleeping for an extended period after the study.  
These first-hand descriptions are a far cry from the description Milgram provided of participants stating they were glad they participated in the study. The experimenter (a high school science teacher) was provided with four prompts to encourage participants to continue with the shocks. If the participants still refused to continue after all four prompts were exhausted, he was instructed to stop the study and allow the participant to leave. As the experiments continued over multiple years, Perry cites instances in which the experimenter went through eight attempts to urge the participants to continue. This likely had the effect of creating higher participation rates, which Milgram then published.  
Milgram described defiant participants as “bad” and complying participants as “good” in his notes, which, according to Perry, demonstrates a strong confirmation bias. Perry argues that Milgram knew the result he wanted and expected far ahead of the “live” study. Milgram ran several “practice trials” before the experiment went live, which produced nearly the same result. Also, Perry addresses Milgram’s argument that the events surrounding WWII had inspired this work. In her research, she did not find any references to this until after the study’s conclusion when Milgram gained popularity for the study.  
While this is a harsh assessment of Milgram’s infamous study, it is a revealing snapshot of what occurred behind the scenes of the famous study, and the personal reflections of the participants alone make this a compelling read.
 
 
Other Related Resources
Podcast with Gina Perry
http://www.wnyc.org/story/313564-untold-story-notorious-milgram-psychology-experiments/
 
Psychological Figures and Concepts
Solomon Asch
Diana Baumrind
Stanley Milgram and obedience to authority
 
 
 

The Hope Circuit: A Psychologist’s Journey from Helplessness to Optimism
Author:  Martin E.P. Seligman
ISBN-10: 1610398734
ISBN-13: 978-1610398732

APA Style Citation
Seligman, M. (2018). The hope circuit: A psychologist’s journey from helplessness to optimism. New York, NY: Public Affairs.
 
Buy This Book
https://www.amazon.com/Hope-Circuit-Psychologists-Helplessness-Optimism/dp/1610398734
​

Book Description
The Hope Circuit is the personal story of Martin Seligman.  Seligman used his position at the APA to transform American psychology from focusing on weakness to looking at strengths. Rather than being driven by the past he created a new psychology of hope based on the future.  The field is now known as Positive Psychology.
 
Beginning
Seligman was born to Jewish parents and strongly identified as Jewish.  As a young boy he was intelligent and well-liked by teachers.  Even though Marty had top grades, he was denied a promotion due to anti-Semitic sentiments.  Eventually, this also led to his rejection to Harvard. Seligman ultimately attended Princeton. He started taking philosophy classes, but got caught up in the rigor (internal validity) versus reality (external validity) debate. The summer before his senior year, he completed his first lab work in psychology studying the effects of electric shock as punishment. The rat study led to his first publication in a top journal. Soon after he was granted a fellowship to study experimental psychology and a fellowship to study analytic philosophy. He was at a crossroads and needed to decide whether he wanted to be a psychologist or a philosopher.

He was a natural psychologist and decided to start down the road of psychology.  It was during a meeting at University of Pennsylvania that Dick Soloman said, “I think the dogs in my lab are helpless, and I don’t know why.”  This statement stuck with Marty for years and presented one of the first of many paths in his career.  From 1964-67, Seligman did research on learned helplessness. He published helplessness (outlining his cognitive theory) with limited criticisms. However, learning theorists, fearing the cognitive storm, quickly went on the defense especially with animals. His research involved shocking dogs, which was called into question due to ethical concerns. After the experiment the dogs were taken to a park and set free. Marty does not know their fate, but thinks of them often. After finishing the PhD program, Marty took a job as assistant professor of psychology at Cornell University. His assertive personality kept him distant from others and he was not always well-liked. Despite his negativity, he was ambitious and surrounded by devoted students and followers. In 1967, he was introduced to psychiatry by Joe Wolpe who took him under his wing and gave him first look at mental illness. It was then that Seligman drifted from a learning psychologist to a clinical psychologist.
 
Becoming 
Seligman continued teaching at Cornell and his passion for psychology came across in his teaching. After reading an article by John Garcia he opened a new career path once again. Marty shared his “sauce béarnaise” taste aversion story with his students and it became one of the “most publicized meals since the Last Supper.” Seligman became known for his work on learned helplessness and biological constraints.  He extended his work to evolutionary preparedness for phobias and OCD.   At this point in his life, he paid little attention to his personal life, was seen as self-obsessed, and classified himself as anxious and depressed.  Meanwhile, learned helplessness was being replicated in rats, mice, goldfish, cats, and cockroaches based in part on the work Seligman had done with dogs.

Marty’s life took a turn when he received the Guggenheim Fellowship and became visiting professor at the Institute of Psychiatry of the Maudsley and Bethlem Hospitals, run by Hans Eysenck. He met Suzanne, a PhD student, and fell in love. Soon after he left his wife and two children for Suzanne. It was also at this time that his first trade book, Helplessness, was published. When questioned publicly about his research he invited the critic to collaborate. Together, with his research group, they worked to define the “depressive attributional style” for internal, stable, global bad events. This new style was called “pessimism” and hypothesized as a risk factor for depression. In 1980, his relationship with Suzanne ended and Marty was a 38-year-old bachelor with major depression. Seligman reinvested himself into college life. He and a friend formed “Chicken Dinner Club” where twelve of the liveliest faculty from all disciplines were invited to dinner once a month. He wanted to create an environment similar to the one he experienced in college; an intellectual environment filled with faculty and students. Then, he became director of his department and could no longer straddle the natural and social sciences or basic and applied science. He believed scientific psychology was meaningful only if it applied to human problems and he became the advocate of applied psychology. His research took new turns into the world of business and predicting sports.  He also explored the connection between cancer and helplessness.
 
Being
Seligman bought a large house and hoped to one day make it a home. Mandy, a new graduate student, caught Marty’s attention. Despite being 17 years older, once divorced, and not ideal marriage material, he asked her to marry him. They were married one year later. She was the love of his life and mother to five of his children. She made the house a home. At the age of 46, he changed his life and spent more time with his wife and thought about the good in life.

In 1990, Seligman’s publishing career took hold. He wrote Learned Optimism and presented evidence-based exercises to raise optimism and decrease depression. Next, he wrote Optimistic Child to help teach optimism in middle school and lower the risk for depression and anxiety. Then he wrote a book that changed his life. He wrote the book What You Can Change and What You Can’t. It was a guide to major disorders and major treatments. At the time, evaluation of psychotherapy was unclear. It was concluded that the effectiveness studies were a decent guide and efficacy studies were not. Marty was seen as a traitor by his academic colleagues, but a hero with therapists.

Building on his support from therapists, Marty ran for president of the American Psychological Association (APA) and won. He used this new position to lead the charge for positive psychology. Together with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Marty spent his 1998 New Year’s vacation inventing positive psychology. They created a name, secured funding, and worked to find leaders in the field. Positive psychology launched at the end of 1999. From there, the research led into writing a DSM of good character and virtue.  At this point, Seligman was 60 years old and flourishing. His life was filled with love, work, and play.  By 2001, there was a Positive Psychology Center and a master’s degree of applied positive psychology (MAPP) by 2005. The Authentic Happiness website was created and five elements (PERMA) of positive psychology were identified.

Seligman started positive education; prevention being better than therapy. The first Penn Prevention Program for children began.  He began to train teachers and measure how well it worked. His work had a giant boost from Angela Duckworth (who joined Penn as a grad student in 2002). She wanted to explore how self-discipline compared with IQ in predicting success. Seligman would go on to create a positive education program in Australia. The program was taught to teachers first and had a huge effect of providing rejuvenation for teachers. The prevention program was then extended to the UK, Bhutan, Mexico, and Peru.
Seligman’s story took a turn with his work for the government. In 2002, he was asked by the CIA how the research on learned helplessness could help captured Americans resist and evade torture and interrogation. He was never asked about using his research with detainees.  He was also invited to the Pentagon to address mental illness that plagued the army. He decided to teach and measure resiliency and positive psychology for the army. Seligman helped create a 120-item Global Assessment Tool (GAT) and pilot a program to teach signature strengths, build strong relationships, and use effective praise. Penn received a $31 million contract to train U.S. Army personnel in resilience and positive psychology. While this caught a lot of criticism, it was a sole-sourced no-bid contract because no other entities besides Penn could compete for the contract. More recently Marty’s work has turned to protective factors against physical illness. Studies have shown optimism mattered above all factors in preventing heart disease.  Prospection, the mental activity of envisioning future scenarios about our lives, is an important factor.  Thanks to the U.S. Army consolidating personnel and medical records he has the data for longitudinal studies. That coupled with data from Twitter has found that changing what you think and what you say, might be the royal road to physical health.  Marty is looking to the future rather than the past. Philosophy may once again join with psychology. He is exploring prospection, creativity, and consciousness.

Seligman’s original learned helplessness research has been turned upside down. His collaborator, Steve Maier, was retrained as a neuroscientist and studied brain circuits in rats. Steve showed that being helpless was a natural, unlearned, default response to prolonged shock. He found that it was not helplessness, but control and mastery that were learned.  The hope is that we can learn- and teach- that future bad events can be controlled, and this will help buffer against helplessness and anxiety. The story of the hope circuit comes amidst a foggy, painful state. Seligman’s friend Jack Templeton died and the night before the funeral Marty had significant pain from a cyst on his spine. He woke from a deep sleep, and knew that the circuit Steve found was the hope circuit. He was able to attend Jack’s funeral that day. When he was asked to give the eulogy, he added “I want to tell Jack what happened to me this morning. Jack and I talked often about a science of hope and its relation to faith. Between science and religion one can grasp everything. Jack wanted there to be a hope circuit in the brain and I can tell him now that there is.” He delivered the eulogy and went home to bed for days.

​In Seligman’s lifetime, psychology has shifted away from behaviorism and turned more seriously toward cognition, evolution, and the brain. In addition, attention has shifted from weaknesses and focusing on one’s past to strengths and the possibilities of the future.   As president of the APA he led the charge to change psychology.  Marty has transformed from a learning psychologist to a clinical psychologist and now a positive psychologist. His personal life has gained fulfillment. He is no longer a pessimist and skeptic. His personal and professional story is one of change and for the better.
 
Other Related Resources
Learned Helplessness Article
https://ppc.sas.upenn.edu/sites/default/files/learnedhelplessness.pdf
 
APA- Old Problem, New Tools
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2009/10/helplessness
 
What is Learned Helplessness?
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/325355.php#in-children
 
Learned Helplessness Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFmFOmprTt0
 
TED Talk: Martin Seligman- The New Era of Positive Psychology
https://www.ted.com/talks/martin_seligman_the_new_era_of_positive_psychology/transcript?language=en    
 
Psychological Concepts and Figures
Gordon Allport
Albert Bandura
Aaron (Tim) Beck
Mary Whiton Calkins
Noam Chomsky
Mihaly (Mike) Csikszentmihalyi
Charles Darwin
Angela Duckworth
Little Hans
Erik Erikson
Hans Eysenck
Sigmund Freud
John Garcia
William James
Carl Jung
Richard Lazarus
Elizabeth (Beth) Loftus
Abraham (Abe) Maslow
Walter Mischel
Ivan Pavlov
Jean Piaget
Robert (Bob) Rescorla
Dave Rosenhan
Julian Rotter
BF (Fred) Skinner
Edward L. Thorndike
Edwin Twitmyer
Margaret Washburn
John B. Watson
Joe Wolpe
Wilhelm Wundt
 
Amygdala
Anxiety
APA
Appraisal theory
Archetypes
Attachment
Availability error
Avoidance learning
Basic vs. applied psychology
Biological constraints and preparedness
Brain circuitry
Catastrophic thought
Clinical psychology
Cognitive therapy
Cohort effect
Confounding characteristics
Consciousness
Coping
Creativity
Cross-sectional vs. longitudinal
Demand characteristics
Depression
Depressive attributional style (pessimism)
Determinism
DSM and UnDSM
Duchenne smiles
Eating disorders
Eclectic therapy
Efficacy vs. effectiveness research
Ethics
Evidence-based therapy
External vs. internal validity
Fight or flight
Flow
Free will
Generativity
Heritability
Heuristics
Hope circuit
Introspection
Law of effect
Learned helplessness
Learned optimism
Locus of control
Memory
Natural selection
OCD
PERMA
Phobias
Placebo
Positive psychology
Posttraumatic growth
Psychiatry
Psychotherapy
Puzzle box
Random assignment
Reflexes
Resilience
Self-discipline
Self-efficacy
Serotonin
Skepticism
Taste aversions
Thorazine
VIA Signature Strengths Test
Well-being

We are thankful for our readers! As we approach posting a review and activity on our 100th book, we would like to hear from our readers. Please consider taking a short survey (4 questions) and enter your name into a drawing for a gift card.  Submissions will be accepted until the new year.

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Deviate:  The Science of Seeing Differently
Author:  Beau Lotto
ISBN:  978-1-474-60033-7
 
APA Style Citation
Lotto, B (2017).  Deviate:  The science of seeing differently.  London:  Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Orion Publishing Group Ltd.
 
Buy this Book 
https://www.amazon.com/Deviate-Science-Differently-Beau-Lotto/dp/1478909161
​

​Book Description
We often think of perception as the sum of our sensory inputs, but Beau Lotto turns that on its head and suggests that what you view as reality is, in fact, based in large part on prior expectations of what you see, hear, touch taste and smell.  In Deviate, Lotto sets out to help us understand how our brain processes new information and makes meaning of it.  Lotto’s research into neuroscience allows him to utilize his 25 years of research experience, much comes from the Lab of Misfits, which he founded at the Science Museum of London to explore, “how we see and why we see what we do.”  Lotto indicates that the word Deviate has many negative connotation, but in fact, he proposes that nothing new ever occurs without active doubt.  Lotto purports that deviance is a positive way of looking at the world through a different perspective, which can lead to a broader understanding of reality.  
 
