Speaking of Psychology - Kids and psychologists team up to learn from one another (SOP40)

Episode Date: July 22, 2016

In order to understand how children think and behave, psychologists need to study them. Most of the time, these experiments take place in university labs or sometime in schools, but one program is taking psychological science into museums around the country. In this episode, Peter Blake, EdD, talks about the Living Laboratory and how it’s breaking down barriers between scientists and the public. APA is currently seeking proposals for APA 2020, click here to learn more https://convention.apa.org/proposals Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Going to therapy is probably one of the most common ways the average person sees a psychologist at work. Some museums are trying to change that. A program called the Living Laboratory is breaking down the barriers between psychological scientists and the public by having museum visitors and their children see and participate in actual psychological experiments. And it's become a learning experience for the participants and the scientists. I'm Audrey Hamilton and this is Speaking of Psychology. Peter Blake is an assistant professor of psychology and director of the social development and learning lab at Boston University. He studies how children learn to become cooperative members of society.

Specifically, he uses experiments to investigate children's altruism, fairness, and other social behaviors in different cultures. Over the last 10 years, he's worked to bring the lab to the general public by collaborating with the Boston Museum of Science as part of the Living Laboratory, a nationwide program that aims to help grown-ups understand children's development by a university. immersing museum visitors in the process of scientific discovery. Welcome, Dr. Blake. Hello. Let's talk about the living laboratory at the Museum of Science. From what I understand, psychologists are working in museums, conducting experiments with volunteers.

It's fascinating. What was the idea behind this project and how does it work? Researchers in the Boston area, there's a lot of psychology labs around here. we were interested in where we could get subjects, particularly developmental psychologists are always looking for new populations of children or access to children and families that we can test. And the Museum of Science was interested in having scientists come into the museum and explain what they're doing to parents and their children as well. So about 10, probably more than 10 years ago at this point, there was a meeting of the minds, and we agreed to start doing research at this one area of the Museum of Science in Boston. And this, over several years, this grew into a more formal program that is specifically about,

not just about us collecting data, but also about scientists engaging. in education with the public. So it's kind of a research education collaborative. And we've developed this, and it's become more clearly defined, and now it's kind of a, there's a shared value system that we have in working with the Museum of Science. So I can go into more detail on some of that, if you like. Yeah, I mean, the psychological experiments,

they appear to be a good fit for these types of venues. And you've conducted, like you said, research in these museums. Can you tell us about some of those experiments and what you found? Yeah, absolutely. So we do things, we have to design our experiments specifically for this kind of environment, but in the museum environment, it's actually quite similar to running experiments in preschools or in elementary schools. This is something that developmental psychologists have done for generations. So that's a standard practice. But we don't run the studies. The studies can't be an hour long, for example. That's kind of rare. We have to be sensitive to the fact that parents are there with their kids. They want to get some experience. They are interested in the science of what we're doing. Here's an opportunity for their kids to do an experiment, and it'll only take maybe 10 minutes.

So it's a very safe way for parents to get engaged in the process. parents are always interested in how their kids are thinking and how they behave. So this is something they're eager to participate in. The kinds of experiments that I've been doing specifically, kids really enjoy them because they usually get some sort of prize. For altruism, for example, we'll give kids a set of stickers and we'll tell them that you can keep them all for yourself or you can give some to another child. And this basic setup when it's done by economists, the idea is that the child gets to act as a dictator. They get to make a decision about what they're going to get and what this other child is going to get. Giving is costly.

So this is a behavior that has some consequences for them. And this works really well in the Museum of Science. We can do this quickly. And we've been able to compare the results there to what we get in the lab, what we get in schools, and in other settings. And so far, everything looks very consistent. So that's one very simple basic game. And what we've done over time, now once we establish that, the basic result is that children who are younger

than about six years of age will keep more than for themselves in that setup and a baseline. And then they tend to approach giving an equal split as they get closer to six, seven, and eight. So what we've done with that and what other researchers now do quite regularly, we use that giving measure as our dependent experimental manipulation before that are different conditions and see if we can increase or decrease children's giving. So in that way, we can study what are the factors that help children engage in more altruistic behavior and what can depression? And I'm sure a lot of parents find that very interesting.

