close up photo of person holding pizza

It’s another fall Sunday in the U.S., so it’s another day of TV commercials featuring NFL players. I know that being a middle-aged woman does not make me the target demographic, but the Little Caesars ad featuring George Kittle still rankles. Let me get this out of the way first. Yes, that is Caesars plural, not Caesar’s possessive. I can make peace with that. I can believe that there are a bunch of little Caesars, not just one who has pizza. Now for the commercial. Give it a watch. Again, I recognize I’m not the demographic, but I don’t understand how watching 11 people (includingRead More →

Cannabis silhouette clip art psd

An estimated 43.6 million people in the U.S. who are 12 or older—that’s 15.4%—reported using marijuana in the last month. The largest group of people who used in the last month? They would be 18 to 25 year olds; 25.2% (8.6 million or so) (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2024a). How about daily use? In 2023, an estimated 15.7 million people in the U.S. who are 12 or older—that’s 5.6%—reported using marijuana daily or almost daily. The largest group of daily users? Yes, that would be 18 to 25 year olds again; 9.2% (3.1 million or so) (Substance Abuse and Mental Health ServicesRead More →

On the right side of this blog site is an area called Psych-Related News. Scroll down for the most recent news. In my own news feed, I scroll through a few hundred articles (and 30+ comic strips) every day. When I see an interesting article (or comic strip) that may be appropriate for one of my book chapters or for this blog, I tag it. It’s the most recent 15 of those tagged articles (or comic strips) that appear in the Psych-Related News area. If you have your own news feed reader (I use Inoreader) and would like read the Psych-Related News at your leisure,Read More →

Cartoonists are often astute observers of people. Since cartoonists usually don’t name the psychological concept that they are illustrating, their cartoons can provide excellent fodder for class discussion. Before we get to the discussion, note that the comic strip below is part of the Go Comics family which uses Andrews McMeel licensing. Be sure to read their classroom usage statement to ensure that you do not inadvertently violate copyright law. Before beginning this activity, make your students understand the different types of emotion regulation (McRae & Gross, 2020). Situation selection. We select a particular situation in order to experience a particular emotion. For example, ifRead More →

Friends and colleagues, We’ve had a good run! This blog started in 2009 as a way for me to keep track of how to do stuff. And then you all came along and learned right along with me. Perhaps you noticed that my posts to this blog have been reduced to barely a trickle? These days my energy has moved away from technology to psychology. Writing has kept me busy. For example, I have three psychology textbooks: Introduction to Psychology (with Charles Stangor), Principles of Social Psychology (with Charles Stangor; publishing Fall 2024), and Teaching Psychology: A Step-by-Step Guide (with Doug Bernstein and Steve Chew).Read More →

Not infrequently I am asked about my thoughts on AI and the future of technology more generally. Here are some thoughts. In 1927, Charles Lindbergh was 25 years old when he flew solo across the Atlantic. It took him 33.5 hours to fly The Spirit of St. Louis from New York City to Paris. When he returned to the United States, he spent a year travelling the country promoting the wonders of flight. He said that he could envision a time when as many as 15 people could fly on a plane. In 1968 and at the age of 66, he met with the ApolloRead More →

I was saddened to receive this email yesterday (Nov 26, 2023). Dear Nudgers We are sad to say that despite the support we’ve received from you over the years, Nudgemail is losing money to operate. As much as the love we’ve had for this product has never stopped (we ourselves still use it to this day), we unfortunately cannot afford to support the efforts. Nudgemail will be shutting down in December – but with any luck this could be temporary. If you would like to remain notified if we have the capacity to resume in the future, please let us know here. In the meantime, ifRead More →

Everyone who writes needs a solid pdf and reference manager. I’m a big fan of Zotero. Zotero is free, and you can back up 300 MB worth of stuff on their servers for free. If you want more space (and I do), it’s $20/year for two GB, $60/year for six GB, or $120/year for unlimited back up space. While I could go on and on about Zotero’s features (and I have in workshops), in this blog post, I want to focus on how Zotero handles article titles. When we import article data into Zotero—through a doi search or by dragging a pdf into Zotero—the titleRead More →

Windows users have a built-in screenshot app: Snipping Tool. The Snipping Tool got an upgrade. You can now use it to extract text from an image. After taking your screenshot (shout out to LearningScientists.org), look for the text extraction icon. Clicking the text extraction icon causes Snipping Tool to identify and spotlight everything that looks like text. When it finishes, it will give you two new options: Copy all text and Quick redact. Clicking the down arrow next to Quick redact allows you to choose auto redaction for phone numbers and email addresses. After clicking “Copy all text,” I pasted it here: Cientista LEARN TORead More →

There is a lot of confusion around copyright. What can you use? What can’t you use? How much can you use? A few years ago, I participated in an excellent Educause course on copyright hosted by Thomas Tobin (University of Wisconsin-Madison), and what I learned has been a tremendous help to me. I hope this helps you, too! (Disclaimer: I am not an intellectual property attorney. If I were an intellectual property attorney, well, you’d probably already know that.) To determine whether you can use something without violating copyright, you need to answer four questions. Keep in mind that all four answers are on aRead More →

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