Lotto points to the famous dress incident that was an internet sensation a few years back.  While some were convinced that the dress was blue and black, others were convinced that it was white and gold.  Everyone saw the same dress, but came away with different perceptions.  More recently, the “Laurel/Yanny” phenomenon caused the same uproar, but for auditory rather than visual perception.  We often believe that our truth is the same as others.  As Plato illustrates in the Allegory of the Cave, we may never know the truth unless we can perceive something from all perspectives, which is impossible because of our prior experiences with the world.  Our reality is highly subjective; Lotto makes the analogy to driving in a mobile home and taking in information through our senses by looking out the windows.  We can move the mobile home to get a better view, but we will never experience the whole of something without stepping outside of the mobile home.  
 
Similarly, our experiences no matter how extensive, will never give us a full view of the world so, in order to make sense of our daily experiences, we must rely not just on our senses, but also on our prior knowledge. Without this mechanism, our world would be chaos because our mind could not keep up with the onslaught of incoming information. If you are reading subtitles as you watch a movie, and run across the word f*%@ing, you have a pretty good idea that something vulgar has been said, even though most of the word is made up of symbols.  Letters only take on meaning based on our prior learning and use of combining letters into words and words into meaningful units.  
 
 
 
Russians perceive red with greater discrimination than English speakers because the word choices in the Russian language are more nuanced in this area.  Similarly, many English speakers cannot roll a Spanish r and do not hear the difference because they have not encountered these sounds before.  We now know that Western societies differ in their eye movements from those from Eastern societies.  Asians extract visual information more holistically, while Westerners view objects more analytically.  Lotto argues that, “context is everything” and indicates that we must learn not what to see but rather how to look in order to gain a more complete understanding of the world in which we live.  Our prior experiences can also change our internal biological mechanisms. This was demonstrated by a famous study conducted by Rosenzweig in which rats were placed into either an enriched or deprived environment for ten weeks.  At the conclusion of the study, those in an enriched environment had a thicker cerebral cortex, while those in the deprived environment had a thinner cerebral cortex with fewer neural connections.  These types of life experiences have unfortunately been found in humans from Romanian orphanages and cases of severe neglect often with similar results.  In some cases, when removed from these environments, the children caught up to normal developmental landmarks but their memory, inhibition, and visualization still lacked behind others.  
 
Our brains allow us to imagine the world and its possibilities as we experience it like no one else. We can create new perceptions by creating stories as children often do.  These can seem realistic and add to our future interpretations of the world.  We sometimes misperceive the world, perhaps imagining motion where none exists, such as in the phi phenomenon or the autokinetic effect.  Because of our cognitive biases, Lotto argues that we do not have access to reality but we can use this lack of reality to unleash creativity and see the world in new and different ways that will continue to allow for new inventions and thinking unbounded by expectations.  Travel opens our minds to new realities, and if one cannot travel, they can travel in their mind, which can achieve similar results.  Lotto uses the example of the backward brain bicycle (see resources) to demonstrate how we can learn to change our brain with continual practice.  We can look for reasons that do not support our existing schemas but rather, challenge what we think we know.  We can question others and ask why we should believe what we think we know instead of giving into the confirmation bias.  Lotto refers to this as courageous intervention.  This courageous intervention is what Lotto means when he encourages us to Deviate.
 
 
Psychological Figures and Concepts 
Charles Darwin
Rene Descartes
John Gottman
Carl Jung
Plato
 
Additive color mixing
Auditory cortex
Autokinetic effect
Cerebral cortex
Cerebral hemispheres
Cognitive maps        
Cognitive rehearsal
Cognitive scientists
Confirmation bias
Conformity
Conscientiousness
Creativity
Delusion
Dopamine
Empiricism
Epigenetics
Evolution
fMRI
Grey matter
Habituation
Illusion
Mindfulness
Neurons
Neurogenetics
Neural networks
Neuroscience
Random sampling
Rubber hand illusion
Perceptual neuroscience
Phenotype
Phi phenomenon
Priming
Sensory receptors
Tabula rsa
Thalamus
Trial and eror
Visual cliff
Visual cortex
Wavelengths
 
Other Related Resources:
Talks at Google:  Beau Lotto “Deviate”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQUgGg9XzbQ
 
Lab of Misfits
https://www.labofmisfits.com/our-team
 
Deviate:  The Science of Seeing Things Differently
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZc0oWjA3Ho
 
Big Think
https://bigthink.com/u/beau-lotto
 
The Washington Post:  Why our Grasp of Reality is Fragile
https://www.washingtonpost.com
 
Apple Podcasts:  The Science of Seeing Differently
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-38-beau-lotto-deviate-the-science-of-seeing-differently/id1011637188?i=1000385502985
 
Quartz:  A neuroscientist explains why we can’t see the world objectively
https://qz.com/973116/a-neuroscientist-explains-why-we-evolved-to-be-curious/
 
Backward Brain Bicycle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFzDaBzBlL0
 
 
 
 

Drunk Tank Pink: And Other Unexpected Forces That Shape How We Think, Feel, and Behave
Author:  Adam Alter
ISBN-10: 0143124935
ISBN-13: 978-0143124931

APA Style Citation
Alter, A. (2013).  Drunk tank pink: And other unexpected forces that shape how we think, feel, and behave. New York, NY: Penguin Books.
 
Buy This Book
https://www.amazon.com/Drunk-Tank-Pink-Unexpected-Forces/dp/0143124935

​Book Description
Can the color pink calm rowdy prisoners? Yes! Drunk tank pink is the affectionate name for the bubblegum-pink shade of paint used in jail cells in San Jose, CA in the 1980s. Soon after, the use of the color pink spread like wildfire in efforts to change people’s behavior. Drunk Tank Pink investigates how context effects and hidden forces shape our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. It is filled with studies that leave you wondering just how much we are impacted by the world within us, the world between us, and the world around us.
 
The World Within Us: The world within us consists of names, labels, and symbols.
 
Sometimes our names can determine our destiny. For example, Carl Jung “young” studied youth and rebirth. Freud, which means joy in German, studied the pleasure principle. Usain Bolt became the fastest man in the world. If our name is easy to pronounce, it opens doors and makes us money. People tend to prefer the letters in their name. For instance, people with a name starting with K donated more for Hurricane Katrina recovery because they associated the storm with their name. Names can be powerful.
 
Labels also make our lives easier and help us make decisions. Color labels shape how we see the world. Our reality is also influenced by the language we speak. Language impacts our perception of personal space, physical space, and time.  Sometimes even meaningless labels gain meaning and impact us. For example, north is thought of as being above. Individuals are more willing to travel five minutes south because north implies uphill and requiring more effort and gas. According to the framing effect, the wording of a statement impacts decision making. Labels can distort eyewitness memory and reshape our social interactions.
 
Symbols are also a powerful influencer. Symbolic images can be more powerful than words. For example, students were exposed to negative symbols that changed their later impressions. Company logos set off a network of associations, such as The Apple Company enhances our creativity. Money is a powerful symbol. As we watch money be destroyed, possibilities seem to disappear. Nationalism and religion are also powerful symbols. The American flag can unite or inspire aggression, depending on the association when primed. Being reminded of religion primes an individual to be honest in their future interactions. The world within us shapes a diverse range of outcomes.
 
The World Between Us: We are surrounded by others, socially motivated, and view life through a cultural lens.
 
Being surrounded by others changes our behavior. Adding a picture of eyes above an honesty box by communal coffee influences the amount of contributions. Posting ads stating “We’ve got our eyes on criminals” lowers criminal activity. We like to be surrounded by others, and social isolation has significant effects. We’ve learned this from case studies, such as Genie, a girl who was isolated for the first 13 years of her life, and individuals living underground to simulate the isolation astronauts might experience. Our behaviors change when we are forced to compare ourselves with others. A utility company reduced electricity use by showing customers how much other households use.  Noor, a Turkish soap opera, changed the Arab world by showing viewers marital benefits of gender equality. We feel connected to others when we mimic each other. While two people talk on the phone, they often synchronize their steps by following the rise and fall of their voices. Performing in front of others can be exhilarating, but it depends on the ease of the task. Students did better on the SAT with fewer competitors. Also, having too many people around can be problematic as found in the bystander effect.
 
According to Abraham Maslow, we are socially motivated. After our physiological needs are met, we seek safety. Men are more likely than women to die from accidental causes because they take greater risks. Next, we need the social support of love and belonging. A nasal spray, called Liquid Trust, applied before important social events can lead to feelings of trust. The spray contains oxytocin, which is believed to promote positive responses for in-group members. A photo of a loved one produces the same response as oxytocin by activating the same reward centers in the brain. Amazingly, imagined social support is just as effective as real support. The top of Maslow’s hierarchy is self-actualization, consisting of self-acceptance and moral clarity. Individuals donate more when asked to recall childhood memories. People are also more honest when forced to stare at their mirror image.
 
Everyone sees objects and places through a cultural lens. This is evident with the famous Muller-Lyer illusion. Bushmen from southern Africa and tribes from North Angola and Ivory Coast failed to fall for the illusion because they were raised in rounded houses that did not possess angled lines. Studies have also explored the impact of culture and focus. Chinese and American participants studied photos with a central background. Americans focused their attention on the main object and less time on the background, whereas Chinese participants focused more on both the object and background. We see people, math, art, and honor through a cultural lens. There are also culture-bound disorders. Anorexia is concentrated in the wealthiest regions of the world. While the hikikomori disorder of lacking any social contacts is a disorder almost exclusively limited to Japan. Being immersed in another culture impacts the person we become. The social world we live in shapes a diverse range of outcomes.
 
The World Around Us: We are shaped by colors, locations, and the weather.
 
Colors influence our world by shaping how we think and behave. Blue lights in Scotland have decreased criminal activity, and blue lights in Japan have stopped suicide attempts. We have learned to associate colors and objects. That blue light mimicked a police car’s flashing lights. Colors can impact us at work or school. Students have learned to fear red ink. While using a red pen, teachers found more errors. At the same time, writing in red ink students produced more mistakes. Even more confusing, depending on the intellectual task red can be beneficial. Proofreading or memorizing a list of words (tasks that both require attention to detail) presented against a red background becomes beneficial. Color impacts sports. Athletes who wear red uniforms win more often, while athletes who wear black are seen as more aggressive. Colors have even been associated with morals. We associate lightness with morality and darkness with immorality. Colors influence through association, but also biology. Red is associated with love because it signals sexual arousal. Blue halts production of melatonin.
 
Locations also influence our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Outgoing children became hostile, anxious children after minutes in an overcrowded room. Living in packed quarters hinders generosity and diminishes quality of life. Overcrowding creates noise, and the constant hum stifles creativity and learning. Children raised on lower floors, which tend to be loud, struggled more to read than their peers living on higher floors. Natural environments can bring positive effects. Patients recover faster in rooms facing a small courtyard. Children who spent time outdoors were more relaxed, focused, happier, and friendly. Even children who sat indoors with natural views were calmer. Japan and Germany have already been using natural therapy. The Japanese practice forest bathing- walking for a long time while inhaling woodsy scents. The Germans physically exercise in forest clearings. Natural environments promote calmness and well-being because they expose us to low levels of stress.
 
Even the weather influences us. Civil conflicts have been driven by changes in climate. Southern states are more prone to violent crime. On hot days, domestic violence rates increase. Long cold winters breeds love. Social isolation creates a literal chill. Students held a cup of hot coffee or iced coffee while riding an elevator and were asked to rate another person. If they held the hot coffee cup, they rated the individual as warmer and friendlier (not attractive or strong). The sensation of physical warmth alleviates the need for social contact.  The weather also influences our well-being. Rain, snow, and darkness are responsible for great unhappiness. However, a sunnier day brings on mental stupor. Individuals recalled three times as many items on rainy days as sunny days. Gloomy weather hampers mood, but it makes us think more deeply and clearly. The world around us shapes our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
 
Think about the world within us, the world between us, and the world around us.  Just how much of you has been determined by your environment? If you want to know more, this is a must read!
 
Other Related Resources

Adam Alter Webpage
http://adamalterauthor.com/drunk-tank-pink
 
Color Matters
https://www.colormatters.com/color-and-the-body/drunk-tank-pink
 
NPR: “Drunk Tank Pink” Find Clues To Behavior
https://www.npr.org/2013/04/05/176339686/drunk-tank-pink-finds-clues-to-behavior
 
Scientific American- MIND Reviews: Drunk Tank Pink
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mind-reviews-drunk-tank-pink/?redirect=1
 
Psychological Figures and Concepts 
 
Alfred Adler
Solomon Asch
Darley and Latané
Jane Elliott
Sigmund Freud
Genie
Kitty Genovese
Harry Harlow
William James
Carl Jung
Wolfgang Köhler
John Locke
Elizabeth Loftus
Abraham Maslow
Hermann Rorschach
Stanley Schachter
Normal Triplet
Benjamin Whorf
Bob Zajonc
 
Biologically predisposed
Chameleon effect
Circadian rhythm
Conformity
Context effects
Correlation
Cortisol
Critical period
Culture
Diffusion of responsibility
Discrimination
Distress vs. Eustress
DSM
Evolution theory
Experiment
Feeding and eating disorders
Flashbulb memories
Hawthorne effect
Individualism vs. collectivism
Insula
Melatonin
Müller-Lyer illusion
Necker Cube
Oxytocin
Phobias
Phonemes
Pineal gland
Placebo
Schizophrenia
Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
Self-fulfilling prophecy
Serotonin
Sleep paralysis
Social facilitation
Social inhibition
Social norms
Stigma
Stroop task
Subliminal priming
Temporoparietal network
Testosterone
Visual cortex
Well-being

​The Culturally Inclusive Educator:  Preparing for a Multicultural World
Author:  Dena R. Samuels
ISBN: 13: 9780807755921
 
APA Style Citation
Samuels, D. R. (2014). The culturally inclusive educator: preparing for a multicultural world. New York: Teachers College Press.
 
