man in gray long sleeve shirt sitting on brown wooden chair

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In: 06. Development, 10. Emotions & Motivation, 12. Stereotypes, Prejudice, & Discrimination, Intro to Psych, Principles of Social Psych

This is the seventh in a series of posts based on Becca Levy’s book Breaking the age code: How your beliefs about aging determine how long & well you live. **** Ask your students to rank order these longevity-lengthening factors from least impact to biggest impact. Low cholesterol Low blood pressure Low body mass index Not smoking Positive beliefs about aging And the answer is… Low body mass index (BMI). On average, a low BMI tacks on only one extra year of life. This is one reason BMI is a poor measure of health. Not smoking comes in second. Non-smokers, on average, extend their livesRead More →

assorted books on shelf

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In: 01. Welcome to Psych, 02. Research Methods, 03. Biopsych, 04. Sensation & Perception, 05. Consciousness, 06. Development, 07. Learning, 08. Memory & Cognition, 09. Intelligence & Language, 10. Emotions & Motivation, 11. Social Psychology, 12. Personality, 13. Psychological Disorders, 14. Therapy, Intro to Psych

Intro Psych is the most difficult course we teach because we are not experts in the vast majority of the content. We rely on our Intro Psych textbooks—the one we adopted for our class and a stable of others that our students will never see—to help bring us up to speed in our weaker areas. Those who are lucky enough to have the funds go to conferences where they can hear experts who bring our knowledge up to date. For example at the 2025 Psych One Conference, we heard Kenneth Carter talk about how we can use high sensation-seeking behavior to help our students thinkRead More →

Psi Chi Journal of Psychological Research

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In: 02. Research Methods, 03. Biopsych, 04. Sensation & Perception, 05. Consciousness, 06. Development, 07. Learning, 08. Memory & Cognition, 09. Intelligence & Language, 10. Emotions & Motivation, 11. Social Psychology, 12. Personality, 13. Psychological Disorders, 14. Therapy, Intro to Psych

Are you looking for new ways to introduce original psychological research to your Intro Psych students? In this freely available journal article, authors identified 14 articles from the open access Psi Chi Journal of Psychological Research, each relevant to one of 14 typical chapters in an Intro Psych textbook (Rouse et al., 2025). For each identified article, the authors provide the reference information for the article, the abstract, key terms, and five questions. The questions are intended to be used by an instructor to prompt students to reflect on each of the sections of a journal article. For example, for an article on procrastination (GregoryRead More →

Red Bull crew member looking at Red Bull logo

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In: 10. Emotions & Motivation, Intro to Psych

It’s not unusual to see professional athletes lose their composure. Given the intensity of emotions athletes may experience during competition, it’s a wonder that more athletes don’t lose their cool or that it doesn’t happen more often. During the 2025 Spanish Grand Prix, Red Bull’s driver, Max Verstappen, lost his cool. After a series of frustrating incidents on the track, Verstappen intentionally rammed another car (Gitlin, 2025). After describing the following five emotion regulation strategies (McRae & Gross, 2020), invite students to work in small groups to identify which strategies Verstappen could have used in the moment that may have helped him not attack anotherRead More →

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In: 02. Research Methods, 05. Consciousness, 06. Development, 07. Learning, 10. Emotions & Motivation, 11. Social Psychology, Intro to Psych

In this New York Times article (gifted to you), the writer Frances Dodds tells us the tragic story of how her sister’s four children came to live with the writer’s parents, the children’s grandparents (Dodds, 2025). Grandparents being responsible for raising their grandchildren is not an unusual occurrence. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that in 2023, 2.1 million grandparents were doing so. With very little effort, I can think of many “grandfamilies” I currently know or have known, including neighbors, my extended family, colleagues, and students. In my teaching and writing, I try to honor such families by referring to caregivers rather than parents. WhenRead More →

man in black shirt and gray denim pants sitting on gray padded bench

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In: 06. Development, 10. Emotions & Motivation, Intro to Psych

My father died of cancer when I was a teenager. He was 52. I didn’t realize how young he was until I surpassed his age. My father died in middle age. It wasn’t his middle age. I’ve never liked covering death and dying at the end of the Intro Psych lifespan chapter. By putting death after discussion of being an older adult, the implication is that that is the right time to die. Everyone who dies before their 80s or 90s has evidently done life wrong. That doesn’t sit well with me. In my Intro Psych textbook, the previous author had placed death and dyingRead More →

snowy pine forest at copper mountain co

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In: 10. Emotions & Motivation, Intro to Psych

The 2024-2025 ski racing season is underway. Mikaela Shiffrin, at the age of 29 holds the record for the most World Cup alpine skiing wins with 97. She blew past the previous record holder, Ingemar Stenmark, who had 86 wins. Stenmark’s record was set in 1989 and was thought to be unbeatable. In alpine skiing, winners are commonly determined by tenths of a second. In a recent race, less than a second and a half separated the top eight racers (Zaccardi, 2024). All racers work to improve their technique in order to improve their speed. Their goal is not to win; their goal is toRead More →

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In: 10. Emotions & Motivation, Intro to Psych

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 →