In my recent exploration of artificial intelligence, I stumbled upon a fascinating article entitled, “Instructors as Innovators: a Future-focused Approach to New AI Learning Opportunities, With Prompts" which introduced the concept of goal-play interaction between students and AI. The authors provided a prompt for this interaction, which I found to be an intriguing application of AI to create interactive, educational experiences for students.

I adapted the prompt provided in the article to be more aligned with psychology concepts, particularly for students learning about cognitive distortions. I experimented with various AI models, including Google, Gemini, Meta, Perplexity, and ChatGPT, and the results were truly enlightening.

The goal of this exercise is for the individual to assume the role of a counselor, while the AI embodies a person exhibiting cognitive distortions. However, I must note that the outcomes were not always predictable, as different language models sometimes altered the dynamics of the interaction.
Despite this unpredictability, I found the interactive conversations to be incredibly valuable, sparking insightful discussions around cognitive distortions and Aaron Beck's groundbreaking work in this field. I invite you to try this out and share your experiences with your students (and with me as well as I'd love to hear how you've been using - and possibly modifying - this prompt). I am continuously refining this experiment and welcome any suggestions to enhance its reliability and effectiveness.

I encourage you to engage in this thought-provoking exercise and explore the potential of AI to create engaging and meaningful conversations around psychological concepts. As you'll see, I instructed the AI to draw from content on the Psych Central site, so thanks to them for providing very clear explanations of various types of cognitive distortions. Happy experimenting!

Instructions: copy all of the text below (without the lines) and then past it into whichever AI large language model of your choice. I have tried this in the free version of ChapGPT as well as paid versions of Perplexity, Gemini, and Meta, and it works well, though differently, in each one.

#SexualAssaultAwareness

#MentalHealthMatters

#EndTheSilence:

#SupportSurvivors

#TonicImmobility

#MentalHealthAwareness

You have no doubt asked yourself this question after watching a play: "How did those actors memorize all those lines?". In previous episodes of The Psych Files I have discussed a few of the techniques actors use to do this, but on this episode I have an interview with a professional actor, Jared Kelner, who wrote a fascinating book exactly on this topic. It's called, naturally, "Line?". If you're interested in psychology, memory, and how actors accomplish the amazing feat of memorization - especially for long plays containing many many lines (perhaps for a Shakespearean play). Here are the answers. 

Why do we find it so hard to put down our phones? I'll give you 5 reasons drawn directly from psychological theories on how we learn, how teenagers are strongly affected by reward and how we are all drawn in by mystery.  There is of course no easy answer for how to get teens to put down their phones but I'll share what I'm doing with my teenagers.  

I grew up eating baloney without ever giving a thought to where it came from.  But psychology is all reflecting on who you are, why you think the way you do and why you do what you do.  So let's explore our eating behavior: why do we think it's weird or wrong when we hear that in some cultures people  eat cat meat or insects or bats.  Is it really that different from eating cows and pigs?  How are we influenced to think that some foods are okay while others aren't...?    

What if you could study for your psychology test in 24 second sound bytes on your iPhone? Now you can. I recently contacted Parviv - the founder of an app called Clammr. Typically, people use Clammr to stay on top of the news, listen to podcasts or "top tweets" and other humorous audio clips. I thought it would make a great test prep tool. So check it out: download Clammr on your iPhone and search for Psych Fest Prep. You can choose from 7 major psychology topics and start studying!

London needs help and only a person trained in psychology can fix this. There are just too many Londoners using their subway (the "tube") and instead of standing side by side as they go up the escalator, people are doing what they always do - they stand single file on the right of the escalator so that people in a hurry can pass on the left. That's a fine social norm when there aren't that many people, but if London transport is going to be usable as the population grows they're going to have to get people to behave differently.

How can we break such a strong norm? It's not just London's problem. When you go up the stairs which side do you stand on? The right of course, and you expect the people coming down the stairs to stay to their right. When someone doesn't follow the norm we can get pretty annoyed.

So what can we do to create a wide scale change in behavior? We have to apply a little social psychology.

What comes to mind when you think "nursing home"?  Not so good, right?  Let's change that.  Let's use what we learn from psychology to create exciting places for seniors to live.  We've got the tools provided by Maslow's Hierarchy and by the Self Determination theory.  Here's one way we could revolutionize the "senior years".