Buy This Book
https://www.amazon.com/Culturally-Inclusive-Educator-Preparing-Multicultural/dp/0807755923
 

​Book Description
 
In The Culturally Inclusive Educator, Dena Samuels addresses how educators can create classrooms that welcome all students regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status or any other characteristic that may make some students feel marginalized in a classroom setting.  Samuels acknowledges that most educators want to create a welcoming and caring environment for all of their students but can unknowingly create an exclusionary classroom that favors some students over others.  This occurs when an environment caters to the dominant group.  There is currently a mismatch between teacher`s belief in their ability to create an inclusive classroom and their ability to relay that message to the students in their care.  
 
American classrooms are becoming increasingly more diverse, and by 2050 Caucasians will be a minority in the United States.  Our world is becoming more diverse and lines between genders, races and identity are no longer defined by the binary standards that have historically been used.  The challenges that instructors face are multi-faceted because the make-up of faculties often does not match that of the student population. Currently, 90% of all public-school teachers are white, and 40% of schools do not employ a single teacher of color (National Collaborative on Diversity in the Teaching Force, 2004).  Not only does the faculty often come from different backgrounds than many of their students, but students’ peers are often not welcoming of diverse populations which can create a school environment which seems to reject those it is intended to help educate.
 
Nearly 100% of students (97%) report regularly hearing homophobic comments from peers and a 53% report hearing such comments from faculty. Clearly, these types of statements regardless of the group that is targeted can have long-lasting and detrimental effects of the success on the student who is targeted or who hears such comments. Some instructors feel that it is not their place to intervene when a student in class makes an inappropriate remark, but Samuels argues that this lack of action indicates to the students that the comment is acceptable and that the teacher will not defend those who may be hurt by the comment. The common reaction from students who were not defended by the instructor is to retreat from participation and vocalization in the classroom.
 
Even when comments are not intended to be hurtful, they can emphasize the students perceived differences.  These comments or microaggressions such as asking a person of color, “Where are you from?” assuming that they or their family cannot be from the United States can lead students feeling marginalized.  These types of interactions increase the likelihood of stereotype threat impacting academic performance, increases the risk for drop out and even potential self-harm as the individual devalues their own self-worth in the wake of repeated rejection from the larger culture.
 
Individuals from previously marginalized groups (i.e., LGBTQ individuals or veterans suffering from PTSD) today can often be more open about their identities, instructors must continually recognize that the classroom is in constant change.  In order to allow all students, the opportunity to be successful, instructors must be considerate about the words they use and the ways in which they organize their classes.  If, for example there is one student of color in a teacher`s class, this person should not become the sole representative for all issues related to their race.  Instructors must be cognizant of the language they use and must be willing to intervene and correct students who may use language that is demining or hurtful to others even if it is unintentional.
 
Samuels provides a number of helpful tips to instructors but acknowledges that becoming more culturally inclusive will not happen overnight and necessitates continual effort and the willingness to learn from one`s mistakes.  Samuels suggests that instructors begin by exploring their own background in an effort to identify their own bias and internalized feelings about certain groups. Because all of us have a gender, race, sexual identity, all of us will have opinions about others whether they have been adopted from popular culture or developed through our own experiences. Samuels recounts many instructors who claim to be “color blind.”  In addition to the impossibility of such as statement, she advocates in favor of seeing and acknowledging color (gender, sexual orientation, etc.) because each of these are components that make up a part of the identity of the students in a classroom and should be acknowledged as a part of who that individual is but clearly people are complex this sole feature should not be their only defining characteristic.  
 
Once the instructor has identified and acknowledged their own biases (this can be done in part by using the Harvard Implicit Association Test; IAT), they can begin the work of inclusivity by challenging these biases. Samuels recounts an interaction with a friend who was going through gender reassignment surgery.  Samuels wanted to be supportive but accidentally referred to the friend by their former gender identity.  Instead of simply ignoring the mistake, she apologized, and her friend was quite understanding.  Without this acknowledgement, her friend may have believed that she did not support the gender change and refused to use the correct pronoun.  In another conversation with a friend of a different race, she describes her friend saying, “I want you to ignore my race, I want you to acknowledge my race, but most of all I want you to be a trustworthy and reliable friend.” 
 
Samuels argues that the acceptance of all students in a classroom is a component of each student`s identity.  By issuing a large portion of one`s grade based on participation immediately provides an advantage to the extroverts in the classroom.  Samuels indicates that teachers need to be more reflective of their practices in and outside of the classroom.  Assigning students, a homework assignment that necessitates an Internet connection at home may exclude those from low-socioeconomic backgrounds who may not have a computer or the ability to pay a monthly fee, some students may not even have a home.  
 
Physical space can also inadvertently cause students to feel like outcasts.  African American students have been found to more actively participate in groups when seas are arranged in tables rather than rows.  Transgender students often do not have a designated place in which they can use the restroom, and school cafeterias may cater their offerings to a dominant group.  While none of these practices intentionally leave out a group of individuals, teachers and administrators need to think deeply about how to create inclusive spaces and the necessity to be open for feedback and the willingness to make necessary changes. 
 
Samuels also touches upon faculty training programs intended to increase faculty awareness of culturally diverse issues.  In many cases, faculty report feeling that they have a culturally inclusive classroom until upon learning more, they realize that they are not fully prepared to facilitate an inclusive classroom.  This may indicate that after training, people actually report feeling less prepared which Samuels counts as a victory, as these faculty members realize the necessity of learning in an effort to create a more inclusive classroom.  Samuels acknowledges that there will be mistakes and setbacks, but rather than count these as failures, we should embrace the mistakes and learn from them so that we make sure that as faculty members all students have an environment where they feel supported and in which they have the best possibility to thrive regardless of their personal characteristics and differences.  She uses the words of Albert Bandura who stated that “Intention is a precursor to action.”  By becoming more cognizant of the biases we may hold, we can become active advocates to create transformative change in classrooms across the country.
 
Other Related Resources
 
Teaching Tolerance:  Speaking Up Without Tearing Down
https://www.kickboardforschools.com/blog/post/5-ways-to-promote-equity-diversity-in-the-classroom
 
5 Ways to promote Equity and Diversity in the Classroom
https://www.kickboardforschools.com/blog/post/5-ways-to-promote-equity-diversity-in-the-classroom
 
Equity Maps:  An app to promote equal class participation and track student responses
https://equitymaps.com
 
Illinois State:  Understanding Microaggressions
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPRA4g-3yEk
 
Microaggressions photo project student Kiyun Kim
https://nortonism.tumblr.com/
 
 
Microaggressions in Everyday life
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJL2P0JsAS4
 
If Microaggressions happened to White people
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPRA4g-3yEk
 
Love has no Labels
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnDgZuGIhHs
 
 
Psychological Figures and Concepts
Elliott Aronson
Albert Bandura 
Jane Elliott
Claude Steele
Lev Vygotsky
 
Confirmation bias
Emotional intelligence
Explicit bias
Harvard Implicit Associations Test (IAT)
Implicit bias
Microaggressions
Mindfulness
Self-awareness
Self-efficacy
Self-fulfilling prophecy
Social cognitive theory
Social identity
Prejudice
Stereotypes
Stereotype threat
 

​Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human
Author:  Elizabeth Hess
ISBN:  978-0-553-90470-3
 
APA Style Citation
Hess, E., (2008).  Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human.  New York: Random House.
 

Book Description
Nim Chimpsky is well-known for the part he played in a novel study to determine how language is acquired.  He worked with a number of instructors who tried to teach him American sign language.  Nim was taken from his mother just hours after his birth to be raised in a home with humans.  Stephanie La Farge (a former graduate student of the head researcher for the project) served as Nim`s initial mother and treated him just like one of her children to the extent this was possible with a chimp.  Nim took part in chores around the house, went to school to practice his sign language and loved roughhousing and getting tickles from his “siblings.” 
 
Chimps share 98.7% of their DNA with humans, so chimps were the logical choice to potentially teach researchers more about human language acquisition.  The debate regarding how we acquire language was primarily driven by B.F. Skinner and Noam Chomsky.  Skinner believed that language was learned by reinforcements for favored responses, while Noam Chomsky believed that language was inborn and that each person had an innate ability to learn language.  Herbert Terrance, of Columbia University, who headed Project Nim was a Skinnerian as he had studied under Skinner himself while at Harvard completing his doctoral degree.  Terrance was also hoping that Project Nimwould help shed light on how humans learn and use language.  Some believed that chimps could learn signs but not use them in creative and productive ways; Terrance set out to prove them wrong.
 
The La Farges found that caring for a chimp was more difficult than caring for a child.  Nim slept between the couple because he would not leave Stephanie`s side, destroyed many belongings, and while he was usually sweet and kind, as he grew, he became more dangerous and destructive.  One of the La Farge’s daughters, Jenny, also played a large role in Nim`s care asked if the family had a new baby or a new pet, it was a difficult question to answer.  The La Farges described themselves as the Brady Bunch - plus chimp.  
 
To make the process of learning sign language more official, Nim had multiple weekly meetings at Columbia University.  To determine if Nim had actually learned a new word, the sign had to be observed by at least three different people on at least five successive days.  At first, Nim was on the same schedule as a human deaf child might be in terms of the acquisition of new signs, but he often was reluctant to learn new signs and resisted his lessons.  He often threw temper tantrums to get out of learning.  Nim learned signs for the words sorry,stone,give, Nim, orange, and many more.  He eventually tapered off in his ability to learn new signs, learning roughly one new sign each month.  Progress could be extremely frustrating.  Nim did, however, thrive at reading the emotions of other people, and he could be quite manipulative.  
 
The La Farge family had to give Nim up after about a year because he was too much to handle.  Terrance was able to find an old mansion on the outskirts of New York City owned by the University to be used for the continuation of Project Nim.  While Nim had devoted teachers and handlers, he was growing quickly and would escape or bite his teachers with increasing frequency. He surprised neighbors by showing up at a birthday party and nearly bit a young child walking with his family nearby Delafield.  Finally, Terrance had to conclude Project Nimand send him back to the Institute for Primate Studies (IPS) affiliated with the University of Oklahoma where Nim was born.  Here, Nim lived a cage rather than being tucked into his bed with his stuffed animals after brushing his teeth.  Nim gradually adapted to this life and bonded with the other chimps, some of whom also had been involved with studies involving American sign language. Perhaps the most famous of these was Washoe who had been taught sign language from Roger Fouts who conducted the language research at the Institute. Nim, and the other chimps were frequently observed signing to one another and even were able to teach other chimps some basic sign language to communicate. 
 
When Terrance published his findings on Project Nim, many were surprised that he concluded Nim had not really learned language.  Terrance claimed that Nim was imitating his handlers and teachers, but it was just mimicking rather than productive language.  Nim did not often create new combinations of words, or if he did, they were often nonsensical such as “Give Nim orange, give, give.”  He concluded that Chomsky was right about the innate ability to learn language was exclusively reserved to humans.  
 
Eventually, the Institute for Primate Studies was disbanded after Oklahoma University cut funding of the research conducted there. The chimps were gradually sold off, and Nim was sent to the Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery (LEM-SIP) in New York to be part of a study on hepatitis.  This was just a few miles away from where he had lived with the La Farge family but a completely different type of existence.  Because of Nim`s notoriety, he was saved after public outcry, but many of his fellow chimps did not fare as well and died in the hepatitis or other studies at LEM-SIP.  Nim was sent to the Black Beauty Ranch funded by Cleveland Armory who had made it his life`s work to save animals who had been mistreated or were in danger of being killed.
 
Because Nim alone was saved from the hepatitis study, he was caged by himself at the Black Beauty Ranch and became despondent and angry.  Chimps are very social and need contact with other chimps to thrive.  Eventually, Nim was joined by other chimps some of whom he had known at IPS in Oklahoma.  The chimp enclosure was gradually expanded to give the animals indoor and outdoor space in which they could thrive and get some exercise.  Nim bonded with many of the workers at the ranch, and they often ate their lunches in front of his cage, signing and sharing parts of their lunch. Nim sometimes escaped and would show up at the doorstep of some of the houses on the ranch where he was often welcomed in an offered a snack or a beer.  Stephanie La Farge went to visit Nim at the ranch, and he lashed out at her violently, as if he remembered that she had “abandoned” him many years before.  
 
On March 10, 2000, Nim was playing on his favorite tire swing when one of the workers at the ranch passed by on her way to prepare a snack, and Nim signed “hurry.”  When she returned with the snack a few minutes later, Nim was on the floor of his cage, he had died suddenly of a heart attack.  Nim died roughly 20 years too early, but in his short life, he gave much to researchers investigating language and touched the lives of many people in the process.  At his memorial service, many of those who had worked with Nim over the years gathered to celebrate “the chimp who would be human.”
 
