Psychology 101: General Psychology

Spring, 1999

My name is James Laird
Office: 212A Jonas Clark
Phone: 793-7272 (Home: (508)636-8017)
Office hours: Mon, Wed, Fri 11-12

Teaching Assistant:
Tamer Amin
Office: 364 Jonas Clark
Office hours:

The text will be Gray, P. Psychology (Third Edition).

Some ground rules for this class.

There are three lecture sessions a week, and each of you will be assigned a discussion section as well. Attendance is required. We will keep track of who is here, and if you fail to appear for lectures and discussions a total of more than 4 times without some prior explanation, we will assume that you have decided not to be a member of this class.

I will lecture, but will often pause to ask you questions. Even if I don't stop, please feel free to interrupt me whenever you don't understand something I have said, or even better if you have had a good idea about the topic we are discussing.

Evaluation will consist of two mid-term exams and one final, all of which will have both short answer and essay questions. We will attempt to design these questions so that you must not only know the material but also think about it in order to answer them well. The two mid-terms will each count 30% of your grade, and the final will be 40%. All of these exams will be "open book" and notes to encourage you to study for the concepts, not recall of details. Be warned, however, that this can be a trap: some people think they don't have to study, and then come to the exam ready to flip pages in the book to find the answers. These people rarely pass, since there just is not enough time to learn the material during the exam.

Thinking is like any other skill: people may differ in natural talent, but the most important determinant of performance is practice. To encourage you to keep thinking about the material, every week everyone will submit to their TA at the beginning of the discussion section a brief paragraph describing at least one novel idea related to the course material. These ideas could be criticisms of ideas presented in the readings or lectures, applications of these to everyday life, interesting connections between material from different chapters or new ideas for theory or for research studies. The best time to develop these is not the evening before your discussion section (or the five minutes before) but while you are reading the assigned material or while listening to the lectures and discussion in class. Just jot a note in the margins of your notebook, or wherever.

The "thought" papers will not be graded. Instead, they are the minimum entry requirement. If you have not submitted at least 12 that are adequate, your grades on the exams won't count. If you do submit 12 that are adequate, then you can be sure of receiving at least a C- for the course, even if you fail the exams. But of course, we don't expect that you will. Anyone who has paid attention enough to write all the papers will cruise through the exams.

Schedule:

Date:         Topic:                                                                                                                  Text Chapters:
Jan 20      The History and Science of Psychology                                                              1

                    Overview of the course, mundane details,

Jan 22          Logic of scientific method and the methods of psychology 2

Jan 25         Behavior Genetics and Evolution                                                                             3

                      Nature and nurture in IQ and temperament  

Jan 27            Emotion and evolution

Jan 29         Learning                                                                                                                      4

                        Classical and Instrumental Learning

Feb 1                Behaviorism and cognitivism
 

Feb 3             The Nervous System                                                                                               5

                            Neurons and neurotransmitters

Feb 5                   Brains and behavior

Feb 8                  Motivation, Sleep and Emotion                                                                         6

                                need Achievement (nAch)

Feb 10                        Sleep, consciousness, etc.

Feb 12                       Emotion and feeling

Feb 15                Sensation                                                                                                             7

                                The logic of sensory systems

Feb 17                      Gathering and organizing information

Feb 19         Exam 1,      on all material through Sensation

Feb 22                  Perception                                                                                                          8

                                Separating the world into objects

Feb 24                      Organizing the world of objects

Feb 26                  Memory                                                                                                            9

                                Building systems of memory

March 1                      Remembering "how", "what" and "when"
 

March 3                  The Intellect                                                                                                   10

                                Intelligence: What it is, and how its measured

March 5                    Race, Sex and class differences in IQ

March 8 to 12 VACATION

March 15                    Problem solving

Mar 17                         Judgments in the real world

Mar 19                 Cognitive Development                                                                                    11

                                Language development

Mar 22                      Development of thinking

Mar 24             Social Development                                                                                             12

                                Self & Identity

Mar 26                      Moral development

Mar 29        Exam 2. On all material from Perception to Social Development

Mar 31             Social Cognition                                                                                                   13

                                Knowing about others

April 2                      Friendship and Love

April 5                      Prejudice

April 7             Social Influences on Behavior                                                                             14

                                Conformity and Obedience

April 9                      Aggression and helping

April 12                      Social Dilemmas

April 14             Personality                                                                                                        15

                            Freud

April 16                Other "grand" theories

April 19                Modern views
 
April 21         Mental Disorders                                                                                                 16

                            Stress and coping

April 23                Types of disorder (NB: This is Academic Spree Day. Check it out, to see things you could do if you are interested.)

April 26                  Sources and Causes

April 28             Treatment                                                                                                17

                                Matching treatments and disorders

April 30                     Treatment effectiveness              

May 3 Science and human behavior: what does all this mean?

May 11 Final Exam: It will cover everything in the course, with perhaps a slight

emphasis on the material since the second mid-term.

 NOTE: DO NOT SCHEDULE FLIGHTS OR OTHER CONFLICTS.

UNLESS THE DEAN EXCUSES YOU, YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE

FOR TAKING THE FINAL EXAM WHEN SCHEDULED.