Passengers on an airplane spring to action when a stewardess needs help - but a neighborhood in New York City does very little when a woman is attacked. What's different about these situations? How can we take what we learn from the airplane and apply it to the attack? Lecturing the neighborhood residents probably won't help. Can we do anything to the way the neighborhood is laid out to encourage interaction among residents and a greater sense of interdependency among them? That's what we explore in this episode of The Psych Files.

How can we use a little psychology to get you to slow down when you're driving? You'd be surprised.  Very often road signs like "Slow" or a posted speed limit of, say 20 mph does not work.  Drivers go past these signs and nothing bad happens so after a while they're ignored.  We try to make it more personal with signs say, "Drive as if your kids live here", but often that doesn't work.  How about something trickier: what if we enlisted the help of those 3D sidewalk artists?  What could they possibly do?  You'll find out.  

Snapchat got a pretty bad rap over the past few years, but did you know that you actually can use this video messaging app in ways that really do help students see the applications of what their teachers are learning in their everyday lives.  In this episode I share my experiences using Snapchat with my psychology class.  Yes it has it's limitations, but it also has some strengths that I think are worth looking at.  Join me as I explore snapchat and give you samples of "snaps" I sent my students.

You've probably heard about these Brain Training games. Do they really help you keep your mind sharp? Will they prevent cognitive decline as you get older or will they slow the effects of Alzheimer's disease? In this episode I review some recent studies on the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of these popular games.

If you have not seen the movie Analyze This with Robert DeNiro and Billy Krystal, then you really should. It's not just a funny movie, bit also gets a lot of things about therapy right. So many movies portray psychotherapy so unrealistically but this movie, while it takes a lot of liberties with the therapeutic process, gets some things right and gives you a pretty good idea of how therapy progresses. Through sound bytes from the movie we'll see examples of catharsis, freudian defense mechanisms of denial and minimizing, the analysis of dreams, the breaking of therapeutic boundaries, and Rogerian techniques of reflection. A fascinating movie to take apart and that's just what I do in this episode of The Psych Files.

Another of my episodes on mnemonic techniques you can use for just about any purpose. I recently discovered a pegword system in a great book called, "Line?". It's a book for actors that was written by a memory expert like myself, Jared Kelner. Check out his book on Amazon. In this episode I demonstrate how this memory tool works and how an actor might apply it to memorize a famous speech from Shakespeare's comedy, Twelfth Night. A very fun little system. I show how the system could be sued to memorize the firs t three lines of the speech, but it certainly could be used to remember the entire speech.

What if you could swap bodies with someone else? What would it be like to be someone of the opposite sex? A different race?  We're getting darn close to being able to do that with new techniques like the Rubber Hand Illusion, the Enfacement illusion, and now the Full body illusion.  You can now virtually switch bodies with someone else and thanks to our mirror neurons and other brain systems, you can have a very different sense of body ownership.  Come listen to me talk about the latest research on this topic and some potential intriguing applications to problems like bullying.

A small number of men cross dress and many movies and broadway shows feature cross dressers (transvestites), so obviously many people find it fascinating and those who cross dress typically enjoy it. Why?  What does it mean about the people who do it?  I was recently cast as Albin/ZaZa in the musical version of the movie "La Cage Aux Folles" so I've been doing a lot it recently.  I decided to take a closer look at cross dressing and see what psychologists think about it.  Along the way, I'll also look at some of the ways we determine how or if a behavior, thought or feeling is "abnormal"

Do "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation" or are we actually pretty happy most of the time?  As it turns out humans are far more resilient than you think.  Ever heard of the term "affective forecasting"?  It's something we do every day and very often we make mistakes doing it.  In this episode you'll learn more about positive psychology from the authors of a new book called Pollyanna's Revenge.  Another myth put to rest: "depressive realism" - the idea that there's an advantage to being depressed - that depressed people are more realistic about the world than non-depressed people.  That's not so either and I think you'll find a lot of interesting information in this episode about what affects your own level of happiness.  Join me for a fascinating discussion about how we really react to the ups and downs of life.