Other Related Resources
Noam Chomsky on Nim Chimpsky and the Emergence of Language
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3w7h01
 
Documentary of Nim Chimpsky
http://www.coveringmedia.com/movie/2011/07/project-nim.html#trailers
 
The Sad Story of Nim Chimpsky
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/the-sad-story-of-nim-chimpsky
Betrayed by Science:  The Story of Nim Chimpsky
`Project Nim`:  A Chimp`s Very Human, Very Sad Life
http://www.bookslut.com/features/2008_04_012664.php
 
A tribute to my friend, Nim: By Bob Ingersoll one of Nim`s handlers at IPS
http://nimchimpsky.net/home
 
Columbia University: Herbert Terrance Studies Evolution of Language
https://www.college.columbia.edu/cct/archive/winter12/cover_story4
 
On the Myth of Ape Language:  Interview with Noam Chomsky
https://chomsky.info/2007____/
 
Psychological Figures and Concepts
Noam Chomsky
Charles Darwin
Franz Joseph Gall
Jane Goodall
Clever Hans
Virginia Johnson
Alfred Kinsey
William Masters
Steven Pinker
B.F. Skinner
Robert Yerkes
Washoe
 
 
Behavioral modification
Cerebral cortex
Clinical psychologist
Double-blind studies
Neurons
Operant conditioning chamber
Psycholinguists
Psychotherapist
Syntax
Transformational grammar
 
 

​Welcome to a special post highlighting a group of technology tools, including apps, websites, and online course materials useful for teachers of psychology.  Whether you teach psychology at the high school or college level, the featured technology resources are designed to improve teaching and learning and increase student engagement. Please note that before using technology you should review your district policies about technology and receive approval. 

APA Style Citation
Wray, B. (2019). XAMPLR. Retrieved August 05, 2019, from https://xamplr.com/
 
Description
Designed by AP Psychology teacher Brad Wray, Xamplr is a tool for teachers to help students develop a deeper understanding of psychology vocabulary by creating and identifying correct original applications of over 700 theories and concepts.  Xamplr thus moves students beyond simply memorizing a definition to creating applications and recognizing the nuances which separate similar concepts.  Students also benefit from recognizing incorrect or incomplete examples. As the instructor, you assign students “to do” lists of concepts students are working with currently for which they will create examples and non-examples. Xamplr creates a feed based on examples and non-examples created by all of the students in the class.  Students viewing the feed will have to determine if the example they are viewing is or is not an accurate example of a specific psychological concept by choosing the “is” or “isn’t” button. The site records each student vote and after a particular response has 9/10 “is” or “isn’t” votes the site labels the response officially as an example or non-example.  The site has a fun gamification aspect with a leaderboard showing student points.  Xamplr awards points based on the number of examples and non-examples as well as factoring in accuracy and distribution of study time. The leaderboard tracks nationwide rankings to increase engagement through fun and competition.
 
Coming Soon to Xamplr
Stay tuned as a new and improved version of Xamplr is set to be released in the next couple of weeks.  The new version will be mobile friendly and swipeable.  Xamplr will soon include other subjects beyond psychology such as English or SAT vocabulary preparation.  Improvements to the site’s algorithm will further automate the verification of examples and non-examples. Additional teacher controls, allowing for competition between classes will also be available soon. 
 
Check the following article featuring the creator of Xamplr, AP Psychology teacher, and AP reader Brad Wray.
https://arundelhighnews.com/2018/05/15/arundel-high-teacher-creates-new-learning-platform/
​Watch the following video from creator Brad Wray to learn how Xamplr works!

APA Style Citation
Engaging student peer review. (2015-2019). Retrieved August 10, 2019, from https://www.peergrade.io/
 
Description
Peergrade is a free online platform that creates a seamless process for both teachers and students to evaluate the written work of their classmates.  Instructors can create and distribute a writing assignment, and students will submit their work electronically. The site then randomly allocates to each student the responses of other students about which they can provide feedback using a teacher provided rubric. Feedback can take the form of selecting choices from a predetermined set of questions created by the teacher, or the feedback can be designed to be open-ended. Each student will see the results of feedback provided anonymously by his or her classmates.
 
Additionally, the student receiving the feedback will also be able to comment on the quality of the feedback that he or she receives. Students, as a result, develop skills for giving and utilizing constructive feedback leading to a deeper understanding of topics and improved writing skills.  Peergrade is easy to set up and navigate, student-friendly, and can be used for small and large written assignments, projects, videos, and presentations. Peergrade is capable with integration in the Canvas LMS.

Use the following Google Slides presentation created by Peergrade to learn how to use Peergrade or share it with others for professional development.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1xcTlWgY0Rr0Gc5kM6Qd9JpAMT0t_rq0iSugmXEUzFFg/edit?usp=sharing
 
Watch the following video to learn how easy it is to use Peergrade.

​APA Style Citation
Create Interactive Online Presentations, infographics, animations & banners in HTML5 - Visme by Easy WebContent. (2019). Retrieved August 10, 2019, from https://www.visme.co/
 
Description
This site designed to help teachers and students create effective and attractive infographics, presentations, posters, web graphics, social media graphics, and documents has both free and premium (paid) options.  The free version includes numerous editable templates. One of the free infographic templates is a comparison of introverts and extroverts that students or teachers could edit or use as a model to create other comparisons for personality psychology or other units.  For example, students could create infographics to differentiate between classical and operant conditioning or to highlight the various perspectives in psychology. 

APA Style Citation
Create Infographics, Presentations & Flyers. (n.d.). Retrieved August 11, 2019, from https://piktochart.com/
 
Description
Similar to Visme, Piktochart also has both a free and premium version and allows students and teachers to easily create unique infographics, posters, and brochures.  The templates and tools provided make it simple to create visually engaging representations of information. Students could create projects to promote the reduction of stigma, highlight psychological research, advertise psychology clubs, or promote activities such as Brain Awareness Week in schools.  Teachers can use Pikochart to present the class syllabus in a unique and engaging manner to both students and parents.
 
Books for Psychology class blogger Jessica Flitter uses Pikotchart to discuss her syllabus in a presentation for parent night.
https://create.piktochart.com/output/40343950-ap-psychology-2018-19-copy

​APA Style Citation
Online Diagram Software & Visual Solution. (2019). Retrieved August 06, 2019, from https://www.lucidchart.com/
 
 
Description
Lucidchart is a creative site that allows students and teachers to easily create a variety of graphic organizers, visual flowcharts, and diagrams. The free plan allows for the creation of up to 10 documents with a storage space of 100MB and connects with G Suite. The paid version offers unlimited users and storage and connects with Google Classroom, Canvas, Box, and other systems.  There are a wide range of free templates for various diagrams, including flowcharts, mind maps, data flow, and sophisticated Venn diagrams.  Within the education templates section, there are easy tools to create cause and effect, classification, word webs, clock diagrams, flow charts, planning charts, fishbone diagrams, and other graphic organizers. Lucidchart connects easily with Google Drive to allow for collaboration in real-time. The visualizing vocabulary template is especially effective for helping students connect psychological vocabulary to examples and other concepts.  This tool integrates well with the Frayer model style of graphic organizer (concept surrounded by four boxes for the definition, characteristics, examples and non-examples). Teachers can even use Lucidchart to make effective seating charts for classrooms with a wide variety of layouts. 

APA Style Citation
Simple Collaborative Mind Maps. (2019). Retrieved August 17, 2019, from https://coggle.it/

Description Similar to Lucidchart, Coggle allows teachers and students to create mind maps and flow charts. Students can invite other students to edit the project, and changes made by co-editors will appear in real-time. Coggle includes a message option that allows students to work collaboratively outside of class.  Students can use Coggle to summarize units by visually making connections.  For example, students can create a Coggle to summarize and connect the various theories of emotion, motivation, or personality.  Coggle includes over 1600 icons and allows unlimited uploads of images.  When completed, a Coggle can be downloaded as either an image or a PDF file. The free option allows you to create three private diagrams and unlimited public diagrams.

Watch the following video to learn how easy it is to use Coggle.

​APA Style Citation
Inc, Participate. (2019). Participate. Retrieved August 10, 2019, from http://www.participate.com/
 
Description
Participate is a free service designed for supporting teacher professional development, but the collection creation feature can also be used by students working collaboratively, especially within problem-based or inquiry learning projects. This site creates a place for groups of teachers or students who are working together to share resources such as websites, videos, images, and links. Participate makes it possible for groups of teachers or students to create easy to share collections of resources. Teachers or students create and name a collection which organizes links to resources found on the Internet, which can be shared with others.  The collections can be set to private, hidden, or public depending upon the purpose of the assignment or type of professional development.  When viewing other collections, individuals can easily add materials to their collection.  Students or teachers working collaboratively on a project have a place to collect and store relevant resources. 

​APA Style Citation
Padlet is the easiest way to create and collaborate in the world. (n.d.). Retrieved August 17, 2019, from https://padlet.com/
 
Description
Padlet is a free service similar to Participate, which allows for collaboration and sharing of materials. A Padlet is a blank digital page to collect videos, images, text, documents, responses, and notes that can be shared and worked on collaboratively. 
 
Students working together on group projects can use Padlet to share resources, including notes and ideas. Teachers can pose questions, such as entrance or exit tickets to a Padlet, and collect information about student understanding.  Students can take an image of their completed work and share it to Padlet for class discussion and constructive feedback.  There are privacy settings that allow teachers to have the ability to approve messages before they are posted publicly.  

APA Style Citation
Pear Deck for Google Slides. (2019). Retrieved August 07, 2019, from https://www.peardeck.com/googleslides
 
Description
Pear Deck is a free add on for Google Slides that easily makes presentations in Slides interactive, formative, and engaging.  Students need to log on to the presentation with an access code provided by the teacher, which allows them to interact with questions within the presentation.  A variety of editable slides exist for bell ringers, checks for prior knowledge, checks for understanding, summarizing, exit tickets, polls, and self-evaluation components.  Pear Deck instantly makes presentations interactive, which can be used both in class and as part of a flipped classroom model. Pear Deck can also be used by students to make their presentations more interactive.

APA Style Citation
Socrative. (2019). Retrieved August 12, 2019, from https://socrative.com    
 
Description
The Socrative site makes it easy to create formative assessments for student learning in an interactive format that generates data for teachers about student understanding.  Students can participate in Socrative formatives, quizzes, and exit ticket using a laptop, tablet, iPad, Chromebook, or smartphone. Formative assessments can be true/false, multiple-choice, or open-ended in design.  The formative assessments can be delivered in a variety of manners.  For example, teacher-paced allows the entire class to answer questions at the same time and shows feedback regarding the most frequently reported answers (student names are not visible to the class). Instructors in the teacher-paced delivery method control the pace of question delivery and observe responses from students in real-time.  The student-paced delivery method can be used for individual quizzes, entrance tickets, or exit tickets. In the student-paced delivery method, students can skip questions, and finish at their own pace, and teachers can monitor progress using the Live Results table. Regardless of the delivery method, students receive feedback about their responses immediately and can have access to answer explanations if those are added by the instructor. Results from the activity can lead to more targeted instruction and differentiation opportunities. Instructors can share quizzes by sharing the unique SOC number associated with the quiz. Other teachers can import the quiz using the SOC number.
 
Watch the following video to learn how Socrative work

APA Style Citation
Flipgrid. (2019). Retrieved August 15, 2019, from https://flipgrid.com/
 
Description
Flipgrid is an app that allows students to respond to teacher prompts with short video responses and respond to the videos of other students creating a new type of discussion format. Instructors create “grids,” which function like message boards where students respond with short videos about specific topics or questions. Students do not create accounts but use their school email or a QR code to join the discussion where they will click on the green plus sign to record their video.  The default video length time is 90 seconds, but it can be adjusted to record between 15 seconds and five minutes. It is important to note that only the grid owner (instructor) can download the videos after they have been submitted by the students. The instructor can choose if students can view and respond to their classmate's videos or if the videos will remain only visible to the instructor.
 
Review the following lists of Do’s and Don’ts created by Flipgrid for classroom use.
http://static.flipgrid.com/docs/Flipgrid_dos_donts.pdf
 
Consider using the consent form created by Flipgrid for the classroom.
https://static.flipgrid.com/docs/Flipgrid_consent_form.pdf
 

APA Style Citation
Brandt, L., Fenton, N. (2019). IScore5 AP Psychology. Retrieved August 06, 2019, from http://www.iscore5.com/apreg-psychology.html
 
Description
The iScore5 AP Psych app is designed as a fun and interactive way for students to earn high marks on the AP Psychology exam. The app functions like a game to help students to master over 800 vocabulary words for the AP Psychology course.  The app goes beyond merely learning basic vocabulary by challenging students to master multiple-choice questions in levels of increasing difficulty.  Experienced AP exam readers have written all of the questions. There is a bonus round that challenges students to recognize key figures in psychological science, and when students reach level five, they will have the opportunity to take an original AP Psychology exam consisting of 100 questions formatted the same way as the AP exam. Finally, students are given two practice Free Response Questions with provided rubrics to determine their score. The app is compatible with iPhone, iPad, and Android phones and tablets.
 
The interactive interface of the app is easy to navigate, and students may choose to return to study mode to practice basic vocabulary at any point during the game.  The app records a running score allowing students to monitor their progress and better understand the concepts they will need to know for the exam.  Within each level, including the study mode, the questions and practice items are organized according to the key topics outlined by the nine units in the official College Board AP Psychology course outline.
 
The app is also an effective way for students to prepare for classroom unit exams, midterms, and finals.  Because it is portable and easily accessed by phone or tablet, students are more likely to review more often than with traditional review books.  Even if students only have five or ten minutes to review at a time, this will result in an impressive increase in knowledge of psychology content due to the spacing effect.

​Get the iScore App!
The iScore 5 AP Psych app is now available for $4.99 in the iTunes app store for Apple or Google Play for Android.
iTunes  https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/iscore5-ap-psych-2016/id1084611907?mt=8
Google Play  https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.iscorePysch
 
The technology listed in the post is certainly not all-inclusive but should provide a wide range of ways to shake up your instruction and improve engagement.

