Applications of Psychological Science

Don't forget to include your name with each post.

Alumni faculty can, and probably should have suggested readings for the students in the class. These can be posted or sent to me for distribution.

Hope the holidays have been kind, Dave

Hi there: I'm Dr. Levy and wanted to test this out to see if the technology is too advanced for me (!!). I should probably ask my 15 year old to do this for me while he's texting his friends, studying for exams, and listening to his IPOD :).

I will be posting a handful of chapters from my I/O textbook and another reading or two for you. Drs. Cober, Rosen, and I spoke last week and decided on the readings to give you a flavor for I/O content and processes. Hopefully, these readings will show up somewhere in the next few days.

I look forward to meeting all the W&L students and hearing about how much things have changed since my years there (1980-1984; I was back 5+ years ago to give a talk and had a great time). Take care.

I apologize for the late notice on this, so please
before class tomorrow, please visit the Annual Reports on the Career Services page.
http://www.wlu.edu/x15723.xml

Please review the data posted for Class 2007 and Class 2001. What observations do you have? Any projections into Class 2008?

Examine the summary of W&L psychology/neuroscience majors and their reported status. Write a brief document that could be shared with parents of potential psych majors who are concerned about return on their investment. Limit this to one page.

On February 27 classes are canceled so that W&L students can present the results of their academic efforts to the W&L community. The schedule can be found at:

http://ssa.wlu.edu/schedule09.asp

For alums: When you get to the schedule, press on the blue items to get access to the poster presentations abstracts. Here you see many posters by neuroscience and psychology students. It is really exciting to see the work respresented in these posters. The remainder of the schedule is also impressive. W&L is alive and well.

Hi all-

Just wanted to reiterate how much enjoyed this class with you - you're an impressive and motivated group. Please don't hesitate to contact me - email is grace.stutzmann@rosalindfranklin.edu. Certainly, if you're in the Chicago area, please stop by!

Best of luck to you...I have no doubt you'll accomplish great things.

Beth

Good evening everyone,

Thanks so much for the great questions. Some of them match up well with the presentation materials I've prepared. Thats good. Some of the questions do not match with what I prepared....thats good, too. For the latter group, there are a few things I'd like to research. I'm going to try to answer any posted questions when we meet in person. Please keep posting. Anything we do not cover I will try to handle over the blog. Thanks again and see you soon.

Thanks to everyone for the feedback on the clinical vs. forensic emphasis for my visit next month. From this feedback I will plan to spend roughly equal time on each area. Perhaps looking at career paths in general and my own career path on day one and getting into details of what each area involves (the good, the bad, and the ugly) on day two.
Keep the questions coming!

A student suggested that there are likely to be issues for discussion that might be embarassing or personal. I suggest that we handle this by taking advantage of the generic user. That is, if you have a personal or sensitive issue you wish discussed by the class, simply ask the alum the question(s) and not include your name in the title of the question.

If you would rather the class not discuss the issue, send your question to the alum's personal email.

I have entered a new category "Anonymous Questions" to handle this.

Good evening/morning,
I hope y'all found today's session useful - it certainly was enjoyable for me - and that our two examples of herd psychology and economic consequences successfully illustrated the breadth and depth of the impact of emotion on cognition. This interaction has given rise to a school of economic thought known as 'behavioral finance'. Based on some of your questions, I hope that the short article below will help reinforce the linkages between the disciplines of psych and economics for you. While the article's immediate theme may be more relevant to those contemplating a business or financial career, its real intent is to demonstrate that formal education in psychological science provides a wealth of career applications - you will have lots of options.....

< http://www.moneyweek.com/investment-advice/how-to-invest/does-our-psychology-move-markets.aspx# >

This is a short, old-ish (2006) article on 'Behavioral Finance' by Simon Wilson of the U.K.'s MoneyWeek magazine, which underscores the intellectual link between psychology and economic behavior. If you're a real gluttoon for punishmnet, the Wikipedia article on 'Behavioral Economics' is also a good primer.

Seperately, given that the flow-of-investment-emotions slide seemed to ring true for other 'bubbles' on your radar, here's it's link:
< http://www.greekshares.com/lemming.php >.
If interested in its author's views on how to avoid getting caught up with the lemmings in bubble-decisions, do look at the 'next page' of the article for some investment disciplines to consider. Of course, I'm delighted to add my comments as you might find interesting.

Lastly, while we didn't really spend any time on this topic today, if y'all have any interest in discussing the personal thrills and challenges of working abroad, please do let me know.

