Psychology Self-Help | Self Help

I've been reading from Smithsonian magazine for a number of years, but had never thought to visit their website due to the relatively few directly psych-related articles in the paper-version.  In their most recent issue (May 2010) there is an excellent article on memory and how memory works.

 As I perused the online version of the article, I noticed that they had several other sections with articles of note.


Articles on the Brain
Articles on Psychological Issues/Topics
Thought Innovation & Behavior--which could have some articles of interest


Overall, if you like to read quality writing on any topic, I recommend the magazine/website.  Great stuff there.

Posted by Chuck Schallhorn

There are a host of products students can purchase to help them prepare for the AP Psychology Exam. Review books currently on the market include:

• Barron's AP Psychology Barron's Book with CD ROM (Allison Weseley & Rob McEntarffer)
• Cliffs AP Psychology(Lori Harris et. al.)
• D&S Marketing AP Psychology (Michael Sullivan)
  
• Holt McDougal Fast Track to a Five: Preparing for the AP Psychology Examination (William James & Michael McLane)
• Kaplan AP Psychology (Chris Hakala)
  
• McGraw-Hill 5 Steps to a 5 AP Psychology (Laura Maitland & Pam Hannah)
• Princeton Review Cracking the AP Psychology Exam (Princeton Review)
  
• REA AP Psychology (Don Sharpstenn, Karen Brown & Tia Patrick)
  
• Spark Notes AP Power Pack for AP Psychology (Spark Publishing)
  

For more information, simply click on the book's title. Please feel free to leave a comment regarding any of the above books. In April of 2009 this blog did a survey on the various review books. Go to http://teachinghighschoolpsychology.blogspot.com/2009/04/ap-psychology-exam-review-books_01.html to see that survey. Written by Kent Korek

I started doing research for Kent's post about summer opportunities in psychology for high school students and realized that it would be easier to create a new post that put this in a comment.

Hello student! Thanks for writing. I found a slew of summer programs that are related to psychology through some “aggressive Googling” and most of them I don’t know a thing about, but I did want to pass them on.

One summer program I know about is called TIP (Talent Identification Program) and while it is part of Duke University, they also host camps at many other campuses around the world. It's an excellent program! Unfortunately the deadline is passed for this summer, but you can learn more here. They do teach several related courses such as Psychology and The Brain, Intelligence and Creativity.

Something I just learned is that TIP now has summer courses online. This summer they are offering Abnormal Psychology (which is taught by two instructors I know, David and Lindy Norman, and they're great!), Neuroscience: Biology of the Brain, and Social Psychology. Deadline to apply is May 7, so hurry!

I found a link at a local high school of dozens of similar summer programs - check them out! (PDF)

Here are several other summer programs I found that offer psychology courses:

• Stanford
• Columbia
• Illinois Institute of Technology
• Boston University
• Cornell
• Arizona State (psychology and music)
• Xavier
• Hofstra
• Susquehanna

This should keep you busy for a while (as it did me). Good luck!
--Steve

I received the following email from a student in Florida. While I know of a number of opportunities for undergraduates, I am not aware of anything for high school students. Please leave any possible ideas in the comments section below.

Hi Mr. Korek,

I'm a high school student in Florida and I am profoundly interested in the field of psychology. I've been reading your blog for a while, as I find many of your posts very interesting, even though some are geared toward teachers.

Anyhow, I anticipate going to college to be able to pursue my interest in psychology, and I'd like to do something psychology-related while still in high school to help me stand out from the thousands of other college applicants that will be applying at the same time as me. (I'm only a sophomore, so I've got time... but it's never too early to start planning).

So I was wondering if you could come up with a blog post or article detailing some opportunities that could give high school students hands-on experience in the psychology industry or a sub-field, such as summer internships, summer camps, or anything really. I think a post offering such insight would not only benefit me, but hundreds of other students across the nation who are interested in the amazing science of psychology.

Thanks for any insight.
Regards,

Eager psychology student.

On 60 Minutes this Sunday Katie Couric looks at the use on college campuses of "smart drugs" -- apparently, though, she's just referring to the use of prescription drugs for ADHD (like Adderall and Ritalin) which are being used by people who don't have the disorder to "boost their brain power." An excerpt is below:



Watch CBS News Videos Online




Posted by Steve

This New York Times profile of endurance athlete Jure Robic describes his amazing athletic feats and his (and his supporters) claim that his "madness" during races help him continue and often win. Mr. Robic was also featured on a recent episode of Radio Lab about "Limits", and both the article and the podcast do a great job explaining the "central governor theory": the idea that our brain holds some energy/resources in reserve for emergencies, and some athletes may trick the brain into releasing these resources. The Radio Lab podcast includes interviews with Mr. Robic and other endurance athletes. Athletes in your class may be very interested to hear about how these people push and break their own "limits."