 

​The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules our Lives
Author:  Leonard Mlodinow
ISBN:  978-0-307-27517-2
 
APA Style Citation 
Mlodinow, L (2008).  The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules our Lives.  New York, NY: Random House.
 
Buy this book 
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001NXK1XO/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
 

Book Description
In the 2018-2019 NBA season, LeBron James had a free throw percentage of 51%, just over his all-time career free throw percentage of 50.4%. Let's propose a scenario in which LeBron James had made the last ten free throws he shot. Many basketball fans would consider this a "streak," attributing this recent run of success to the playoffs, playing against a long-time rival, increased fan support, or LeBron's new off-season training regimen.  Those who believe in this “streak” for whatever reason will be more likely to assume that James will make his next free throw, disregarding the evidence that roughly 50% of the time he will make the shot and 50% he will miss.  The Drunkard's Walkis not about an inebriated stroll through the city, rather it is about how we try to make sense of random events in our lives by adding some meaning and perceived control to these happenings. 
 
The author, Mlodinow recalls a story from famed psychologist Daniel Kahneman.  Kahneman explains that he was working with air force flight instructors trying to demonstrate that reinforcement was a far more effective method of instruction than punishment in terms of the speed of learning.  The instructors disagreed, explaining that when a student completed a great maneuver, the instructor would issue praise, but inevitably at the next lesson, the same maneuver would be less impressive.  Likewise, they argued that if the pilot in training made a horrible move, they would receive some intense negative feedback, and the next time out, their performance was generally better.  After much contemplation, Kahneman realized that this did not challenge the conventional wisdom, instead, the instructors were witnessing regression to the mean.  Most of the students were quite good as pilots, but were still training and would occasionally make a silly mistake and sometimes make a brilliant move; most of the time, however, their flying was slightly above average.  It was not the instructors' positive feedback that was decreasing the quality of the flying, but the brilliant move was likely a fluke as was the mistake, so regardless of the feedback they received, the students flying should return to their typical level of performance on the next flight.
 
Mlodinow also explains that no executive is worth 25 million dollars and that the profits of a company are likely the result of many random market fluctuations and most of a company’s success (or failure) is far outside of the control of the CEO.  Mlodinow uses the example of studios that produce movies.   Heads of the movie houses are just as likely to predict a blockbuster as they are to predict a failure, but we want to believe that they have some internal vision that allows them to “just know” a blockbuster when they see one.  It is far more likely that most film`s success or failure cannot be predicted with any certainty until it is released.
Our need to feel control over our lives and the world around us leads us to the frequent misconception that we have control over circumstances that are independent random events.  If we flip a coin 20 times and it comes up as heads the first 19 times, most people would bet that on the next toss the coin will land as tails. They forget that the 20thtoss is an independent event that is not related to the results of the earlier trials.  Just as each of LeBron James's free throws is an independent entity.  People who win the lottery believe that their selection of specific numbers such as their family`s birthdays were the reason they won, not just a stroke of luck.  Speaking of a stroke of luck, in large state lotteries the person is more likely to die in a car accident driving to buy the lottery ticket than they are to win the jackpot, but still, they persevere in the belief that they somehow influenced the outcome of this random event. 
 
Some events however, we can predict.  For example, we can predict the location of a prize behind one of three curtains (the two other curtains have goats behind them) with a higher than chance likelihood (66%) once one of the curtains has been eliminated. This is the famous Monty Hall Problem.  We can predict the likelihood that a mother carrying fraternal twins will have a 75% chance that one of them is a girl (girl-boy), (boy-boy) (girl-girl), (boy-girl).  Insurance companies can predict the risk of a driver based on their demographics, and the National Highway System can predict the number of accidents that will occur on a given year within a few hundred accidents.  Demographers can produce relatively accurate predictions regarding the number of people who will move into or out of a state in a given year or two. To make these accurate predictions, we must overcome our expectations of past events and focus only on the situation in the present.  Schemas are cognitive models we hold based on previous experiences, which then influence our perception in other situations.  If I believe that men are safer drivers than women because the men in my household received fewer tickets than women or that, even if you present evidence to the contrary, I will have a difficult time accepting this information. Schemas can create selective attention allowing us to only focus on certain aspects of a situation while missing out on other important information.
 
Once we can identify the difference between random events and those that we can predict with some accuracy, we can stop developing algorithms for a drunkard's walk in which the drunk will eventually go somewhere, but there is no discernable pattern to his random ambling.  Despite our inclinations to make meaning out of clouds and to think that a Volkswagen is smiling at us because of the orientation of the grill and headlights, we should let those things beyond our control be just that and seek to control what we can, namely things like studying to improve one's psychology grade in which great strides can be made with the proper efforts.
 
 
Other Related Resources
Scientific America: How Randomness Rules our World, and How Why We Cannot See It
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-randomness-rules-our-world/
 
New York Post: "The Drunkard's Walk"
https://nypost.com/2008/05/18/the-drunkards-walk/
 
The Monty Hall Problem
https://www.montyhallproblem.com
 
Mathhacks:  Simple explanations of some of the statistical examples from Drunkard's Walk
https://medium.com/i-math/the-drunkards-walk-explained-48a0205d304
 
Examples of people trying to plot the Drunkard's Walk using an algorithm
https://www.google.com/search?sa=X&q=drunkard+walk+algorithm&tbm=isch&source=univ&safe=active&ved=2ahUKEwiBlcORpv_hAhUFdJoKHY6rB9sQsAR6BAgJEAE&biw=1252&bih=814#imgrc=BOlvmEepa5hGQM:
 
Microsoft Research Talk with Author
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRLwyq5dK48
 
Psychological Figures and Concepts
Aristotle
Charles Darwin
Rene Descartes
Francis Galton
William James
Daniel Kahneman
David Rosenhan
B.F. Skinner
Amos Tversky
 
amygdala
availability heuristic
behavioral modification
cerebral cortex
confirmation bias
conjunction fallacy
correlation coefficient
fMRI
gambler's fallacy
game theory
hindsight bias
inter-rater reliability
intuition
Monty Hall problem
normal distribution
outliers
paranoid delusion
perceptual sets
random sampling
regression towards the mean
representativeness heuristic
Rorschach inkblot
schema
schizophrenia
split-brain
standard deviation
statistical significance
stereotype
variance
 
 

Shrinks: The Untold Story of Psychiatry
Authors:  Jeffrey A. Lieberman and Ogi Ogas
ISBN-10: 031627898X
ISBN-13: 978-0316278980

APA Style Citation
Lieberman, J. A. (2015).  Shrinks: The untold story of psychiatry. New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company.
 
Buy This Book
https://www.amazon.com/Shrinks-Untold-Psychiatry-Jeffrey-Lieberman/dp/031627898

Book Description
 
Psychiatry was coined in 1808 by German physician Johann Christian Reil and means “medical treatment of the soul.” Despite its origin over 100 years ago, major discoveries have only recently happened in the last few decades. The author of Shrinks: The Untold Story of Psychiatry is Jeffrey A. Lieberman, MD, the Lawrence C. Kolb Professor and Chairman, Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons; Director, New York State Psychiatric Institute; and Psychiatrist-in-Chief, Columbia University Medical Center of the New York-Presbyterian Hospital. He was a member of the DSM-5 oversight committee and president of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) during the publication of the DSM-5. Dr. Lieberman believes he became the president of the APA at a historical turning point in the profession, when psychiatry finally assumed its rightful place in the medical community. New research, technologies, and insights have allowed the field to come out of the shadows of its dark history. He believes to move forward the field needs to own up to its history of mistakes and how they overcame their problematic past. He shares this controversial history in three main sections: the story of diagnosis, the story of treatment, and psychiatry reborn.
 
Psychology is not the only field with fake treatments, but it does have more illegitimate treatments than any other one. In order to understand the methods for diagnosis and treatment, Dr. Lieberman takes the reader on a journey through the history of diagnosis. The field of psychiatry has been historically split into two camps. There are the neurologists who work with visible damage to the brain, such as dementia, strokes, tumors, Parkinson’s disease, and Alzheimer’s disease. Then there are psychiatrists who work with mysterious conditions, such as psychoses, manias, phobias, melancholia, obsessions, and hysteria. The field has swung from psychodynamic psychiatry that views mental illness as a result of inner psychic processes to biological psychiatry that supports mental illness as an identifiable physical abnormality in the brain. This dichotomy exits to this day, while most psychiatrists have settled on a pluralistic psychology that accepts both views. Next, the reader is taken on a journey through the early asylums, the movement of alienists, Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis, the WWII shift in psychoanalysis from Europe to the U.S., the foundation of American psychiatry, and the formation of the term “shrinks.” In the 1960s, American Psychoanalysts took the U.S. by storm and gained power by influencing universities. With this newfound power they wanted to fix the world and got swept up in America’s social activism. The 1970s was faced with the Rosenhan study, homosexuality controversy, and the antipsychiatry movement. The final part of the story takes the reader through the development of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) and its modern day influence.
 
Psychiatry is often given a black eye for its early start consisting of the harsh treatment of its patients. The unfortunate lack of adequate budgets and overcrowded facilities led to intolerable conditions in the early asylums. Out of desperation physicians tried techniques that sound barbaric by today’s standards. Dr. Lieberman takes the reader on the story of treatment in the field of psychiatry. The American story starts with Dorthea Dix, pyrotherapy (creating an artificial fever), insulin-shock therapy, transorbital lobotomy, convulsive therapy, and electroconvulsive therapy. Next, came the use of psychiatric drugs to pacify disruptive patients. These included morphine, chloral, and sodium bromide. In the 1950s, the first psychopharmaceutical drug was born to relieve anxiety, known as Miltown. But the beginning of the end of asylums didn’t come until the introduction of Thorazine, the first antipsychotic. Soon after came antidepressants, mood stabilizers, and MAOIs. According to Dr. Lieberman, the three flagship illnesses had a solution that took them from “wholly untreatable” to “largely manageable.” The world of psychiatry was changing.
 
Since the history of diagnosis and treatment, the field of psychiatry has witnessed a rebirth with the study of the brain. Phrenology, the study of bumps on the skull, started in 1809, but it wasn’t until the late 1900s that scientists were able to study the brain inside the skull while their patient was still alive. In the 1980s, brain imaging opened the door in the brain wide open for exploration. The PET scan, which measures the brain’s chemistry and metabolism, was nicknamed the “head-shrinker.” The 1990s became the Decade of the Brain. Eric Kandel was studying memory in the brain and Aaron Beck developed cognitive-behavioral therapy. Thanks to the Human Genome Project and the ROMA technique psychiatrists were able to explore genetics in a way that was never done before. Meanwhile the diagnosis of PTSD was evolving and the DSM was facing revisions in the digital age.  In 2006, the DSM-5 Task Force faced a daunting task of updating the DSM while public complaints were expressed on the Internet. Leaders of previous DSMs began to question the process publically. Shrouded in confidentiality agreements and behind closed doors, the revision process put the APA back in the public spotlight. From 2008 to 2013, the media fueled the fire and kept the DSM in the public eye. The APA appointed an oversight committee that recognized a serious problem and then implemented two post hoc review committees to squelch internal conflict. The DSM-5 was confirmed by vote in 2013 and quickly attacked by the National Institute of Mental Health who proposed they would make their own diagnostic system based on neural definitions of psychopathology. This criticism quickly faded after recognizing the size of the task and since then criticism and news involving the DSM has fallen quiet. 
 
The story of psychiatry has taken many turns in recent history, but the future has many more hurdles ahead. Once there were no effective diagnostic criteria or treatments, whereas now the social stigma associated with mental illness prevails as the main hurdle ahead. Hollywood has taken on the issue and has start to put a dent in the problem, but there is a ways to go before society accepts mental illness in the same way as physical illness. The future also offers promising areas of research in genetics and diagnostic testing. Thanks to technology, research, and the use of mobile devices more improvements are on the way.  The story of psychiatry is long from coming to a close and it is an exciting time in the field with many advances right around the corner.  
 
