PSYCHOLOGY 205 - SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
Winter, 2010

Instructor: Frank T. McAndrew E-131 SMC, Ext. 7525 e-mail: fmcandre@knox.edu.
Textbook: Social Psychology, 9th Ed., by David G. Myers. OFFICIAL WEBSITE FOR THE TEXT: http://www.mhhe.com/myers9

Psychology Department Web Page

Encyclopedia of Social Psychology

Social Psychology Network

Resources for Teaching Social Psychology

GOALS OF THE COURSE:

Psych 205 (Social Psychology) is a lower level class that assumes that you have already taken Psychology 100. This is a broad survey of the field of social psychology, including such topics as attitude change, interpersonal attraction, social cognition, and aggression. In this class you will locate and do a critique of a journal article and also read three assigned journal articles and write an abstract of each article. Your learning will be assessed by the quality of the written critique and abstracts and by a series of four examinations.   Every course that you take is designed to help you acquire knowledge and skills. The learning goals & competencies assessed in this course include the following.

Subject Matter Knowledge:
You will become familiar with classical studies/important research findings in social psychology
You will acquire the psychological vocabulary needed to read social psychological literature and engage in discussions
You will become familiar with the ethical guidelines required in research involving humans

Research Skills:
You will come to better understand the scientific method
You will come to know the benefits/limitations of using the scientific method when studying (human) social behavior.
You will become better at applying theory and research to yourself, to other individuals, to organizations, and to society

Critical Thinking Skills:
To be able to summarize and evaluate research from primary sources
To be able to critique arguments, methods, interpretations, and conclusions
To recognize the limitations and cognitive biases inherent in human intuition
To distinguish opinion from fact
To distinguish observations from interpretations

Writing:
You will learn to write an abstract of a longer paper

TOPICS & CHAPTERS
Introduction to Social Psychology & its Research Methods (Chapter 1)

The Self & Personality (Chapter 2)

Social Perception & Cognition (Chapter 3)

TEST #1 (Wednesday, January 20th)

Attitude Formation and Change (Chapters 4 & 7)

Prejudice & Discrimination (Chapter 9 and pages 483-505)

TEST #2 (Friday, February 5th)

Genes, Culture, & Gender (Chapter 5)

Social Influence (Chapter 6)

Sex, Love, & Attraction (Chapter 11)

TEST #3 (Monday, February 22nd)

Group Behavior (Chapter 8)

Helping Behavior (Chapter 12)

Aggression (Chapter 10)

TEST #4 (Monday, March 8th)
Your final grade will be based upon the percentage of total possible points that you accumulate on the four tests and on four short written assignments that you will be handing in. Test questions will be based on both textbook and lecture materials. No makeup tests will be given without prior permission and a very good excuse.
Letter Grades for the course will be assigned as follows:

A = 93-100%
A- = 90-92%
B+ = 88-89%
B = 83-87%
B- = 80-82%
C+ = 78-79%
C = 73-77%
C- = 70-72%
D+ = 68-69%
D = 63-67%
D- = 60-61%
F = Need I say more?

The Written Projects:
The written projects will acquaint you with the way in which social psychologists conduct research and communicate their results to each other. In the first assignment, you will learn how research results are presented in psychological journals by reading and critiquing a journal article. The article that you read will be chosen from one of the following journals available in the Knox libraries either on-line or on the shelves:

Basic and Applied Social Psychology
British Journal of Social Psychology
European Journal of Social Psychology
Journal of Applied Social Psychology
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
Journal of Personality
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Journal of Social Psychology
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
Sex Roles
Social Psychology Quarterly

The format for the critique that you will write will be given to you in class - You will also be required to submit a photocopy of the article that you critique. For the other three assignments, you will read an assigned journal article and write an abstract for that article. The abstract SHALL NOT EXCEED 120 words or points will be taken off. There are a variety of goals for the assignments in which you will write abstracts. You will not be able to write an effective abstract unless you have carefully read and understood the article, identified its important points, and know how to use language very concisely in communicating the results of the article to others. These are very valuable skills in almost all academic fields, not just in psychology. Each assignment (the journal critique AND the abstracts) will be worth 10 points.

Due Dates for each of the Assignments will be as follows:

Assignment #1 - Critique of a Journal Article, Due Wednesday, January 13th.

Practice Abstract Assignment - Write an abstract for the article entitled Guns, testosterone, and aggression by Klinesmith, Kasser, & McAndrew; Due on Monday, January 18th.

Assignment #2 - Write an abstract for the article entitled The Teddy-Bear Effect: Does Having a Baby Face Benefit Black Chief Executive Officers? by R. W. Livingston & N. A. Pearce. Due Wednesday, January 27th.

Assignment #3 - Write an abstract for the article entitled The Relative Importance of the Face and Body in Judgments of Human Physical Attractiveness by T. E. Currie & A. C. Little. Due Monday, February 15th.

Assignment #4 - Write an abstract for the article entitled School Violence and the Culture of Honor by R. P. Brown, L. L. Osterman, & C. D. Barnes. Due Monday, March 1st.

For the first assignment (the critique of the journal article), you will locate your own article. When writing the abtsracts, everyone will work from the same articles and they have been placed on reserve at the desk in the SMC Library - ask for them by title.

PARTICIPATION IN PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH
By participating in research projects being conducted in our deprtment, you can earn bonus points (extra credit). You are free to particpate in as many studies as you like, and you will earn one point for each half hour that you participate in. However, no one will earn more than 6 points through research participation. If you volunteer to participate in an experiment and fail to show up, one point will be DEDUCTED from your grade.

To see the powerpoint slides that were used in the lectures for this course, click on the picture of the overhead projector.