(The other stories on this same podcast about the "Limits of the Mind" and the "Limits of Science" are also fascinating - listen to the researchers talk about their "Erequa machine" and prepare to have your mind blown . . .)


Posted by Rob McEntarffer

With the AP Psychology Exam just around the corner, my (Kent) thought was to conduct a quick survey about guessing strategies on the AP exam. With the quarter-point adjustment for incorrect answers, teachers/students have developed a variety of philosophies on when to and when not to guess on a multiple choice question. In the past, I have found this to be one of the more debatable topics regarding the exam.

The current results of the survey will be revealed once you have cast your vote. Thank you for your participation.

Online Surveys & Market Research

N=131 as of 06/11/10.


Thanks to all those who have participated. Please feel free to further explain your strategy in the comments section below.

The new big thing in the field of psychology and its natural connection to other sciences is in the field of behavioral economics.  I will do some posts on some recommended books later, but for now, you can get your feet wet with an episode of NOVA on PBS called Mind Over Money.  I've collaborated with my economics colleagues and have gained some fascinating insights into human behavior as a result of learning more about this field of decision making and money.  It also will give you additional examples of any aspect of cognitive psychology.

The show first airs on April 27 and is viewable online on April 28, 2010.

Chuck Schallhorn

Michael Britt (hi Michael!) just emailed an excellent question to the Society for Teaching of Psychology listserve, and I thought the Teaching High School Psychology blog community might like to think about his question too. Michael asked: Is Zimbardo's prison study an experiment? Does it meet the criteria for experiments? I often discussed the ethical issues involved in the study but I think its interesting to think specifically about the methodology, and it might be a good exercise for students to think about what criteria a study needs to meet to "qualify" as an experiment, then examine the Prison study to see if it meets those criteria.


Posted by Rob McEntarffer

As many of you are aware, the latest revision (May 2010, May 2011) of the AP Psychology Course Description book, commonly referred to as the "Acorn Book", includes listings of famous psychologists in almost all of the unit descriptions. Throughout the course of this past school year many of us have gone to great lengths to include these psychologists in our AP Psychology units and assessments.

As we rapidly approach the day of the 2010 AP Psychology Exam, I was looking for a way for students to study/review these famous people from the history of psychology. Last year I had students in my AP Psychology classes form study groups to create Wiki outlines of the fourteen AP Psychology units (http://teachinghighschoolpsychology.blogspot.com/2009/05/wiki-pages.html). My students seemed to find the outlines very helpful. This year I would like to expand the idea to the famous psychologists and beyond my school.

I have created a Wikispace page of famous psychologists at http://famouspsychologists.wikispaces.com waiting to be completed by AP Psychology classes from throughout the United States and possibly the world. My hope is many of you AP Psychology teachers and students will join forces to create a fantastic review tool. Together I'm betting we can create the world's largest AP Psychology study group.

Please take some time out of your busy schedule to visit the Famous Psychologists Wiki page and see if you and/or your classes would like to help with the project. I could see this as a great one or two day lesson in your classes as they prepare for the AP Psychology Exam. I am sure students will be excited about having your name and school name included on the Wiki site.

Lastly, as this is the first time I am taking on this type of adventure, please be patient with all those technological problems that I know are going to happen. It is one thing to try something of this nature with my students knowing when (not if) something goes wrong they will understand I am learning right along with them. It is a completely different thing to do the same in front of my peers throughout the country. I thank you in advance for your help and patience.

Christopher Chabris's recent article about a fascinating conference in the Wall Street Journal got me thinking about the possibilities for high school psych students. Chabris describes some of the talks at Harvard's "Hard Problems In the Social Sciences" conference (you can find video of the talks here and a facebook page with an ongoing discussion here). Conference presenters all offered their ideas for the really big, really hard, really "over-arching" social science ideas that need to be tackled. How would high school students respond to a question like: "What are the most important psychological questions that have yet to be answered? Why are they so important? How could a researcher start to research the answers?" Might be an intriguing after AP test discussion?

Posted by Rob McEntarffer

This is such an excellent idea:how can you get people to take the stairs instead of the elevator? As you recall, there was a novel solution offered in Sweden last year when stairs were converted into a giant piano to convince people to bypass the escalator next to it. But we can't all afford to do that -- isn't there something more simple?