Other Related Resources
Colombia University
https://www.columbiapsychiatry.org/profile/jeffrey-lieberman-md
 
Personal Website (Book, Podcasts, Media)
https://www.jeffreyliebermanmd.com/
 
Twitter
https://twitter.com/DrJlieberman?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
 
New York Times article
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/29/books/review/shrinks-by-jeffrey-a-lieberman-with-ogi-ogas.html
 
Editorial
Shrinks: The Untold Story of Psychiatry, by Jeffrey A. Lieberman, M.D. ...
aapdp.org/documents/uploads/pdps.Friedman_Critique_of_Lieberman.pdf
 
Psychological Figures and Concepts 
 
Aaron Beck
Abraham Maslow
Albert Einstein
Alfred Adler
Anna O
Antonio Egas Moniz
B.F. Skinner
Carl Gustav Jung
Charles Darwin
David Rosenhan
Dorthea Dix
Emil Kraepelin
Eric Kandel
Franz Mesmer
G. Stanley Hall
Hermann von Ebbinghaus
Ivan Pavlov
Paul Broca
Philippe Pinel
Sigmund Freud
Walter Freeman
Wilhelm Wundt
William James
 
ADHD
Agoraphobia
Alzheimer’s disease
American Psychiatric Association (APA)
American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA)
American Psychological Association (APA)
Amygdala
Animal magnetism
Antidepressant
Antipsychotic
Anxiety
Anxiolytics
Apgar score
Archetypes
Asylums
Autism
Autonomic nervous system
Aversion therapy
Barbiturates
Blindsight
Case studies
Castration anxiety
Catharsis
Classification system
Cognitive-behavioral therapy
Cohort
Collective unconscious
Confidentiality
Conversion reaction
Crisis of reliability
CT scan
Deep brain stimulation (DBS)
Defense mechanisms
Deinstitutionalization
Delusions
Dementia
Denial
Dreams
DSM (I-5)
ECT
EEG
Empiricism
Evidence-based psychotherapy
Flashbulb memories
Flat affect
fMRI
Free-association
Freudian slips
Frontal lobe
Gestalt theory
Glutamate
Heritability
Hippocampus
Homosexuality
Hypnosis
Id, ego, superego
Implicit memory
Informed consent
Insanity
Intellectual disability
Interpersonal psychotherapy
Labels
Leucotomy
Lithium
LSD
Malingering
Mania
Meditation
Monozygotic/dizygotic twins
MRI
Narcissistic
Neural network
Neurologists
Neuroplasticity
Neurosis
OCD
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)
Oedipus/Electra complex
Opiates
Panic disorder
Paranoia
Parkinson’s disease
Penis envy
PET scan
Phenylketonuria (PHU)
Phobias
Phrenology
Prefrontal cortex
Priming
Prozac
Pseudoscientists
Psychiatrist
Psychoanalytic vs Psychodynamic
Psychosexual development
PTSD
Replication
Resistance
Retrograde amnesia
Schizophrenia
Simple reflexes
SSRI
Stigma
Sublimation
Substance abuse
Suicide
Synapses
Transference
Xanax

​A Visionary Madness: The Case of James Tilly Matthews and the Influencing Machine
Author:  Mike Jay
ISBN:  978-1-58394-717-3
 
APA Style Citation
Kay, M. (2014).  A Visionary Madness: The Case of James Tilly Matthews and the Influencing Machine. North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, California.
 
Buy this book
https://www.amazon.com/Visionary-Madness-Matthews-Influencing-Machine/dp/1583947175
 

​Book Description
“They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me.”
                                    -Nathaniel Lee, admitted to Bedlam in 1684
 
James Tilly Matthews is often cited as the most widely early reported case of schizophrenia.  Authorities stated that Matthews was delusional and paranoid, believing that the British government was out to get him.  Matthews also believed that there was an “influencing machine,” which he described as an “air loom,” which was a kind of primitive machine that could control people`s thoughts and actions.  The machine was operated by a team of men, and Matthews produced many detailed drawings and thousands of words of descriptions regarding the workings of the  “machine.”  The impetus for Matthew`s diagnosis and eventual confinement occurred after he attended a session of the House of Commons and then loudly accused the Prime Minister of treason.  He was removed and taken immediately to Bethlem asylum.  Once admitted to Bethlem, Matthews refused to associate with the other patients, claiming they were not lunatics, but rather spies placed there by the government to keep an eye on him.  He also refused to drink the water believing that it could be poisoned.  
 
Dr. James Haslam served as the resident apothecary (an early term for a psychiatrist) at Bethlem and was responsible for the care of Matthews during his stay.  Careers in “mad doctoring” were not highly sought out at the time, and Dr. Haslam received little recognition despite his hard work.  Dr. Haslam was one of the first to advocate that “madness” was not a spiritual problem, but rather an organic brain disorder.  He acknowledged that one could suffer from a mental illness and still retain a high level of intelligence.  Dr. Haslam completed post-mortem analysis of patient`s brains to determine if he could find the source of the problem.  He did find increased ventricles in some patients which today has been confirmed in the brains of some individuals with schizophrenia. 
 
If that were the full case of James Tilly Matthew`s insanity, we would not likely know of him today.  It is possible that Matthews was not insane at all but rather the patsy in a government cover-up.  Matthews had worked as a spy for the British government. He acted as an intermediary between French and British forces just after the French Revolution.  He and a colleague worked through intermediaries on behalf of William Pitt (a prominent statesman) to find a way to keep peace between England and France.  He accompanied David Williams to Paris to work with the committee drafting the new constitution.  They had received the invitation via a French agent in London and were traveling undercover on enemy soil.  Matthews had been well-funded and supported by the British government, however, once talks fell apart Pitt refused to meet with Matthews and eventually he found himself a prisoner in France.  After his imprisonment, the British government seemed to want to distance themselves from their previous involvement in his covert actions. Matthews went from an esteemed agent for the state to a pauper.  
 
Matthews had a brilliant mind, when Bethlem needed to be reconstructed because the old building was sinking and falling apart, Matthews provided a set of ingenious plans with a visionary plan with modernized heating, ventilation, and beautifully designed architecture.  Matthew`s family and a number of his associates remained steadfast in their claims that he was perfectly sane.  Initially, Matthew`s stay at Bethlem was paid for by his local parish as was customary at the time.  For reasons unknown, however, and without the Parish of Camberwell (the parish providing payment) ever being informed, Matthew`s was designated as a state prisoner, this seems suspicious and supports the idea that the state may have been behind the internment from the start.  
 
Matthew`s family claimed they would take full responsibility for him upon his release which would lighten the burden on the state significantly and Matthews did not seem to pose a physical threat to anyone which was the typical concern upon release in cases such as these.  While the head of Bethlem, Thomas Munro, states that he has “never felt the smallest doubt with respect to his insanity and believes him to be a most insane and dangerous lunatic and wholly unfit to be at large.”  Munro provides no specific details to support this and spent very little time at Bethlem. Matthews had never acted overtly violent to anyone during his stay at Bethlem. In addition, the diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia is generally categorized by delusions so bizarre that they are difficult to follow, Matthew`s supposed delusions were characterized by events that can be demonstrated as fact and they remained consistent over the length of his internment.  
 
The James Tilly Matthews case is not the only one in which the ambiguity of psychological labeling has been addressed.  In the 1970s, psychologist David Rosenhan and eight other mentally healthy people checked themselves into mental health care facilities claiming to hear voices saying, “thud,” “empty,” “dull.”  All participants were immediately admitted to the facilities but then acted normally.  Their normal behaviors were often interpreted as symptoms of their “illness.” It seems as if their label of schizophrenia (bipolar psychosis for one participant) had reframed all of their behaviors.  Even simple questions or not talking was identified as “disordered.”  These mentally healthy individuals were held at the mental health care facilities between 17 and 51 days and were released as having schizophrenia in remission.  
 
Did the label that was attached to James Tilly Matthews also cause his everyday activities to be labeled as “disordered?”  Did the British government simply concoct a story to make Matthews seem insane so if he revealed any of his covert actions, they would be written off as the work of a madman?  Even if he did have schizophrenia at some point, was he held in Bethlem because he was a pseudo-celebrity, because his therapist had written a book about Matthew`s insanity or because the facility wanted to capitalize off of his clear brilliance?  Dr. Haslam would not release Matthews because even though he acknowledged his sanity after a number of years of treatment, there was also the requirement that Matthews admit that at one time he was not sane, which Matthews refused to do, therefore he remained at Bethlem.  
 
Eventually, the governors of Bethlem admitted that Matthews` mental state was not the reason for his confinement, rather it was an issue of state security.  He was eventually transferred to a country house with more freedom, where the doctors who visited him found him conscious and clear.  They reported that he appeared “collected, tranquil and intelligent”. Shortly after moving to the country house, Matthews died as a result of living for years in the damp and cold environment of Bethlem.  After Matthew`s death, Dr. Haslam,  Matthew`s long-time doctor never even attempted to object to Matthews sanity when confronted with the evidence.
 
We will likely never know the full truth about the James Tilly Matthews case, but this historical case is still relevant today as we continue to struggle with the line between strange behaviors and diagnoseable illnesses.
 
Other Related Resources
Illustrations from James Tilly Matthews
https://publicdomainreview.org/2014/11/12/illustrations-of-madness-james-tilly-matthews-and-the-air-loom/
 
The Air Loom:  Mind Control
http://www.theairloom.org/mindcontrol.php
 
Video Describing the Air Loom
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wc1LOPoSE3A
 
Why the Rosenhan Experiment Still Matters
https://bigthink.com/rosenhan-experiment-mental-institution
 
The Washington Post:  This Secret Experiment Tricked Psychiatrists into Diagnosing Sane People as having Schizophrenia.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/an-experiment-fooled-psychiatrists-into-treating-sane-people-as-if-they-were-insane/2017/12/29/c6c9c3ea-d5f7-11e7-b62d-d9345ced896d_story.html?utm_term=.14a602f9b51f
 
 
Psychological Figures and Concepts
 
Alfred Adler
Eugen Bleuler
Sigmund Freud
Carl Jung
John Locke
Franz Anton Mesmer
Philippe Pinel
Edward Wakefield
 
 
Bethlem
Cerebrospinal fluid 
CT scans
Delusions of reference
Denial
Double-blind tests
EEG
Electro-convulsive therapy
Flat effect
Hallucinations
Insanity defense 
Labelling
Mesmerism
Narcissism
Neurochemistry
Paranoid schizophrenia
Personality disorders
Pre-frontal lobotomy
Projection
Psychiatry
Psychoanalysis
Psychodynamic method
Psychosis
Schizophrenia
Stream of consciousness
Telepathy
Temporal lobes
Unconscious
Ventricles
 
 
 

The Man Who Couldn't Stop: OCD and the True Story of a Life Lost in Thought
Author: David Adam
ISBN-10: 1250083184
ISBN-13: 978-1250083180
 
APA Style Citation
Adam, D. (2016). The man who couldn't stop: OCD and the true story of a life lost in thought. New York, NY: Picador.
 
Buy This Book
https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Couldnt-Stop-Thought/dp/1250083184/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_img_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=F7EB0H0TX69H38ZENPNE
​

Book Description
Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) often does not get the attention it deserves. It is the fourth most common mental disorder after the big three of depression, substance abuse, and anxiety. OCD is referred to as a “secret disease” and a “silent epidemic,” but subclincial OCD is everywhere.  The stigma has lessened for some disorders, such as depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar, but there is a way to go for OCD. The book The Man Who Couldn't Stop: OCD and the True Story of a Life Lost in Thought shares the personal journey of the author, David Adam, a science writer from the United Kingdom who informs the reader of the science and history of OCD in hopes of reducing the stigma associated with the disorder.
 
Psychiatrists have made it clear that OCD is not an exaggerated form of everyday worries, but yet the general public often persists in thinking otherwise.  A thorough explanation of the different types of symptoms is provided for the reader. Specific attention is given to intrusive thoughts. Adam goes on to explain the Pure-O form of OCD with no overt compulsions, the just-no-right experience where behaviors come first, and the high-place phenomenon where individuals commonly report wanting to jump from a window or bridge. OCD is not a problem with memory, but rather a loss of confidence that a given behavior has been successfully carried out.  The author weaves his personal story with OCD that peaked in 1991 throughout the book. He would obsess about the ways he could catch AIDS. He describes how it took over his life and how he would call the National AIDS Helpline on a regular basis. Adam also provides the historical background to the diagnosis of OCD, taking it back to patient zero, Mademoiselle F, a French woman from the early 19th century.  He explains models of OCD throughout the text based on the knowledge at that given time.
 
Over twenty separate conditions are linked to OCD, and each of these similar disorders is carefully differentiated from OCD in the book. People with phobias can avoid what causes their anxiety, but those with OCD cannot. Adam differentiates between the commonly confused OCD and OCPD. He explains hoarding and neurological disorders, such as Tourette’s syndrome and Parkinson’s disease, and their connection to OCD. In addition, he investigates connections to impulsive disorders, such as gambling, pyromania, and kleptomania. Differentiations are also provided for trichotillomania, skin-picking, body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), body integrity disorder (BII), hypochondriasis, eating disorders (anorexia or bulimia), maladaptive daydreaming, and obsessional jealousy.
 
Another section of the book is dedicated to the types of therapy that have historically been offered to treat OCD. He chronicles classic psychodynamic analysis, with specific attention to Freud’s contribution. Next, the behavioral approach in the 1960s and the era of aversion and thought-stopping therapy are addressed. In the 1990s the cognitive psychologists started to explore OCD and first looked at the connection to religion. While religion does not cause OCD, it provides an outlet for the symptoms. Research also focused on three dysfunctional beliefs important to OCD: Inflated sense of threat and personal responsibility, perfectionism and intolerance of responsibility, and over-importance of thought and the need to control them. These different types of dysfunctional beliefs could explain the range of symptoms.  
 
The first modern cognitive model of OCD was based on how one reacts to thoughts.  With great responsibility, comes great power. The responsibility of parenting can bring many intrusive thoughts. Adam goes on to explore postnatal OCD, which is almost unheard of in comparison to postnatal depression now recognized as a serious problem.  It can take an upsetting form where mothers have powerful urges to throw their baby into a fire, cook them in a microwave, etc. It is important to note that none of this happens outside of the mother’s head, they do not act on their intrusive thoughts.  The author recognizes that a substantial shift in his story happened when he found blood on his six month old’s leg. Immediately he became obsessed with the thought that he had given her AIDS. He had settled for a personal life with OCD, but never wanted to impact his family. He refused to make his daughter an accomplice and wanted his intrusive thoughts to stop with him, so he sought out therapy.
 
Another section focuses on animals and human patterns of behavior and ritual. Various animal examples are provided and the similarities to OCD are explored. Check out the book review Animal Madness:  How Anxious Dogs, Compulsive Parrots, and Elephants in Recovery Help Us Understand Ourselves (https://booksforpsychologyclass.weebly.com/blog/category/disorderstreatment8086727c74/2). Humans like routine, whether it a sports routine, washing in the shower, or taking a path from point A to point B. The link between ritual and OCD fascinates scientists and there is a belief that ritual is useful by performing tasks with less mental effort and therefore saving energy. Other evolutionary explanations are also explained. The differences between anxiety and OCD are carefully teased apart.
 
