The Psychology of Good and Evil Psychology 291 (Class under construction, anything might change: Last Oct 30 2009)

Chuck Huff	M,W,F 10:45 - 11:40 RNS 124	current as of 10/30/09
Regents Science Hall 120, 786.3169		Mail to the Prof
Office Hours: by appointment		Mail to the class

IMPORTANT : Download and read the book prospectus and reviews BEFORE Weds Sept 9, the first day of class.

Welcome to the first Ethics class in the Psychology curriculum. This is the course I feel like I have been reading for most of my career. That means I am constantly changing my mind about what the course ought to be about and updating it to reflect the most recent work in the field. Thus, unlike the social psychology course (which is probably 3-5 years behind the cutting edge) or the intro course (which is sometime 10 years behind the cutting edge) this course in some ways defines the cutting edge of the field. This is most true for the 2009 offering: we will be together writing the book on the field.

So what is the field about? It is about what the emotions have to do with morals, how vengance works, why moral heroes think they have no choice, how our evolutionary heritage affects our moral judgments and action, how religious claims about morality can be reconciled with empirical claims, and a hundred other puzzles we will try to outline together.

Good News / Bad News

The bad news is that there really is no textbook for a course like this, so we will have to make do with what we can find. The good news is that I am writing a textbook in this area. More bad news (or good, depending on your perspective): you will be helping Laura Barnard '07 and I do the research for the text. To this end, it is important that you read the book proposal and the reviews of it to prepare for the first day of class.

Readings

There will be three types of reading for this course: philosophical, religious, and psychological. You will be reading classic and contemporary philosophy (mostly excerpts and short articles) to understand how people have thought about what it means to live a moral life. You will be reading some religious texts (mostly Christian, but some Muslim and I hope other approaches) to see how religion influences moral thought and action. But mostly you will be reading recent empirical and theoretical psychology. I hope to make all the readings available from electronic texts or in PDFs or other forms.

It will be to your advantage to do the reading for the assigned day. First, this will mean you will be able to follow the discussion for the day. Secondly, it means you will be able to write the daily papers.

Daily Comments

There will be daily reaction papers for the readings. These will be keyed to the reading for the day and will ask you to react to them. This means you will need actually to read them and to reflect on them. These should be sent to me in email the night before class and should be no more than a 1/2 screen or so of text. When we are doing student-assigned reading, I will forward your aper on to the student leaders for the discussion so they can see what eople are thinking about the reading. I will drop the lowest two grades for these papers and so you can decide to skip two (or do them all to make sure you can get the best grade). Late daily papers will not be accepted.

Final Papers

Final papers are due on the day of the final. They will be review papers based on our negotiation of which chapters you or your team will focus on. These are to be in APA style and no more than 15 pages of the body of text, excluding front matter, references, tables, etc. They should connect your topic to at least two other chapters in the book, and should contain references to original empirical work, to theoretical reviews, and to normative work. In the Author Notes section on the title page, they should contain acknowledgments to others students who critiqued the manuscript.

Final Exam

The final exam will be a blue book exam based on a set of basic questions with whose answers you should be familiar by the end of the class. I will draw three to five (3 - 5) questions from this set of questions for the final exam. Answers to each question should be no more than 10 sentences long. You will be allowed to bring a note sheet to the final exam. This sheet should consist of a set of 10 words or less for each potential question, to remind you of your answer to that question. When you write down your answer, you will be expected to number the sentences in each answer.

Because I hope to discover new and interesting things in this class, I reserve the right to add to or modify the list of basic questions for the exam, but I will do my best to keep the number of items about the same.

In Class-Presentations

Most of the class will involve students leading discussions of literature in their area of focus.These are not presentations of your knowledge in the area but instead focussed discussions based on one or two articles you have chosen to be read by the class (and provided an electronic copy with sufficient advance notice). The purpose of the discusion is to

• understand the ideas presented in the article
• critique the ideas in the article based on method, other findings, philosophcial grounds, etc.
• connect the ideas to the literature in other focus areas

Note that we must do the first item well in order to attempt the other two. I will have a grading rubric available for the presentations. Your grade will be based on your presentation and discussion leadership and on an annotated bibliography you prepare of background materials in your area.

Grading

Disability Accomodation

If you have a documented disability that will impact your work in this class, please contact me to discuss your needs. Additionally, you will need to register with Student Disability Services located at the Academic Support Center in Room 1 of the Old Main Annex. All such discussions will be confidential.

---

Schedule

Disclaimer