Until tomorrow,
Kind regards,
Ben G.

ps - Perhaps we could also spend a little time talking about the psychology of perception. I know several of you are doing research into taste, and that at least one person is contemplating a food/hospitality career. As it turns out, the wine/ wine restaurant business is one of my many 'distractions', and I'd be happy to table this topic too....

Students: Prior to our meeting on March 11 please take a quick look at www.phawinchester.com and www.forensicpsychologycenter.com
Pay special attention to the "Services" section of each. This will give you an overview of the types of services offered in the clinical psychology and forensic psychology fields.
Looking forward to your questions and meeting with you on the 11th.
Bernie Lewis, Ph.D.

PHI BETA KAPPA/SOCIETY OF THE CINCINNATI CONVOCATION
Schedule of Classes

Thursday, March 12, 2009

A 8:00 a.m. - 8:45 a.m.
B 8:55 a.m. - 9:40 a.m.
C 9:50 a.m. - 10:35 a.m.
D 10:45 a.m. - 11:30 a.m.
Convocation 11:40 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
E 1:10 p.m. - 1:55 p.m.
F 2:05 p.m. - 2:50 p.m.
G 3:00 p.m. - 3:45 p.m.
H 3:55 p.m. - 4:40 p.m.
I 4:50 p.m. - 5:35 p.m.

Click for full detail

Dear Students and Professor Elmes:
You are invited to the Career Development Class this Tuesday at 12:15 in Career Services, 3rd floor, above bookstore.

We have as our guest Mary Katherine Snead who is directing the Work/Life Balance Inistiative at W&L and has a number of years in the human resources field.

In addtion, guests will be from the field of publishing, teaching and educational administration, and performance engineering.

Each guest wil lshare about 10 minutes of his/her story. There will be plenty of time for questions.

Come join us! Bring your lunch if you like. We provide the beverages.

Dan did his undergraduate honor's thesis on engendering creativity in young students. A couple of years ago he was doing some "flow" research (an important part of positive psychology) with the gruru of positive psychology, Csikszentmilhalyi.

Hey Guys. I'm heading down your way later tonight and looking forward to chatting tomorrow. We'll talk briefly about my general career path (which is a bit atypical), then get in to a few general questions that have either come up along the way or are pressing at the moment.

For example: At the moment, my two roommates (http://bigsight.org/eddie_frederick and http://bigsight.org/warren_konkel) are over at the LivingSocial.com office trying to deal with an app that has just taken over on Facebook. They launched the "Pick Your Five" app two days ago and it's now growing 100K users an hour. The company I'm consulting for now (http://socialcash.com) is running the advertising. Just today they've sent 1.8mm impressions our way. This roughly translates to $4,100.00 in pure profit over a 12 hour period. On their side of things, they are trying to identify a) why the app is working so well and b) how they can sustain it. I'm trying to a) understand which ads are working the best (out of 45 we're running) and then b) what can be done to improve the mix so that the $4,100 figure can double. There are a bunch of interesting factors in play here that we'll talk about a bit tomorrow. It's a pretty good example of a fast-moving situation where very small insights (data driven and otherwise) about psychology can have a huge impact.

One other item: If you want to take bigsight.org for a spin, go to http://bigsight.org/login and hit the "Connect" button. This will instantly create a bigsight page from your Facebook account.

I just went to Bird' social cash site. You may want to look up this: http://adsense.blogspot.com/2006/02/ecpm-what-exactly-is-that.html

Folks,
I am really looking forward to my visit to W&L next week. I've enjoyed following the postings in the blog during the term, and I know I have a lot of tough acts to follow -- I can tell that you have learned a lot from the previous visitors.

In case you want more reading (and listening) than what I suggested earlier (seriously!), I have a few fairly recent web-based resources that will give you a sense of what life is like at Bell Labs these days.

Interview with Jeong Kim, Bell Labs President: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/122/mad-scientist.html?page=0%2C0

Podcast with Cheryl Coyle (who worked for me when the podcast was recorded), describing Human Factors at Bell Labs: http://www.podtech.net/home/4916/bell-labs-human-factors

Thoughts on the balance of Research vs. Development by a former Bell Labs guy, John Mashey: http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/12/r2-d2-and-other-lessons-from-bell-labs/

There is also a Wall Street Journal article that I think will give their view of the "State of Bell Labs" that should be coming out any day, but it hasn't appeared yet.

I'm looking forward to reading your questions here in the blog over the next few days. And looking forward to meeting you all on Monday!

Mike