It turns out that there is. Scienceblogs posted earlier this month* about a study from the Journal of Physical Activity and Health in which researchers posted a sign next to the elevator on a college campus which said “Walking up stairs burns almost 5 times as many calories as riding an elevator." The sign also indicated the directions to the nearest stairs and had a cartoon of the school's mascot taking the stairs. The results were that the use of the stairs increased for both stairs which were plainly visible nearby and those which were hidden from view -- there was an overall increase of 34% that lasted one month after the signs came down! This is a great example of how research can be done ... have your students try to figure out how to gather the data. The original journal article can be found here.


*(I completely missed this on Scienceblogs, which I normally follow closely, but spotted it today on Dan Pink's blog.) -- Posted by Steve.

This post may not be especially useful for instruction, but I thought I'd share it in case anyone needs a smile from a good (in my opinion) quote today. Terry Pratchett is one of my favorite authors, and he often comments on scientific topics in the midst of his creative, chaotic, and VERY funny fiction novels. In the quote below, Pratchet comments on the "we only use 10% of our brain" myth:

"It is a popular fact that nine-tenths of the brain is not used and, like most popular facts, it is wrong. No one would go to the trouble of making the human head carry around several pounds of unnecessary gray goo . . . It is used. And one of the functions is to make the miraculous seem ordinary and turn the unusual into the usual. Because if this were not the case, then human beings, faced with the daily wondrousness of everything, would go around wearing big stupid grins, similar to those worn by certain people who occasionally get raided by the authorities to have the contents of their plastic greenhouses very seriously inspected. They'd say 'Wow!' a lot. And no one would do much work." (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)


Posted by Rob McEntarffer

There may be some concern about the content of this post.  As a group, we've considered the options and believe it best to expose the teachers to this issue.  While some students may stumble upon this entry and links, we feel that the exposure to teachers outweighs potential risk of student exposure.  Students will find this information in one way or another.

In short, these sites are ones that promote being thin as a lifestyle or see being thin as an ideal, sometimes called, "Pro-Ana" or pro-anorexia. While promoting statistics and information about eating disorders, that masks a reality that is very different. The content of these sites can be disturbing, but teachers need to realize the mind-set and thought processes of their students who may share these viewpoints. The views are of those who are not pro-recovery. At best, reading these blogs is fascinating. At worst, it is disturbing. In any case, they are worth checking out.

The first site is: http://www.mymirrorimage.moonfruit.com/
The site contains several galleries of thin women. There is one of severely obese women--but these are there only as a reminder of how the author feels about her own body.
To me this quote sums up this site: "I'm now back at University until the end of June. The doctor has pushed me into seeing a CPN again, and so i might have to see one again. I'm not going to stop though - I know as much as it might be better for me, i don't want to recover yet."

This next site is a blog called Yummy Secrets. The blog is noted as having a "content warning," but can be accessed by anyone. To quote from this blog (italics mine),
"This is a ProAna blog. For basic accurate information on the ProAna movement, please read Solidarity in the Proana Community, a well-researched article on Associated Content.com. For my personal opinion on ProAna read this post.

If you have an eating disorder and are seeking help for recovery, I wish you success, but please find help elsewhere. This blog will not help you and may be triggering. A good place to start is Something-Fishy.org. I wish you the best of luck and health.

If you are against ProAna and wish to express it, please do so by sending me an email. I will be happy to discuss it with you, but I'd prefer my blog didn't get spammed up with arguments."

One blog linked from the previous site is called, I Am Not Ill. There are dozens of other blogs for those who wish to follow others' views and experiences/perceptions of food and other aspects of life.

While you may not like the sites, they will give you some insight.

I would like to post a letter I have written to our brilliant public mental health service. I think it is fairly self explanatory. Needless to say I myself was purple with rage after the incident. Writing a letter and then posting it to the public is very therapeutic indeed.



Dear Director of Mental Health Services,

I am writing to express some serious concerns I have arising from my recent contact with mental health services.

On Monday I had a session with a client and developed very serious concerns about his mental health. he had expressed non specific but clear threats to kill himself and to kill others. He left the session early and left in a fury.

As soon as the client left my rooms I telephoned his parents. they explained that the client had had previous contact with police and mental health services. In June of last year his parents had called police because of his violence and they attended. he taken to A&E but left there police. Unsurprisingly he walked out. he returned to his parent's home and became more violent. His parents were again unsurprisingly not keen to access the services of the police or mental health again.

Following this conversation I telephoned police because of concerns about his safety. I wanted to pass information to the police so that if his parents needed to contact them they would respond appropriately. I wanted police to ensure if he was transported to hospital he would not be released without adequate assessment and supervision. They accepted the information gratefully.

