This was a busy week. I just didn’t have the time to follow through and read as many links, so I don’t think I retweeted as many links as past weeks. I did eventually pick out five links to share for this week.

• Take the Psychology 101 Quiz

About.com Psychology (Kendra Cherry) – January 26, 2012

Test your psychology knowledge with this web-based multiple choice test covering general psychology (for my students, the questions include material from BOTH PSY101 and PSY102). For reference, I missed 1 question. I strongly suspect it was a personality theory question. Seeing that I consider myself a dyed-in-the-wool SOCIAL psychologist, I’m o.k. missing one question on personality theory.

• 10 Great Reasons to Earn a Psychology Degree

About.com Psychology (Kendra Cherry)

Like the name of this blog says, there’s more to psychology than crazy people (or the study of abnormal human behavior & thought). Not only is psychology a popular major, it is also a highly useful major. As Kendra Cherry points out, a psychology major can open the door to numerous careers – not just those in the obvious psychology areas. I know several successful business managers who credit their success in business to their background in psychology.

• Feeling Lonely? Take a Warm Bath

Psychology Today: Choke (Sian Beilock) – January 25, 2012

In her Choke blog for Psychology Today, Sian Beilock writes about recent research* (Shalev & Bargh, 2011) that has revealed that some parts of the brain that process information about temperature also process information about emotions such as loneliness. Researchers, Shalev and Bargh of Yale University, used both correlational and experimental methodology to demonstrate that physical warmth helps ease the negative emotions of loneliness.

• ‘Adrift’ in Adulthood: Students Who Struggled in College Find Life Harsher After Graduation

The Chronicle of Higher Education (Dan Berrett) – January 25, 2011

A year ago, University of Chicago Press published Academically Adrift by Richard Arum and Josipa Roska, an eye-opening book about the academic performance of college students in the United States. In this Chronicle of Higher Education article, Dan Berrett writes about a follow-up study* by Arum and Roksa. In their follow-up on the SAME students they studied in Academically Adrift, Arum and Roska find that those students struggling in college are now struggling in regards to employment and lifestyle.

• Decisions: We’re Maxed Out Say Montreal Researchers

Montreal Gazette (Hannah Hoag – Special to the Gazette) – January 22, 2012

In this article, Hannah Hoag reports on a variety of research* that demonstrates the same outcome: Human willpower is a limited resource and making many decisions depletes this resource. The current phrase for the phenomenon is “decision fatigue”, but the idea has its origins in research by Walter Mischel in the 1960s.

*Note to students: Yes, I always say you shouldn’t cite a secondary source in place of the primary source. I still say that, but deviate from my own advice here due to the purpose of my blog posts. I’m not trying to use the current articles as support for my own ideas. I’m just trying to make you aware of the original research.

Beginning today, my PSY102 (General Psychology II) students will become regular readers of this blog. They will hopefully become commenters, as well.

Please welcome them to the blog and engage in conversation with them when appropriate.

Students, please realize that your comments (once approved – see Comment Policy) are visible by anyone who reads this blog. Please take the time to present yourselves in your best light. Also, remember you can follow my Twitter feed @ae_stuart.

This is what happens when one procrastinates in starting a post until Friday afternoon. It doesn’t get finished before leaving for the day, and then Friday evening fun and Saturday laziness lead to post abandonment.

The challenge this week was finding links that might be useful for my students as well as informative for other readers. I also wanted to find a balance between generally useful links and research-based links. I’m not certain I really achieved those goals, but here are five seven links I wanted to share this week.

• How to Overcome Procrastination

About.com Psychology (Kendra Cherry) – January 18, 2012

As I have stated earlier, I am the queen of procrastination. However, I am at least aware of my procrastination and have learned how to balance my productivity with my desire to put things off. I think many people are still struggling to figure out how to be productive. Kendra Cherry offers four major cognitive distortions that lead to procrastination as well as suggestions for overcoming procrastination.

For my students, I also recommend you read Kendra Cherry’s post on How to Take Great Psychology Notes from January 19, 2012.

• Dear Student: I Don’t Lie Awake At Night Thinking of Ways to Ruin Your Life

Forbes (Art Carden, contributor) – January 12, 2012

Art Carden is writing specifically about his Economics courses, but his statement applies for any course in academia. As much as there are times I enjoy the idea of being an evil professor, I generally want to be helpful to my students. However, to be truly helpful, students need to know where I’m coming from in regards to my expectations and grading. My philosophy is very similar to Art Carden’s.