You may have been heard that taking a nap or going to sleep after you learn something helps you to retain it (which is true), but you may also have heard that drinking coffee helps your memory. So which is it? How can you drink coffee AND take a nap? Well, apparently you can get the benefit of both - if you do it right. In this episode we not only learn about the so-called "students' coffee" but we learn about the "coffee nap". If you do it just right you can get some great memory boosts.

Might you be able to rid yourself of an illness by "turning back the clock"? That is, by immersing yourself in a time in your life when you were not ill? We know that thinking about things in a positive way - which we sometimes call "reframing" can make us feel and act differently, and we know that the "placebo effect" is real, but how far can these ideas be taken Psychology has always struggled to separate itself from those who would "borrow" good ideas and take them too far or twist them in ways that promise people too much. We're now more sensitive than ever about how psychological research is conducted and there are a lot of questions about a proposed new study by Ellen Langer that seems to be skirting some serious ethical issues in order to carry out a study with cancer patients - a study that could be done much less elaborately than is planned. Is this groundbreaking research, or as James Coyne suggests, quackery? We'll find out what's going on in this episode of The Psych Files. And by the way, what the heck is the nocebo effect? We find out.

What was the name of that baby in John Watson's famous videos in which he attempts to demonstrate that fears can be acquired through conditioning (pairing a loud noise with a furry animal)?  A few years ago we were presented with information indicating that a boy named Douglas Merrite was the true identity of "Little Albert".  The data looked pretty convincing at that time.  However, a few pieces of that data simply did not fit together for researchers Nancy Digdon, Russell Powell and Ben Harris.

After another lengthy search into the past, these researchers determined that another child fits the description and the facts of who "Little Albert" really was and that boy's name is William Albert Barger.  As is often true in life, the simple facts require fewer leaps in logic and these facts make the conclusion that William Albert is "Little Albert" inescapable.

In this episode I lay out some of these facts and I think you'll be convinced as well.  One of those facts: unfortunately, William Albert Barger died in 2007 so although we weren't able to talk with him, it appears that he lead a full and rewarding life.

How many times have you wanted to remember a joke at a party but you just can't?  Well, there IS a way to remember jokes and I have got 4 jokes to tell you along with a mnemonic that will help you remember all 4 of them.  I challenge you to listen to these 4 jokes, then listen to my mnemonic and then wait a little while and go through the mnemonic and I guarantee that you'll remember all 4 jokes.  

Remembering anything for more than a few minutes requires not only repetition, but also something else that will make the to-be-remembered thing stick in your head. That thing can be a mnemonic device.  In this episode I'll use a combination of the keyword technique, crazy images and a modified approach to the method of loci.  I'll use your body to help you remember these jokes.  Let's have some fun.

You may have heard that Facebook manipulated the content of user's New Feeds during January of 2012 so that some users saw more positive posts than others, which other Facebook users saw more negative posts.  How did this affect these users?  Did those who say negative posts become more negative and vice versa?  The answer is that the research indicates that some of them - though a very, very few of them - did subsequently write posts that were similar to the ones that saw on their News Feed.  How big of an effect is this?  Is it unethical?  Does agreeing to Facebook's Terms of Use constitute "informed consent".  I examine these questions in this episode of The Psych Files.

In episode 217 I asked you to be frank with yourself: does your animal really think?  It's easy to believe they do, but if you're going to study this issue scientifically you have to eliminate our human tendency to anthropomorphize - to want to believe that animal actions are motivated by internal states.  Well, here's a roundup of a few articles I found in my PsycExplorer app (PsycExplorerHD for iPad) which show exactly what psychologists are doing to find out what exactly is going on (if anything...) in the minds of dogs, cats, rats, chickens and yes fruit flies.  Are they really thinking in there?  Well, maybe so.  These examples certainly convinced me, although it might all depend on what you mean by "thinking" and "feeling". 

We also find out how we react to those sudden thoughts that jump into our minds - what do they mean?  Are thoughts that jump into our mind more significant than thoughts that we actively think about? 