I mean, they want to know how do I make my child a more giving child, a more kind child, maybe a more empathetic child. So how do they react when you get them involved, them and their children? You know, what do they get out of this experience? So that's one of the great things about this environment is that we recruit the parents right there. We get their consent. The child participates in our setup. The parents can watch what the child does. We ask them not to interfere, obviously.

And then we can talk to them right afterwards about what just happened. And for the altruism games, children are often quite selfish and parents are often a little bit surprised or embarrassed. But at least to some great conversations about like, oh, this really, you know, surprise. Like, yeah, this is completely typical. You know, we always have to consider that this is a, you know, we can't make a prediction for your particular child. But we do have a general sense of what are the factors that can cause, cause children to be more altruistic under different conditions. And we also have an opportunity to explain a bit of the science.

We typically will run our conditions as between subjects' conditions. And that just means that children are only received one experimental manipulation. So parents who are watching this just see that their child did a search task or something before this. And they're like, well, isn't that? the thing that's driving the effect. And like, well, we can only tell that if we compare it to a control condition where they're doing some other kind of task. So it gives us a chance to explain to the parents what our science is about.

And I guess this leads into my next question. You know, why not? It sounds like this is not only educational for the parents, even maybe some of the children, but for you, the researchers, you know, you're out of a controlled laboratory setting. in a dynamic setting. I mean, what are the advantages of that? Yeah, this has been a real learning experience for everyone who's been involved in the learning lab project. And one of the benefits to the researchers, kind of initially an unexpected benefit and a bit of a challenge, was that we were forced to really find ways to explain our studies to parents and to other people

who are present quickly, quickly, clearly, and truthfully, accurately. And so this is something where, as we worked, the researchers worked with the educators at the Museum of Science, we learned a lot from them because this is what they do. That's what they do. So they're like, okay, well, if you explain your study to me, you know, I'll give you advice on how you might want to present it to the public. And that helps to take the jargon out of it and present things in a clear way with examples. So that's been one of the benefits, and now we push it down to, we have our, I have my graduate students go and run this.

And as part of it, they have to come up with explanations. Often a parent really just wants to hear like the two-second version, and that's fine. But you have to be able to say, like, so this is what we're doing. this is what, you know, we found in the past. That's great, see you later. But then another parent, you know, they might say, well, tell me more. So now you have the three-minute version. And this can expand into, like, different levels of discussion.

And each of those levels of communication has to be correct, right? So this is often a bit of a challenge. One of the ways that the museum has helped us do this is they create handouts. It's just a two-side, very small thing. that we can hand to parents that says, this is what it's about, this is what we found in the past, and here are some things you can try at home to play around with this idea with your own child. These aren't things, you know, what you do at home. That's not something I usually think about.

Right. So it really challenges us to come up with ways to convey why this is important and interesting. Do you think it's getting psychology and the idea of psychology as a science out there to the general public as well? One way we convey that it's a science is by explaining, like, this is an experiment with different conditions. That seems to impress on people that we're doing something scientific. And we also, this sounds very silly, but like one thing that we mention is that, yes, we run statistics real effect. And just adding the math piece seems to give some legitimacy that like, oh, okay, and interpreting them, you're actually have quantitative measures and are doing. math. That seems to impress upon people that are like, oh, okay, that might be a science then.

Well, it seems to be doing really well. There are more than 25 living laboratories and museums across the country. I mean, what does the future look like for these types of programs? It's really, it has grown rapidly due to a large NSF grant that the Museum of Science got to spread this. And it's spread beyond. There are 20,000. 25 living laboratories, but a lot of other research labs have set up their own independent, have explored independent connections with museums as well. And to give you one striking example, one of my colleagues that I started doing this work with the Museum of Science, Andrew Barron, who's at University of British Columbia,

when he moved up there, he set up his own relationship with the museum. museum in Vancouver. He told us that he's been testing thousands of kids a year. Wow. So it's become a real, I don't like to say it's a gold mine, because that really emphasizes just the data collection aspect. But it's been a very beneficial and productive relationship for both sides, I think. Well, great, Dr. Blake. This has been very fascinating. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you.

Thanks for listening. To hear more episodes and to learn more about the Living Laboratory, go to our website at speakingofpsychology.org. With the American Psychological Association, Speaking of Psychology, I'm Audrey Hamilton.