I then telephoned the mental health assessment team with the same intention. My training tells me that I should provide information to those who might come in contact with my client. My training tells me that people might have been in danger both within and without the mental health service. I was particularly worried that my client might have been released prematurely. I was providing a service to both my client, his parents and mental health staff.

However, I was very clearly told that no information would be taken from me by the assessment tea. I was informed that I must provide all information through central intake. I was told that there was nothing that could be done with the information I was trying to provide. I was put through to the central intake line and left a message. By seven pm no-one had returned my call, I left work for the night. As I write I am not sure how the situation ended. I can only hope the client was never taken to either Mandala or A&E. I sincerely hope there was no violent outcome.

Regardless, I am horrified about the lack of regard, or adequate process provided our clients on this occasion and the blatant professional disregard I experienced. I am a very experienced mental health clinician and was treated with absolutely no respect. I can only wonder how our mutual clients are treated. I can also only wonder about the reaction of the public and of the Area health Service if this situation did indeed go terribly wrong.

regards,

Renee Napier
Clinical and Forensic Psychologist

Celebrities and eating disorders can make for a potentially potent introduction into the eating disorders topic--after all, who has their bodies scrutinized more than celebrities and athletes? 

One site that offers brief descriptions and small pictures is CaringOnline. On the left side of this page is a list/link of nearly 100 famous people who have suffered eating disorders.  Each link goes to a brief description and includes some quotes.

A great idea is becoming a reality next week -- and you can be part of it! Bloggers Shelly Blake-Plock and Steve Katz have created the Teach Paperless for Earth Day campaign, where teachers sign up and pledge to teach without handing out, creating or accepting paper on April 22. Teachers are also encouraged to share their ideas for what they will do this day instead of using paper, so please share your ideas there and in the comments here as well!

(I've pledged to go paperless but haven't yet decided what to do next Thursday!)
--Steve

Intriguing findings from this Science article about possible connections between social fear, genetics, and racist responses. The authors theorize that racist responses are more closely tied to an in-born social fear (out group bias) than they are to specific learned responses to race, and they use a group of children born with Williams Syndrome to try to test the idea. Kids with Williams Syndrome lack a few genes that are related to social fear, causing them to ber very sociable and have no fear of strangers (sometimes called "cocktail party personality").

This research could be a good place to start discussions about several topics: how creative researchers have get when studying complex behaviors (such as racist responses), how tough it is to operationalize some variables (the researchers in this study have to work hard to carefully measure "racist responses" - it sounds like they used something similar to the implicit associations test), and the links between genetics and, well, everything!

To me this study is a good example of the interconnectedness of psychology - our "chapters" are in many ways artificial boundaries between sets of ideas. The AP Psych. free-response questions always try to break down these barriers (requiring students to use knowledge from more than one chapter to answer a single essay question) and this research makes that reality evident.




Posted by Rob McEntarffer

Today's site is called About-Face.  The site has been of great use for both sociology and psychology classes when dealing with the role and portrayal of women in our culture.  The site calls out the magazines and advertisers about their respective questionable images in a portion called, "gallery of offenders."  However, this is not just exploitation.  The site also has a gallery of winners, featuring ads that have real women in real situations.  There is also a great deal of sarcasm that comes with explaining the offenders--pretty cool if you ask me.

Warning--some images are offensive, either for their violent or sexual aspect of objectifying women--you should preview the site to see if it's appropriate for your school/community.  The kids will likely be fine and some will be outraged.  It's the adults that may find something objectionable. 

The "facts page" links to many issues including body image, media, eating disorders and disordered eating, cosmetic surgery and obesity.

Whether you draw from the site some particular references or have your students explore, it will make for some spirited discussion related to body image, women in the media, and more.  Additionally, the blog makes for some very interesting reading.  Go for it.

The folks who brought you the series This Emotional Life have scheduled a webinar on eating disorders for Wednesday, April 14 at 1pm EDT/ 12pm CDT/ 10am PDT. The webinar is entitled Recovery from an Eating Disorder: What does real recovery look like? and will focus on these issues (quoting from the site):

• The challenges of the recovery process, including access, shame, triggers and relapse
• The different types of treatment for people suffering from eating disorders
• Advice for those seeking help for themselves or a loved one with an eating disorder

"Join Dr. Ovidio Bermudez, Medical Director of the Eating Disorders Program at Laureate Psychiatric Clinic and Hospital, and former eating disorder patients, Allison Kreiger, Sara Pollan and Troy Roness to learn about the challenges and success of recovery from an eating disorder. Through the lens of three personal journeys from eating disorders to wellness, this compelling discussion will explore what recovery looks like and offer insights from the perspectives of both those who have lived through the recovery process and a professional with years of experience treating those on the journey to recovery."