Surveys find that psychologists tend to align themselves with a liberal political orientation.  Why is that?  Are liberal-minded people drawn to human service professions or is there something about working in human services that causes people to become more liberal in their political views?  In this episode I propose a few ideas that I think explains why mental health professionals tend to be on the liberal side of the political spectrum.  I invite your constructive feedback on these suggestions.

Guess what?  There are a good number of positives to growing older.  Let's put aside all the negative stereotypes of older folks and realize that they can demonstrate a surprising level of "coolness" about life.  There's a certain perspective you get when you're older that's enviable.  Older folks have passed many of life's challenges and they can look back with satisfaction.  But they also can have a surprising nonchalance about the challenges they face which we - as younger people - often think would make us terribly unhappy.  Let's take another look at aging and see it from a different light.

It's easy to find videos on the web of animals showing what appears to be some pretty smart behavior. But is it really "smarts"?  How can you tell? In this episode I'll point out examples that look like intelligence but probably aren't - as well as an example of animal behavior that is really hard to dismiss as anything but "smarts".  In doing so we'll talk about the behavioral principle of "chaining" - the method by which you can get animals - and humans - to display some pretty sophisticated and complex behavior as the result of reinforcement, prompts and cues.

The idea of working from home sounds great - but be aware of the downside.  In this episode of The Psych Files I talk about what factors influence your job satisfaction and motivation when you work from home.  I also discuss the interesting concept of "emotional labor" - what is it like when you know your boss is watching you and judging whether you are "acting happy" to customers?  What's the cost to you of acting in a way that is contrary to how you actually feel?

Have you ever wondered what it was like to be a patient in an "insane asylum"?  "Asylums" changed names over the years (including "State Hospital" and "Psychiatric Center") and so did the treatment o fate mentally ill.  Hear from Dr. Jennifer Bazar how we went from chaining people up to hydrotherapy to sexual surgery and finally to what is called "moral treatment".  A fascinating walk down the history of psychology with an engaging psychology historian.

We all know that adolescence is a time of change and often a tough time for the teen.  But what about the parent?  Today's parents are often older than years ago, and today's parents are sometimes going through their own self-examination, their own doubts, their own exploration.  What happens when you bring those two together?  Sometimes a lot of yelling frankly.  In this episode I talk about the changes going on in the adolescent and in the older parent and how parents can avoid the yelling and the accusations that only undermine what the teen is going through and how parents can step back and examine themselves.  A little understanding can go a long way.

Where do our emotions come from? From our thoughts? Or do they begin somewhere else – like in our bodies? This week we look at the work of James-Lange, Cannon-Bard, and Schachter and Singer. Also, I review two classic studies in the history of psychology: the Suproxin study (the basis for the well known (two factor theory of emotion) and the Suspension Bridge study. This week the Good, the Bad and the Ugly….Betty of emotions. Oh yes, and what does the TV show Ugly Betty have to do with all this? Find out this week on The Psych Files.

We don't have to pay you to get you to do things - you're already a curious person.  How does our attraction to puzzles, questions, and unsolved mysteries get used to get us to click on videos or blog posts?  And how can it be used to get students to want to learn?  You'll find out that there are ways to get students excited about learning without having to pay them and there are ways to attract people to your content by tapping into their curiosity.  Just don't overuse it (watch out UpWorthy) and don't fail to deliver!  Hopefully this episode will deliver on introducing you to some new ideas to help you motivate others.

What are the psychological themes in the movie the Matrix?  In this episode I talk about connections between the Matrix and Jung's idea of the Collective Unconscious, Joseph Campbell's notion of the Hero's Journey and some recent research that explains why you experience Déjà vu.  Also, can you change your whole world by thinking differently about it?  Let's find out what psychologists (well at least me) think about this fascinating movie.

We face more moral "dilemmas" in everyday life than maybe we realize.  How do we resolve them?  In this episode I discuss two interesting moral dilemmas: a) should you employ for-hire crowds of actors to attend your event in order to make it look like you're more popular that maybe you really are? and b) should you place your advertisements on web and print pages in such a way that they don't really look like ads at all?  I discuss the moral questions involved in "native advertising".  

We're all getting really good at using technology to avoid advertisements, but as we all know, "there's no such thing as a free lunch" - companies have to get you to find out about their products and hopefully buy them.  But when do we step over the line?  Is a little deception okay?