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The Society for the Teaching of Psychology (STP) is celebrating its 75th anniversary as a division of the American Psychological Association. During its history, it has served as a repository of materials for the teaching of psychology. This article highlights the discussion among longtime STP members and officers who played key roles in the evolution of the repository and provides some suggestions as to its future.

Established in 1945 as Division 2, one of the original divisions of the American Psychological Association, the Society for the Teaching of Psychology (STP) celebrates its 75th anniversary in 2020. On the occasion of STP’s 50th anniversary, Wight and Davis published a history of the Division’s first 50 years. Using that history, we summarize STP’s first 50 years and then focus on developments and changes during the last 25 years. We believe that STP has experienced greater change and growth in the last 25 years than it did in the first 50 years.

Research Methods and Statistics in Psychology provides a seamless introduction to the subject, identifying various research areas and analyzing how one can approach them statistically. The text provides a solid empirical foundation for undergraduate psychology majors, and it prepares the reader to think critically and evaluate psychological research and claims they might hear in the news or popular press. This second edition features updated examples of research and new illustrations of important principles. It also includes updated coverage of ethical issues in research and of current diversity issues.

Seventeen books, six journals, and a web page that are useful for statistics teachers are reviewed. Sources are ordered from general to technical, and examples illustrative of the content appear in the descriptions. Keywords: pedagogy; teaching; teaching activities; teaching demonstrations; teaching resources

Response bias (also known as response style) refers to patterns of responding on questionnaires or inventories in a consistent manner independent of the content of the questions. Research across cultures can lead to differences in responses for three underlying reasons. Differences can reflect (a) true variability in the construct being measured, (b) error variability associated with different response styles associated with culture, or (c) error variability involving structural elements of the questionnaire or inventory associated with linguistic or semantic issues. The issue of response bias relates to the latter two conditions. Keywords: methodology; psychometric testing; research

Psychologists recognized the importance of Jean Piaget's theory from its inception. Within a year of the appearance of his first book translated into English, The Language and Thought of the Child (J. Piaget, 1926) , it had been reviewed and welcomed; shortly thereafter, psychologists began testing the tenets of the theory empirically. The author traces the empirical testing of his theory in the 2 decades following publication of his initial book. A review of the published literature through the World War II era reveals that the research resulted in consistent failure to support the theoretical mechanisms that Piaget proposed. Nonetheless, the theory ultimately gained traction to become the bedrock of developmental psychology. Reasons for its persistence may include a possible lack of awareness by psychologists about the lack of empirical support, its breadth and complexity, and a lack of a viable alternate theory. As a result, the theory still exerts influence in psychology even though its dominance has diminished.

Gaining a perspective on the evolution of psychological concepts can show students the power of theory and societal perspective in shaping scientific ideas across time. In this article, the author uses two constructs, the broad concept of intelligence and the narrow concept of combat stress reaction, to illustrate how psychologists have grappled with these ideas over the past century. These examples can provide a model for using the history of psychology to explain how ideas have taken their shape. These illustrations also show the difficulty in developing ideas that are scientifically useful and that periodic changes in the conceptualization of ideas are a normal feature of a dynamic discipline.

This article provides an example of the use of historical issues associated with intelligence testing to teach about the nature of measurement in psychology and includes pedagogical questions for the classroom. Students learning about research may assume that the ways psychologists measure constructs are permanent and immutable. However, using intelligence as the focus, this article shows how its measurement evolved, reflecting contemporaneous theories and assumptions. The initial sensory and psychophysical measurements designed by Cattell (1890) to measure mental ability were logically defensible in his era and gained temporary acceptance by many psychologists. Currently, standardized tests reflect the biases of later psychologists. The article highlights reasons for such changes.