• Emotional News Framing Affects Public Response To Crises, MU Study Finds

Medical News Today – January 17, 2012

Researchers Glen Cameron of the University of Missouri School of Journalism and Hyo Kim of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore have released the findings of a study examining how the framing of news coverage of a disaster impacts people’s emotional response to the disaster. They exposed participants to either an “anger-frame”, which blamed the organization for the crisis, or to a “sadness-frame” that focused on the victims of the crisis. Cameron and Kim found that, in comparison to the “sadness-frame”, the “anger-frame” led people to pay less attention to the news and to develop negative feelings about the organization. The findings have implications not only for corporations and how they handle the news coverage of crises, but also implications for ourselves in taking a second look at how we react to news coverage of events.

• Tim Tebow, Virginity, and Other Important Matters

Psychology Today: Sexuality Today (Stephen Snyder, M.D.) – January 15, 2012

Stephen Snyder writes an open letter to Tim Tebow in his Sexuality Today blog for Psychology Today. Dr. Snyder cautions Tebow, and other abstinence-before-marriage practitioners, that waiting until marriage to have sex does not necessarily make sex more special after marriage.

• Where Is the Excitement in Responsible Living?

Psychology Today: Inside the Criminal Mind (Stanton E. Samenow, Ph.D) – January 19, 2012

In his Inside the Criminal Mind blog for Psychology Today, Dr. Samenow discusses how criminals seek an excitement that comes from their lifestyle outside the realm of normal societal conduct. Dr. Samenow argues that simply finding a different source of excitement is not enough to deter criminals.

• New CDC Report: More Than Half of Teenage Girls Who Had Unintended Pregnancies Had Not Used Contraception

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RJWF): Public Health News Roundup – January 20, 2012

RJWF presents the findings of a recent CDC report that shows that more than 50% of teen girls who had an unintended pregnancy between 2004 and 2008 reported that they did not use contraception. If this statistic is not scary enough, the CDC report also states that despite the drop in teen pregnancies in recent years, the United States still has the highest teen birth rate of any developed country.

The full study report can be read in the CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) Morbidity and Mortality Report Weekly (MMWR) for January 20, 2012.

• Therapy Animals: Companions or Consumption?

PsychCentral: World of Psychology (Faith Deeter) – January 20, 2012

I acknowledge that this final link is one of a more personal nature for me. I have the good luck of living up the road from Blue Star Equiculture, so in recent years, I have had the opportunity to learn more about the welfare of working horses.

In her article, Faith Deeter is raising awareness of recent change in legislation allows slaughter houses in the United States to resume the slaughter of horses for human consumption.

Nothing like a freak October storm to derail my efforts at maintaining this blog.

Personally, I was without power for 5 hours shy of a full week. Thankfully, the kennel had a generator and was willing to take in my dogs until my power was restored. A good friend let us crash on her living room floor.

Things just piled up trying to catch back up from the storm, prepare for Spring registration, and deal with the crazy of finals and the end of the semester. Posting continually got put at the bottom of the to-do list.

But now, it’s a new year and the start of a new semester. That means a new start to keeping up this blog. To increase my motivation to post, I’ll be working the Friday Five into at least one of my classes. I always have a few students who can be counted on to remind me to do things.

I had a tough time picking out five links to share this week. The danger in following more people on Twitter is that I have more links to sort through. I also found a lot of information interesting this week, and I had many more retweets this week than I had last week.

• Tips for Reading Scientific Research Reports

Psych Central: World of Psychology (Jamie Hale) – October 22, 2011

This column provides good advice for my students, but also any reader. I will admit that often I do only a cursory scan of the brief report (or press release, in some instances) of the studies I link to on this blog and through Twitter. Generally, I’m not too worried about this practice because most of the links are coming to me from professional organizations that I trust to a certain degree.

• 8 Tips to Stop Procrastinating

Psych Central: World of Psychology (Gretchen Rubin) – October 25, 2011

I am the queen of procrastination, and I should take some of the advice given in this column. Friends and family members will probably tell you that I become quite a bear when I’m under procrastination-generated pressure to finish a task. My biggest problem is that I’ve learned over my many years in academia (both as a student and a professor) just how much procrastination I can get away with and still get projects done “on time”.

• British Appetite for Zombies Is Becoming a Growing Trend Due to a Feeling of Powerlessness Shared By Many

Medical News Today – October 28, 2011

What’s a Friday Five before Halloween without some Zombies? Dr. Nick Pearce illustrates how modern depictions are very different from their original conceptualization. He points out that, unlike early portrayals of zombies as undead slaves of voodoo masters, the modern zombie (e.g., the zombies of the late 1960s through today) has no controlling master. Pearce argues that this modern zombie is analogous to the hordes of individuals who feel powerless to the mass consumption of consumer goods.

