Snow-capped mountain

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In: 08. Relationships, 11. Social Psychology, Intro to Psych, Principles of Social Psych

On January 18, 2025, dating partners Thomas P. and Kerstin G. went mountain climbing on Austria’s highest mountain, the Grossglockner. Kerstin never returned (Bell, 2026). Thomas was an experienced climber. Kerstin had some experience but not enough for the winter conditions that included strong winds (45 mph, 74 kph) and below freezing temperatures (17F, -8C). Prosecutors say the couple got stuck on the mountain and that Thomas P failed to call the police and did not send any distress signals when a police helicopter flew overhead at around 22:30. Video footage from the helicopter showed the couple still climbing. The judge noted that no distressRead More →

Credit score equals conscientiousness?

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In: 08. Relationships, 12. Personality, Intro to Psych, Principles of Social Psych

After covering the Big Five and/or the HEXACO personality traits in Intro Psych, ask your students which trait or traits are most likely to correlate positively with credit score and which trait or traits are most likely to correlate negatively. (If you want to play along, take your guesses now. The answers are in the next paragraph. As a quick reminder, your choices are conscientiousness, openness, extraversion, emotional stability, and agreeableness.) One study found a small positive correlation between credit scores and conscientiousness. It was about the same size as the positive correlation between credit scores and educational attainment. Interestingly, the authors found small negativeRead More →

Gallup data showing generational differences in sexual orientation identification

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In: 02. Research Methods, 08. Relationships, 10. Emotions & Motivation, Intro to Psych, Principles of Social Psych

Earlier this month, I attended the National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology (NITOP) in what I hope will be their new conference home at the Grand Hotel Golf Resort & Spa in Point Clear, Alabama. It’s a relaxing location with excellent food and friendly staff. The three keynotes at NITOP 2026 (Lisa Diamond, Claude Steele, and Markus Brauer)  gave me a lot to think about, as NITOP keynotes usually do. Lisa Diamond is Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Gender Studies at the University of Utah. Her talk was titled “Your textbook is out of date: What we know now about gender and sexuality, andRead More →

AI-generated image of a child hunched over, leaning on a cane with wild grey hair and cardigan

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In: 06. Development, 11. Social Psychology, 12. Stereotypes, Prejudice, & Discrimination, Intro to Psych, Principles of Social Psych

This is the eighth 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. **** Ageism is alive and well. In Breaking the Age Code (Levy, 2022), I learned that some K-12 schools celebrate the 100th day of school by inviting students to dress up as a 100-year-old person. Because, you know, if you’re going to teach age stereotypes, you should make it fun. Show students these costume ideas on the School Run Messy Bun website (Becker, 2023). Working in small groups, ask students to identify the ageist beliefsRead More →

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In: Intro to Psych, Principles of Social Psych, Teaching Thoughts

As we witness the proliferation of AI, faculty are returning to in-class assessments. Faculty chatter on social media and the sudden increase in blue book sales provide the supporting data (Shirky, 2025). I have been a long-time fan of a modified interteaching model (Frantz, 2019). Students would be given a list of essay questions based on the chapter to be read for the coming week. They would answer the questions and bring their answers to class. Students would then work in small groups to identify the questions that gave them the most difficulty, and that’s what I would lecture on. Students would then revise theirRead More →

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 →

shallow focus photography of black microphone

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In: 02. Research Methods, 06. Social Perception, 11. Social Psychology, Intro to Psych, Principles of Social Psych

During the COVID lockdown, Yale psychological scientist Brian Scholl “found himself reacting unexpectedly to two of his colleagues. One was a close collaborator with whom Scholl usually saw eye to eye, and the other was someone whose opinions tended to differ from his own. On that particular day, though, he found himself siding with the latter colleague” (Nuwer, 2025, p. 18). After the meeting, it occurred to Scholl that his close collaborator “had been using the junky built-in microphone of an old laptop, whereas the one with whom he typically disagreed had called in from a professional-grade home-recording studio” (Nuwer, 2025, p. 18). Could audioRead More →

person going up the stairs

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In: 02. Research Methods, 04. Self, 06. Development, 12. Stereotypes, Prejudice, & Discrimination, Intro to Psych, Principles of Social Psych

This is the fourth 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. **** In my last post, I wrote about how beliefs about aging can affect memory now and even a whopping 38 years later. Researchers have found similar results for physical functioning. Becca Levy and  colleagues “found that those with more positive self-perceptions of aging in 1975 reported better functional health from 1977 to 1995, when we controlled for baseline measures of functional health, self-rated health, age, gender, race, and socioeconomic status” (B. R. Levy etRead More →

photo of old woman sitting while talking with another woman

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In: 01. Welcome to Psych, 06. Development, 12. Stereotypes, Prejudice, & Discrimination, Intro to Psych, Principles of Social Psych

This is the second 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. ******* Psychological scientist Becca Levy’s stereotype embodiment theory “proposes that negative age beliefs bring about detrimental health effects that are often, and misleadingly, characterized as the inevitable consequences of aging. At the same time, positive age beliefs do the exact opposite; they benefit our health” (Levy, 2022, p. 15). Reread the above paragraph. The societal messages that tell us about the horrors of aging are slowly killing us. You’ll be unsurprised to hear that weRead More →

smiling man and woman wearing jackets

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

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about aging. Several years ago, I had a friend in her 80s tell me that internally she didn’t feel any different than she did when she was in her 40s. While I’m gaining distance from my 40s but still quite a ways away from my 80s, I understand what she was telling me. I feel no different today than I did when I was in my 40s, and I don’t see that changing. What I do see changing is how others interact with the me that they I assume I am. My wife read Becca Levy’s 2022 book BreakingRead More →