As described in this article, a video game called EdeavorOTC received FDA clearance as an ADHD treatment in August of 2024. You can find the game here. The assertions made about the game’s effects on ADHD should provide your students with a good opportunity for honing their critical thinking skills.
This article in Psychological Science in the Public Interest provides a dramatic illustration of the gap that can exist between attitude change and behavior change. Its authors meta-analyzed the results of 224 programs for the primary prevention of sexual violence and concluded that although these programs succeeded in changing men’s attitudes, beliefs, and knowledge in a positive direction, they failed to produce reductions in victimization or perpetration.
An example of the influence of descriptive norms on hotel guests’ compliance with requests to re-use towels rather than have them changed every day can be found in this study that compared three kinds of phrasings on the request cards. Cards that emphasized the high percentage of guests who re-use their towels resulted in the highest rates of compliance.
An article found here describes the prevalence, phenomenology, and impact of misophonia, a little known disorder characterized by decreased tolerance for and negative reactions to certain sounds and associated stimuli, which contribute to impairment and distress.
Research on excitation transfer suggests, for example, that people who have been aroused by physical exercise become angrier when provoked and experience more intense sexual feelings around an attractive person than do people who have been less physically active. Physiological arousal from fear, like arousal from exercise, can also enhance emotions, including sexual feelings. This article provides another example, namely that the arousal created by expressing anger in “rage rooms” appears to enhance sexual interest and even sexual activity—in the “rage room” itself or, in some cases, in the parking lot outside!
This article from the UK’s Daily Mail provides an example of a rather questionable stress reduction device as well as an excellent opportunity for your students to think critically about assertions that are likely to carry extra weight because of their association with an international celebrity, Meghan Markle.
One of the authors had a recent experience that provides an excellent example of how a mental set can lead to poor decision-making, and in this case, considerable expense in time and money. It began when he encountered a problem with his two-year-old desktop computer. At random times, whether he was navigating web pages, writing a document, reading a pdf, or engaging in any number of other routine operations, the screen would suddenly start scrolling, or dozens of duplicate web pages would start opening, rendering the machine uncontrollable, almost as if it had been possessed by some evil digital demon. Having purchased a premium support package, he called the manufacturer’s help desk. Thus began a three-month series of almost daily calls during which dozens of technicians conducted remote troubleshooting sessions, some of them lasting for hours. The techs tried everything they could think of, starting with updating drivers, uninstalling and reinstalling various kinds of software, and searching for and adjusting settings found unimaginably deep in the bowels of the system. Some technicians undid what others had done and assured the author that this would do the trick. It never did. Next came reinstallation of the operating system, and later, a series of onsite technician visits who replaced the main printed circuit board and, eventually, the hard drive. Nothing worked.
Finally, at the end of his rope, and frustrated at trying to work with a computer that seemed to have a mind of its own, the author ordered a new machine. He connected it to his display, his wireless keyboard and mouse, and spent a day setting up software, downloading backed up files and doing all the other chores required when a new computer arrives. Late that afternoon, the screen started scrolling uncontrollably. After staring in disbelief at this familiar rogue behavior, the penny finally dropped: If the problem reappeared with a new computer, it must reside in another component, namely the display, the keyboard, or the mouse. He did not have a spare display, but the new system had arrived with a wired keyboard and mouse. He disconnected his wireless keyboard, connected the wired one, but the problem remained. Then he disconnected the wireless mouse, connected the wired one, and was hit head on by the stunning realization that his three-month ordeal was caused by a faulty mouse that had been soundlessly clicking and scrolling its way through his applications. When he purchased and installed a new wireless mouse, the “computer” problem disappeared and has not returned.
One technician did ask the author if he had a wired mouse available to test, but because the answer was no, the topic was dropped. The mouse might have attracted more attention if the author had thought to mention to a technician that throughout this entire episode, he was replacing mouse batteries about every 10 days. That “separate” problem was annoying enough that he had searched the internet for tips on how to prolong mouse battery life, but it did not occur to him to connect the battery problem to what his mental set told him was a computer problem. The final cost of his failure to consider that his original hypothesis might be wrong included the price of an unneeded new computer, at least 100 hours of pointless troubleshooting sessions that could have been spent in productive work, and many sleepless nights born of frustration and annoyance.
This YouTube video provides a great, and funny, example of problem solving by a young child. It might also be useful for illustrating accommodation and assimilation in developmental psychology.
The importance of attribution in everyday life is exemplified by a recent article on political tribalism. It presents the results of experimental research showing that people tend to evaluate political statements and actions more positively if attributed to a politician they support than to one they do not support. A shorter summary of this research and the impact of political tribalism can be found here.
The following story provides an amusing, though costly example of the real-world importance of JNDs, in this case, for weight. During an extended stay in Italy, a man we know went to the grocery store, taking with him the shopping trolley (an opaque bag on wheels) provided in his rental apartment. Returning from the store, he thought he had taken all his purchases from the bag, but a small bottle of laundry detergent was still inside. The bottle was light enough that the man did not notice that the bag weighed a little more now than when it was empty, and it still “felt” empty when he wheeled it back to the store a few days later. On the second visit, he again used the trolley as a shopping cart, putting new items into it. So imagine his surprise and frustration when he put all those items on the checkout counter and discovered that they included the detergent he had purchased previously. There was no way that, with his minimal Italian language skills, he was going to be able to provide a description of Weber’s law to convince the store clerk that he had already paid for that item, so he ended up buying it twice.