P.S. Does anyone hate the word webinar besides me? I can't explain it but I do. Ugh!

Recently, there has been talk about using scenes from the television show "Lie to Me" to illustrate some of Paul Ekman's work on facial expressions.  Recently, season one was added to Netflix--not just the disc version, but the streaming version.  If you've ever used Netflix streaming through your computer, you'll know that you can move through the show/movie to get to the exact scene using visual cues (sorry, no scene markers like on DVDs).  Good stuff if you have the Netflix account.

For those who love the show, the second season begins in June.  Set those Tivos and DVRs now!

Of course, we are all fascinating by illusions.  Now, it seems that there is an artist who creates them using Adobe Photoshop. His name is Erik Johansonn, a Swedish designer.  While there are many examples, here are a couple of which we will tease you with below.  You can find these and more of his work at this site:  http://www.alltelleringet.com/

Of course, we are all fascinating by illusions.  Now, it seems that there is an artist who creates them using Adobe Photoshop. His name is Erik Johansonn, a Swedish designer.  While there are many examples, here are a couple of which we will tease you with below.  You can find these and more of his work at this site:  http://www.alltelleringet.com/

Here's a great quote for you today:

"Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal."

- Henry Ford

What is your goal? Do have something you really want and desire right now?
Are you working towards achieving it and if not, what's stopping you?

It's amazing that when you really go for what you want, nothing can stop you but as soon as you begin to doubt - guess what? You see problems, obstacles in your way.

You can either focus on the goal you want to achieve or on the problems facing you and the obstacles in your path. You cannot do both.

If you want to succeed and achieve your desires in life you need to always have your eyes on your goal.

Read more about goals here

Its enough to put the wind up any well meaning but faintly disorganised and ill-disciplined psychologist. I recently recieved some information from the psychologists registration board about a deregistered psychologist. It prompted me to look at a facinating web site that gives a huge amount of detail about decisions made with regards to deregistration. It gives great detail about the kind of accusations, the evidence provided and the situation that has arisen. The web site is found by googling NSW Psychologist Registration Board Decisions. It has one case where a women psychologist fell in love with her Muslim client in a prison, and another where a male psychologist was treating his fellow christian clients with prayer after their satanic ritual abuse. very interesting stuff.

Anyway, one case caught my eye for lots of reasons. A male psychologist ended up being "reprimanded" for his poor treatment of a woman who he treated in a community mental health centre. She was a sexual abuse survivor and had been diagnosed with "Borderline personality Disorder." She had a history of intense and unstable relationships.

The upshot of the story is that they also developed an intense relationship. The psychologist saw her more regularly than normal and for longer. They had physical contact that included hugs, cheek kisses and caresses. They spoke aobut their intense physical attraction and they spoke about sex. The psychologist disclosed too much information about his sex life and history. He used "inappropriate" language. They became too close. But they did not have any sexual contact.

He argued that she complained because he would not have sex with her. Only after she was rejected did she get angry and "traumatised."

For me this is a master lesson in managing clients who "push buttons." Clients with sexual abuse histories often function on a very sexual level all the time. They operate on their sexuality. They prolong eye contact, they idealise verbally (eg, you are the only one who understands), they lightly touch, they stand closer, they attend carefully, they use familiar language. They (often) unknowingly invite us into a close, personal relationship. We sometimes fall for the subtle interplay between ourselves and our clients.

The repremanded psychologist did just that. He fell for his client and fought against his sexual response. He did not manage the situation well. He did not seek help from colleagues, or manage to hand her over. He did not recognise the warning signs early enough to change his manner. In fact he "went along with it" for too long. Very dangerous indeed.

Just updated my new membership site "Aspire to be You"...

So far I've got about 40 members who are enjoying full membership at a ridiculously low introductory price of just $4.97 per month.

Here's the monthly program which will build into a complete self help course over the months:


Month 1 - getting started

- Important Definitions - I explain the most important concepts for you.

- Attitude and mindset - some words of warning and help which will set you up for success.

- What is the reality of your problem? -

Month 2 - Goal Setting and Happiness

Plus a FREE e-book "10 ways to be happy"

Month 3 - Public Speaking

Plus a FREE e-book "Prepare for public speaking success"

There's lots more inside and lots more to come.

I'm really excited to tell you about this site because this is the first time I've tried to run a membership site.

At the moment you can still get in and take advantage of the special offer while I develop the site.

Sign up today and you'll get a FREE 30 day trial PLUS my new CD "A More Confident You"