The American Psychological Association's (2007) curricular guidelines recommend that students develop both an understanding of how psychologists do research and an appreciation for why scientific thinking is necessary. We surveyed a large sample of psychology majors on specific interests, as well as individual difference variables relevant to scientific thinking. Our results suggest that over time, students' knowledge of scientific thinking increased, whereas their tendency to see psychology as a science did not. Further, students reported greater interest in practitioner activities than scientific ones, and these divergent interests were associated with differential ways of thinking and of viewing the field of psychology. We discuss some implications for conceptualizing undergraduate instruction given that some student characteristics are more malleable than others.

This chapter presents an introductory overview to the title. It discusses the structure and content of each section within the title, along with the importance of continuity within psychology education, and the presentation throughout of psychology as a science.

This chapter explores writing as a developmental process for psychology majors, and discusses important issues in teaching students to write well and bring their ideas to life. This process must take into account the level of the student, the nature of the writing, the process of revision and peer review, the effectiveness of collaborative writing projects, and the development of skill in using APA style.

This chapter discusses research teams, and the development of a capstone experience with programmatic research. It outlines the benefits and importance of student experience with research, varieties of research experience, and obstacles to student research, along with case examples in establishing research teams, their advantages, assessment, and outcomes.

Acquiescence response style (ARS) is a response bias that reflects the tendency by a person to answer Yes/No questions affirmatively or to agree with attitude statements, regardless of the content of the question. There is evidence that this bias is a consistent aspect of an individual's response style across items and scales. Keywords: research; psychometric testing

Social desirability bias (SDB) involves a person's responding to questions in a way that leads to a more positive depiction of the individual than is objectively warranted. Psychologists have defined it in several slightly different ways, but it is common to regard SDB as having two different manifestations. An individual might knowingly provide responses to questions in a way designed to portray the person in a positive light, which is called impression management. Or the person might attempt to provide accurate responses to a question but unknowingly give a more favorable report than is accurate, which is called self-deception positivity or self-deception enhancement. Keywords: methodology; research

Students in four statistics classes received different amounts of guidance and instruction in interpretive skills. Students who wrote press releases free of statistical jargon acquired better computational and interpretive skills than did students in a traditional class. Emphasis on interpretation was not associated with greater conceptual knowledge. Writing assignments appear to focus students' attention on the context and rationale for the statistics. This technique can also he used in other courses.

Researchers have made consistent claims that people do not have an awareness of their humor competence and that the vast majority of people claim to have an above-average sense of humor. In this study, we examined whether people’s self reports of humor competence matched an independent measurement of sense of humor. We also investigated participants’ self-reported personality characteristics to see if they attributed to themselves the same characteristics that participants in earlier research attributed to hypothetical others that shared their level of humor competence. Participants completed the Multidimensional Sense of Humor Scale (MSHS) and inventories based on the Big Five model of personality. The results revealed that participants had a realistic view of their humor competence. Their self-perceived humor competence correlated reliably with their scores on the MSHS. In addition, they characterized themselves on the personality inventories in the way that previous research participants evaluated others. Participants’ self-reports matched the stereotypes they had of imaginary others for extraversion and neuroticism, but not for agreeableness and openness. The findings suggest that people hold implicit theories of the link between humor and personality and apply it reliably both to themselves and to others. Results are discussed in terms of the need to study humor as multidimensional construct and in light of expectations of evolutionary theory.

Without an objective metric for identifying how funny humorous material “really” is, a person may rely on external information in evaluating the humor of a particular humorous joke. In two experiments, we examined the effect of expectations on participants' ratings of jokes. When participants received a message that jokes had previously been rated as either funny or unfunny, they rated the jokes accordingly. In addition, participants who were told less plausible messages about the jokes (“hysterically funny” or “horribly unfunny”) tended to discount the messages and give ratings comparable to the control group. In a second experiment, we examined the effect of testing participants individually or in groups. As predicted from previous research, group effects, which may be social and emotional, did not influence participants' ratings of jokes. We discuss the findings in terms of the role of information in cognitive evaluation versus affective appreciation of humor.