The author turns back to the causes of OCD. Possible explanations are explored, including genes, early experiences and dysfunctional beliefs, inflated responsibility, parenting styles, and family accommodation of symptoms. Age ranges are provided, as well as risk factors for developing OCD. Rituals are normal for children, but some warning signs are provided. Lots of attention is devoted to the brain’s role in the development of OCD.  Research involving scans are described in detail, specific brain parts and neurotransmitters are identified and explained, even the connection to Pandas- Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal Infections.
 
Treatments are addressed once again. The variety of medications to treat OCD is explained.  Before SSRIs became available in the 1980s and 1990s, patients were treated with clomipramine. The methods of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) are explained. Furthermore, exposure and response prevention have also been found to be successful in treating OCD. The use of systematic desensitization is explained in detail.  In 2012, a comprehensive meta-analysis of CBT for OCD found more people improved with treatment, than chance alone. If you change the mind, then you can change the brain. The lobotomy is explored in detail. The author discusses the historical contributions of Phineas Gage, Egas Moniz, Walter Freeman, and James Watts. While the traditional method is no longer used, psychosurgery has provided a cautious green light to more selective stereotactic surgery, such as a cingulotomy where specific tissue is targeted and lesioned.
 
Politics and prejudice are also addressed. The author believes it is important to raise awareness of what OCD is and what it is not (not just about cleanliness). He explains how individuals have lost their jobs and have been separated from their families when harmless obsessions are reported. The stigma has decreased for many mental illnesses, but OCD has a long way to go. It may be due to many not viewing it as a serious disorder. Hollywood has contributed to this by treating OCD with humor and levity. 
 
In 2013, the new Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) brought attention to OCD. It was reclassified as an OCD spectrum disorder, no longer an anxiety disorder. Connections between OCD and other disorders, such as PTSD or schizophrenia are being further investigated. A short history of the DSM and Emil Kraeplin’s classification system used in Europe is explained to help the reader. Also, a critical look at the current categories approach is explored, and a dimensionality approach is offered in its replacement.
 
The author offers his final thoughts, looking back at his symptoms early in life. Currently, he is doing well, but he knows that he will continue to wrestle with his OCD throughout his life. He wants people to know that the bad news is that it won’t go away by itself. But the good news is that we are finding out more about how to diagnose and treat the condition. Sharing his story and many others helps us understand more about OCD.
 
Other Related Resources
2016 Annual OCD Conference Keynote - David Adam "The Accidental Advocate"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KccklYNpTus
 
https://iocdf.org/blog/2016/07/07/david-adam-to-bring-humor-hope-and-books-to-this-years-ocd-conference/
 
The OCD Stories Podcast- Interview with David Adam
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWXIq_Ir9vA
 
http://theocdstories.com/podcast/david-adam-the-man-who-couldnt-stop/
 
Understanding the OCD Brain part 1: OCD and me
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpCOAqxbfpA
 
Addiction.com ‘The Man Who Couldn’t Stop’: A Q&A with David Adam on OCDhttps://www.addiction.com/8869/the-man-who-couldnt-stop-a-qa-with-david-adam-on-ocd/
 
NPR- Why OCD Is 'Miserable': A Science Reporter's Obsession With Contracting HIVhttps://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/01/12/376438311/why-ocd-is-miserable-a-science-reporters-obsession-with-contracting-hiv
 
New York Times Article
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/01/books/review/david-adams-the-man-who-couldnt-stop.html
 
Time Article
http://time.com/4890095/obsessive-compulsive-disorder-ocd-joke/
 
The Guardian Article
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/apr/20/the-man-who-couldnt-stop-review-david-adam-ocd-review

 
Psychological Figures and Concepts
Charles Darwin
Egas Moniz
Emil Kraeplin- category approach in DSM
Ivan Pavlov
James Watts
Konrad Lorenz
Mademoiselle F. (Patient zero of OCD)
Paul Broca
Phineas Gage
Rat Man- Ernst Lanzer (Freud Case Study)
Rosemary Kennedy
Sigmund Freud
Walter Freeman
Wilder Penfield
William James
 
Altered perception
Amphetamines
Amygdala
Anal personality
Anorexia nervosa
Anxiety hierarchy
DSM
Authoritarian
Autism
Aversion therapy
Basal ganglia
Behavioral psychologists
Bipolar
Blood-brain barrier
Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD)
Body integrity disorder
Bulimia nervosa
CAT scan
Catastrophizing
Chromosomes
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)
Cognitive psychologists
Cohort studies
Co-morbidity
Compulsions
Deep brain stimulation
Depression
Dimensionality vs. category approach
Disgust
Distress scale
Dopamine
Dualism
Dysfunctional beliefs
Eating disorders
ECT
Ethics
Evolutionary psychology
Extinction
Factor analysis
Fight-or-flight response
Frontal leucotomy
Genotype maps
Glutamate
Grey vs. white matter ratio
Group therapy
Hippocampus
Hoarding
Homosexuality
Huntington’s disease
Hypochondriasis
Impulse-control disorder
Insanity
Insight
Insulin overdose
Intelligence
Kleptomania
Lesions
Lie detectors
Lithium
Lobotomy
LSD
Memory
Meta-analysis
Motor cortex
MRI
Functional MRI
Nature vs. nurture
Neurologists
Neurosis vs. psychosis
Neurotransmitters
Nucleus accumbens
Obsessions
Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)
Obsessive compulsive personality disorder (OCPD)
Oxytocin
Parasomnia
Parenting styles
Parkinson’s disease
Pathological gambling
PET scan
Phobias
Phrenology
Postnatal depression
Postnatal OCD
Prefrontal lobotomy
Prozac
Psychiatrists vs. psychologists
Psychoanalytic movement
Psychopath
Psychosurgery
Psychotropic medication
PTSD
Pyromania
Rational vs. irrational
Reuptake
Schizo-obsessive disorder
Schizophrenia
Self-harm
Serotonin
Skin-picking disorder
SSRIs
Stigma
Stream of consciousness
Substance abuse
Suicide
Systematic desensitization
Thalamus
Tourette’s syndrome
Trauma
Trichotillomania
Twin studies
Withdrawal symptoms
Zoloft

​Becoming 
Author: Michelle Obama
ISBN:  9781524763138
 
APA Style Citation
Obama, M. (2018). Becoming. New York, NY: Penguin, Random House.
 
Buy this Book
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079ZYWJJ8/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
 

​Book Description
Becoming describes Michelle Obama`s life from her early years living on the South Side of Chicago to her post First Lady of the United States (FLOTUS)experiences.  Many of the situations presented in Becomingcan easily be integratedinto a psychology class in particular, in the social and cognitive units of the course.
 
Michelle was raisedin the South Shore neighborhood of Chicago just a few miles south of the Loop. Thiswas a neighborhood that was experiencing “white flight.”  As middle-class black families moved into the neighborhood because of the reasonable home prices, the traditionally White, Irish Catholic neighborhood changed into what some described as a “black ghetto.” Included in the book are some pictures of Michelle`s 2nd-gradeclass which is fairly diverse and her 6th-gradeclass in which all but one of the students is black.  As the neighborhood changed, so did the schools and the local schools began to have a reputation for being poor quality inner-city schools that were not educating their students properly.  Good teachers were leaving, and talented teachers did not want to come to South Shore. Obama describes thefeeling of a failing school, she reports that people know it is happening but they often there is nothing they can do to stop it.  
 
Michelle had an advocate in her mother, who went in to protest the lack of teaching in Michelle`s grade school classroom.  She was able to arrange for Michelle to get tested and Michelle was ultimately placed into the talented and gifted program. This change allowed Michelle to have an enriching grade school experience.  Michelle loved learning and as a result,was givenmore and more challenging assignments. For high school, Michelle tested into Morgan Park Academy which was a magnet school about an hour away from Michelle`s home but also one of the best schools in the city where she was challenged by demanding classes and surrounded by other ambitious students from all over the city.  From there, Michelle was accepted to Princeton University to complete her undergraduate degree and then onto Harvard University Law school before landing a job at a successful law firm in Chicago. 
 
Michelle experienced the impact of stereotyping both at home and in her education.  One of her cousins once asked her “why she talked like a white person.”  This comment resonated with Michelle and her feel like she was somehow an outsider even with some members of her own family.  When she attended Princeton, she was one of the few black students on campus and spent much of her time at the black student center to feel like she had a support network with people whom she could identify with.  Because she was often the only black person in class, she felt pressure to work harder and be better as she did not want people to feel that she was attending Princeton for any other reason other than her academic talent.  Stereotype threat can be a strong force, but in this case,Michelle worked harder and focused all of her energy to overcome the belief some people had that perhaps she was not “Princeton material.”  When things were difficult, Michelle demonstratedGRIT and a belief in herself and her abilities and was able to show her true abilities.
 
Michelle also found friends who had the same academic ambitions as herself, andthey helped to motivate her but also to keep her grounded.  She was good friends with Jesse Jackson’s daughter.  Michelle participated in her first political marches and saw the inner working of what occurred behind the scenes for a public political figure. She also saw the sacrifice and the challenges that a life of public service created for the family of the public figure.
 
Michelle met Barack Obama when she was assigned to supervise him while he completed a summer internship at the law firm she was working at.  At first,she was skeptical as she described people`s excitement about this brilliant young intern, she expected him to be arrogant and entitled, what she found instead was that he was confident but kind and personable.  By the end of the summer they were dating, and Barack quickly introduced Michelle to his passion as a community organizer.  While Michelle accompanied him to many meetings, she understood the concerns of neighbors who were watching their communities being taken over by gangs and drug dealers, seeing businesses move out of the area, and home prices plummet.  Michelle had seen the same thing in her ownneighborhood and felt compelled to do something to help.
 
Eventually, she left her law firm to take a job at the City of Chicago working for Valerie Jarrett, they became fast friends, andMichelle became acquainted with the many challenges facing people in different neighborhoods in the city.  She went on to create a mentor program and then to work as a community organizer for the University of Chicago hospital.  By this time Barack had become a state senator, andMichelle was surprised by the expectation from women in D.C. that she drop everything and move to support her husband. She faced judgmentfrom the other Senators’ wives who thought she should be lunchingwith them in Washington while their husbands were legislating.  Michelle was juggling a successful career, two young children and a husband that was often away for work.  She credits the many others around her including friends, family and babysitters who helped to assist her through this demanding time in order for her to remain committed to the passions of her work.  
 
When Barack decided to run for president, Michelle tried to keep her position at the hospital, buteventually,it became too challenging, she did, however, insist on a schedule that would get her home in time to put her children to bed each night.  She also advocated for her ownstaff as her travel became more constant and hectic.  People were quick to judge her involvement in the campaign, her care (or lack thereof) of her children, her clothing choices and her informal and accessible style of speaking.  She believed that if she told her story honestly and worked hard that her best was all she could give.  She was right andher husband, with her help, was elected the 44thpresident of the U.S.
 
During the almost instant transition into public life, Michelle kept her focus on creating a normal life for her children and creating a platform as the firstlady that would focus on a healthy lifestyle.  Michelle had seen in her own Chicago community the lack of fresh food and had herself experienced a dependenceon processed food and takeout for her and the girls asshe tried to navigate each busy day.  Michelle organized the planting of a community garden on the lawn of the White House and advocated for causes she believed in.  She met with state and national leaders but limited her time for formal events to be certain that Malia and Sasha felt supported in their new environment.  She also brought her mother with her to the White House so that when she was traveling, her girls would have their grandmother to support and make the White House feel more like a home. 
 
Becoming begins and ends with Michelle in her post-WhiteHouse home, making herself a cheesy sandwich.  She sits on her back steps relishing the strange quietness of being home alone for the first time in years (despite the secret service located feet away in the garage).  She expresses gratefulness for the time she spent doing the many things she loved and wonders what will be next. 
 
Other Related Resources
 
NPR:  Michelle Obama tells the story of “Becoming” herself
https://www.npr.org/2018/11/09/666093279/michelle-obama-tells-the-story-of-becoming-herself-and-the-struggle-to-hang-on
 
BBC radio:  Eight amazing things we learned from Michelle Obama
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/2KRlQwwrfbLmpf08pltxtJz/eight-amazing-things-we-learned-from-michelle-obama
 
Playhouse Square:  Becoming: An Intimate Conversation with Michelle Obama
http://www.playhousesquare.org/events/detail/becoming-an-intimate-conversation-with-michelle-obama
 
BOOKRIOT:  The Most Powerful Quotes from Becoming
https://bookriot.com/2019/02/06/becoming-quotes/
 
Time Magazine review of Becoming
http://time.com/5457854/michelle-obama-becoming-review/
 
 
 
Psychological Figures and Concepts
Belief Perseverance
Discrimination
GRIT
Prejudice
Social Facilitation
Stereotyping
Stereotype Threat

​Prepare for the AP Psychology Exam While Playing a Game with iScore5!
 
iScore5 AP Psych is an app dedicatedto helping students score high marks onthe AP examination.  The app makes exam review entertaining and engaging for students. The creators have designed an app that functions asa game and helps students to master over 800 vocabulary words for AP Psychology.  The app, however,goes beyond merely learning basic vocabulary by challenging students to master multiple-choice questions in levels of increasing difficulty.  The questions have all been writtenby experienced AP Psychology teachers or College professors of psychology, all of whom are also AP exam readers.
 