If you or someone you know is able to attend, Dr. Pearce will be giving his talk as part of the Economic and Social Research Council’s (ESRC) Festival of Social Science 2011 on November 2nd at the Lit and Phil, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 1SE at 7pm. His talk will be followed by a screening of White Zombie (1932).

• Zombie Novella

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Office of Public Health Preparedness – October 18, 2011

This was actually a link I received and retweeted last week. However, I couldn’t resist staying on the zombie theme. The CDC has created a fun graphic novel “Preparedness 101: Zombie Pandemic” to teach the importance of emergency preparedness. A PDF version of the graphic novel is available from the CDC through the link above.

• Eat, Drink, and be Scary

Association for Psychological Science – October 28, 2011

Seeing that I already had a Halloween theme going this week, I was pretty excited when this press release came in from the Association for Psychological Science (APS). Several psychologists are stating that we like Halloween because it provides a safe (and fun) way to be scared.

In an attempt to get myself blogging more often, I am going to start with a weekly post of five psychology-related stories that I found of interest in the past week. Most of these items came through the various Twitter feeds I follow. (Speaking of Twitter, follow me:  ae_stuart.)

• Relationship Between Musical Aptitude and Reading Ability

Medical News Today – October 17, 2011

Science has long known that auditory memory and attention are essential parts of musical ability. However, researchers from the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern University found that musical ability is related to verbal memory and literacy in childhood. The research is published in BioMed Central’s open access journal Behavior and Brain Functions.

• Caresses Enjoyed Vicariously, Too

PsyPost – October 17, 2011

Researchers from the Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, have discovered that watching another person being caressed leads to the same neural activity as being caressed oneself. The study has been published in the Journal of Neuroscience.

• Lessons from Sherlock Holmes: The Importance of Perspective Taking

Scientific American: Guest Blog (Maria Konnikova) – October 18, 2011

Konnikova writes about how people are poor at looking at the world from another’s point of view. She argues that sometimes a simple change of location, particularly if that location is the same as another’s, will help us to see things from the other person’s perspective.

• Busted! Gender Myths in the Bedroom & Beyond

msnbc.com (Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer) – October 19, 2011

In a new review of the psychological literature, University of Michigan psychologist Terri Conley and colleagues have revealed that commonly held beliefs about gender differences are not as clear cut as they seem. The research has been published in the latest issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science.

• Different Reading Devices, Different Modes of Reading?

PsyPost – October 20, 2011

A study conducted by the Research Unit Media Convergence of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) in cooperation with MVB Marketing- und Verlagsservice de Buchhandels GmbH examined differences in reading across e-book (Kindle 3), tablet PC (iPad), and paper in both young and elderly adults. Despite participants’ preference for printed books, the results of the study demonstrated that printed books did not improve how fast or how well information is processed.

A common criticism I hear about studies in psychology, and particularly about my area of social psychology, is that our results simply reveal what we already knew from basic common sense.

I just ran across the “Dogs sneak food when we’re not looking” article by Jennifer Viegas for Discovery news on msnbc.com. Jennifer reports on a study by Shannon Kundey and colleagues of when dogs would steal food. The quick findings: dogs will steal when they know they can get away with it (that is, if the human isn’t watching them and the bowl is quiet).

If, like me, you’re a dog owner, you might say “Well, duh, of course the dog will steal if it won’t get caught.” However, that statement, and the research by Kundey and colleagues, demonstrates that dogs have a theory of mind. They are able to place their own actions in the context of others. Dogs know that when the human is watching, they’ll get caught.

Still thinking this is just learning from experience? Kundley and her colleagues found that shelter dogs (those who had not likely been pets) performed the same as pet dogs. So, it’s unlikely that the behavior is a result of living in close context with humans.

Matt Richtel’s New York Times article, from June 6, 2010, titled “Your brain on computers: Hooked on gadgets and paying a mental price” is an interesting read. The author describes the cognitive, emotional, and social impact of being constantly linked to the internet & other wireless gadgets.

I finish teaching my morning class on Friday, so maybe I’ll find some time for some more substantial posts.

In prepping for my summer courses, I have run across some interesting reads. However, as I should be prepping for my summer courses, I don’t have time to expand comment.

1. Nancy Gibb’sTime Magazine article on the 50th anniversary of the birth control pill.

2. Jesse Ellison’s Newsweek article on her parents’ failed attempt at raising a gender neutral child.

3. Dan Ariely’s wired.co.uk article on the economy and decision making. (Directed to this by Association for Psychological Science and their Twitter feed – PsychScience.)

I have just finished the Spring Semester and am about to begin teaching for the summer term. As I settle into the groove of summer teaching, and have a little more time on my hands, I will (hopefully) add some interesting content.