The interactive interface of the app is easy to navigate,and students may choose to return to study mode to practice basic vocabulary at any point during the game.  The app records a running score allowing students to monitor their progress and better understand the concepts they will need to know for the exam. Within each level including the study mode, the questions and practice items are organized according to the fourteen units outlined by the official College Board AP Psychology course outline.
 
The app is also an effective way for students to prepare for classroom unit exams, midterms, and finals.  Because it is portable and easily accessed by phone or tablet, students are more likely to review more often than with traditional review books.  Even if students only have five or ten minutes to review at a time, this will result in an impressive increase in knowledge of psychology content due to the spacing effect.
 
How to Play!
 
Study Level: 800 key concepts for students to master organized by each of the AP Psychology units are presented in a flash card format.  Thestudy level is available for review atany level of the game.  
 
Level 1:  Vocabulary questions at this level are organizedby each of the AP Psychology units and presented in a multiple-choice format.  Level 1 provides 20 terms at a time for each unit,so it is recommendedthat students play this level often as the app generatesa different set of terms each time the student plays.
 
BONUS:  Between each of the levels, students have the opportunity to answer 20 multiple-choice questions for additional points that are basedon the work of famous psychologists mentionedin the official College Board AP Psychology course outline,and the bonus option is available atall levels.
 
Levels 2, 3, and 4:  These levels contain a set of multiple-choice questions in an AP format for each of the 14 AP Psychology units. Each level increases the level of difficulty:  level 2 (general understanding), level 3 (intermediate difficulty), and level 4 (advanced).  The correct answer toeach question is explainedregardless of whether or not the student answered correctly. 
            
Level 5: The final level consists of a 100-question sample AP Psychology exam.  Students are given the same amount of time that they will have during the official AP Psychology exam (1 hour and 10 minutes) and provides them with their total score.   
 
FRQ Practice:  In addition to all of the levels and practice multiple choice questions the app also includes two practice Free Response Questions and rubrics.
 
The iscore5 AP Psych app provides students with a fun and entertaining way to review for the exam.  Because all of the questions are craftedby expert AP Psychology teachers and college psychology professor,the quality of the questions is very similar to what will be seenon the AP exam. Additionally, the app features a Leaderboard that allows students if they choose, to see how they are doing in comparison with others. 
 
Get the App!
The iScore 5 AP Psych app is now available for $4.99 in the iTunes app store for Apple or Google Play for Android. 
iTunes  https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/iscore5-ap-psych-2016/id1084611907?mt=8
Google Play  https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.iscorePysch
 
Volume Discounts
The link to the volume purchase program that Apple provides to educational institutions will allow a school to purchase multiple apps (more than 20) at a discounted price.  The details of the Apple volume discount program can be foundat the following link. 
https://volume.itunes.apple.com/store
https://support.google.com/edu/play/answer/3396716?hl=en
 
Other Apps Available from iScore5
The iScore5 company also offers review apps for other Advanced Placement topics including AP American Government and Politics, AP World History, and AP Human Geography.  Visit the main iScore website for information about these other programs: http://www.iscore5.com.
 
Social Media
For more information about iScore5 AP Psych, visit the company website or follow them on Facebook and Twitter.  Look for review material and study tips to appear on Facebook and Twitter to help students and instructors prepare for the exam.
 
Website: 
http://www.iscore5.com/apreg-psychology.html
 
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/iScore5APPsych/?fref=nf
 
Twitter:  
https://twitter.com/iScore5APpsych
 

Beat Boredom: Engaging Tuned-Out Teenagers
Author:  Martha Sevetson-Rush
ISBN-13: 978-1625311498
ISBN-10: 1625311494
 
APA Style Citation
Rush-Sevetson, M., & Palmer, E. (2018). Beat boredom: Engaging tuned-out teenagers. Portland, ME: Stenhouse.
 
Buy This Book
https://www.stenhouse.com/content/beat-boredom
​

Book Description
 
Beat Boredom is a guide from a veteran teacher that provides detailed and specific ideas for helping students stay engaged and master difficult material. Martha Sevetson-Rush is a master teacher who was a journalist before spending twenty-five plus years in the classroom teaching journalism, language arts, United States history, economics, personal finance, government, and psychology.  Currently, she teaches AP Psychology as well as AP Microeconomics and AP Macroeconomics.  She has been the recipient of the John Morton Excellence in the Teaching of Economics award in 2014, and she has been recognized in Minnesota as Journalism Educator of the Year (2014), TIES Exceptional Technology Educator (2014), JA Capstone Teacher of the Year (2012) and Economic Educator of Excellence (2012).  Martha delivers workshops for teachers for the College Board as a consultant for AP Economics and the Council on Economic Education as well as through her educational consulting firm, NeverBore LLC.
 
Sevetson-Rush articulates the causes of disengagement and boredom and provides concrete solutions for use by instructors across a variety of disciplines.  Research suggests that boredom is a real problem and that high school juniors report being bored in class 58% of the time and boredom has been linked to a variety of negative outcomes including truancy, increased dropout rates, and lower achievement, and drug use and delinquency.  Sevetson-Rush also cites research that  indicates there are four main causes of student boredom (ranging from mild, to unpleasant, or in some cases actually painful) which are the belief that the work they are doing lacks meaning, activities are repetitive, students feel confined in their environment, or students feel that they have little control over what happens in the classroom.  Some high school students spend most of their day sitting in assigned seats, passively listening to teachers while taking notes, or working quietly on practice problems.  Although some amount of repetition and direct instruction is necessary for difficult concepts, Beat Boredom offers a variety of methods of what she refers to as highly engaging, motivating instruction designed to reach all types of students, but especially those who are unmotivated and easily discouraged.  Rush-Sevenston asks, “Do we want to treat high school as an endurance test, something to be suffered through?  Or do we want high school to be an opportunity for genuine learning and growth?  Do we like lecturing to a zoned-out audience and blaming them when they don’t remember?  Are we satisfied with a system that works for only some of our students, the ones who are already motivated?”
 
The author acknowledges that utilizing the active learning methods presented in the book is not a guarantee of success and that there are potential concerns to look out for when implementing active learning strategies.  The five potential concerns when using actice learning strategies are: (1) While engagement is required, it is not the only piece that is needed for successful learning.  She does not suggest that teaching is merely entertainment, “anyone could get students to pay attention by juggling, handing out money, running a karaoke session, or letting students gripe about unfair school policies,” but what is needed is engagement with a purpose. (2) Although she discusses ways to use technology in active learning, she does not suggest that technology alone is the answer to beating boredom.  (3) Using active learning does not necessitate the loss of instruction in content.  Choosing to use highly engaging methods such as problem-based learning, simulations, and discussions does not mean that traditional content is not taught. (4) Avoid thinking in dichotomies in which you must teach exclusively by active learning or through direct instruction and whole class discussion.  (5) The use of active learning methods requires practice and training, and the best lessons are perfected over time often through continual reflection on one’s practice and incorporating input from fellow teachers and students.  
 
The conversational tone of the book speaks directly to teachers through the use of classroom examples of student reactions to lessons that are easy to relate to regardless of the content or area where you teach.  The book consists of six main chapters each outlining a specific active learning strategy complete with examples across a range of content areas including psychology, government, and economics.  The active learning strategies covered involve storytelling (giving students someone or something to care about), discussion and debate (trust students to drive meaningful conversation), problem-based learning (let students struggle with real and unsolved problems, simulation (immerse students in thoughtful role plays), competition (give students a chance to prove themselves), and authentic tasks (encourage work that matters outside of school).  Within each chapter, the author defines each strategy, articulates the benefits of the method, provides instructions on how to implement the strategy along with examples, addresses challenges related to the strategy, and ends with specific tips for teachers.  The teacher tips include ideas for getting started, tips for building on your current use of this particular active learning strategie, and ways to assess the effectiveness of the method for your students.
 
Beat Boredom: Engaging Tuned-Out Teenagers is full of amazing ideas and specific tips for using active learning methods in a variety of types of classes that both increase student engagement and promote deeper learning. 
 
Other Related Resources
 
Beat Boredom Study Guide
A free study guide to accompany the book is available as a downloadable PDF on the website of the publisher.  The publisher also offers a variety of other books related to teaching and learning and organizes professional development sessions, mentoring, and other services with the authors including Martha Sevetson-Rush.  Check out her recent post about an app called TeachFX which uses AI to visualize for teachers what portions of class are composed of teacher talk v. student talk. 
https://www.stenhouse.com/content/beat-boredom
 
Author Website and Blog
Visit the website and subscribe to author Martha Sevetson-Rush’s blog for engaging high interest discussions of current educational issues and tips for teaching. Rush’s website includes several free resources.
https://martharush.org/
 
https://neverbore.org/
 
The Story of Psychology – Reference Book
Morton Hunt’s The Story of Psychology provides interesting and detailed biographical backstories on the most influential thinkers related to the scientific field of psychology, as well as excellent summaries of their key theories and ideas. This book can be used to build engagement through the active learning strategy of storytelling for many areas of the psychology curriculum.
Hunt, M. M. (2007). The story of psychology. New York: Anchor Books.
 
Make it Stick:  The Science of Successful Learning (Brown, Roediger, & McDaniel)
This powerful book about learning is an excellent resource referenced by Sevetson in Beat Boredom and the website for the book has additional useful materials for classroom use.
https://www.retrievalpractice.org/make-it-stick
 
 
Psychological Figures and Concepts
Phineas Gage
Henry Molaison (Patient H.M.)
Daniel Pink
Achievement gap
Active learning strategies
Backward design process
Classroom management
Collaborative learning
Creativity
Debriefing
Decision-making problems
Divergent thinking
Hippocampus
Intrinsic motivation
Problem-Based Learning (PBL)
 
 

Author:  Richard E. Nisbett
ISBN-10: 0374112673
ISBN-13: 978-0374112677

APA Style Citation
Nisbett, R. E. (2015).  Mindware: Tools for smart thinking. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
 
Buy This Book
https://www.amazon.com/Mindware-Tools-Thinking-Richard-Nisbett/dp/0374112673/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=&dpID=61YCTcmKbhL&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=detail
​

​

​Book Description
 
Will what you learn in college affect how you think about everyday life? Yes. The book Mindware: Tools for Smart Thinking addresses how scientific and philosophical thought can be taught to affect reasoning in everyday life. The key is how events are framed and coded. The concepts in the book are important, teachable, and central.
 
There are six main parts to the book. The first part is about thinking about the world. It explains how we think, the mistakes we make, how to fix those mistakes, and how to improve our thinking. In order to make fewer errors in judgment, we should be careful of inferences, be aware of schemas, recognize how incidental and irrelevant perceptions can affect our thinking, and recognize the power of heuristics.  In order to improve our thinking, we should pay more attention to context, recognize the power of the situation for ourselves as well as others, and know that people can change. In daily life we should not assume that we know why we think the way we do.
 
The second part is about choices. It focuses on economics and real-life examples for the reader.  The third part is about making categorizations of the world. It explains attributions and more specifically the fundamental attribution error. The fourth part is about causality. The focus is on experiments. The fifth part is about types of reasoning. The abstract and formal deductive reasoning are associated with Western thinking. While the dialectical reasoning is associated with Eastern thinking.  The sixth part is about what makes a good theory. For example, the principle KISS- Keep It Simple, Stupid- provides the basis for a good theory. The principles of reductionism, hypothesis testing, confirmation bias, and falsifiability are also addressed. Overall, this book points out how our beliefs can often be wrong, but we can also be more aware and compensate for this. The tools offered by Nisbett, with a little practice, can enhance your smart thinking.
 
Other Related Resources
Author website
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~nisbett/
 
The Psychology of Thinking Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKm4VoExc0Q
Q and A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2Ci4ro75fM
 
The Guardian Article
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/09/world-in-context-mindware-tools-for-sharp-thinking
 
Psychological Figures and Concepts 
Alfred Binet
Aristotle
B.F. Skinner
Charles Darwin
Edward Thorndike
Ivan Pavlov
Jean Piaget
John Darley and Bibb Latané
Martin Seligman
Norman Triplett
Plato
Robert Zajonc
Rorschach
Sigmund Freud
William James
 
Actor-observer bias
Animal models
Availability heuristic
Bystander intervention
Chi square
Cocktail party phenomenon
Cognitive dissonance theory
Concrete operations
Confirmation bias
Conformity
Conservation
Context-dependent
Correlation
Cost-benefit analysis
Culture
Death instinct
Deductive reasoning
Dialectical reasoning
Dispersion
Dispositional attribution
Double-blind
Evolutionary theory
Extrasensory perception
Formal operation
Framing
Fundamental attribution error
Halo effect
Heuristics
Hypothesis
Illusory correlations
Implicit Association Test
Inductive reasoning
Inference
Insight
Interview illusion
Introspection
IQ tests
Law of large numbers
Learning
Mental illness
Mere exposure
Modeling
Multiple regression analysis (MRA)
Natural experiments
Normal distribution
Oedipus complex
Overjustification effect
Pearson correlation coefficient
Percentile rank
Phobia
Population
Postformal operations
Problem-solving
Pseudoscience
Psychoanalytic theory
Psychosexual stages
Random assignment
Range
Reference group effect
Regression
Regression to the mean
Reinforcement learning theory
Reliability
Representative heuristic
Sample
Sample bias
Scatterplots
Schemas
Scientific method
Self-enhancement bias
Self-selection
Set point
Situational attribution
Social desirability bias
Social facilitation effect
Social influence
Social psychology
Spreading activation
Standard deviation
Statistically significant
Statistics
Stereotypes
Subliminal perception and persuasion
Surveys
Syllogisms
Theory
Tragedy of the commons
Transference
Trauma
Unconscious mind
Validity
Ventromedial hypothesis
Vicarious reinforcement theory
Within design