An Introduction to Psychology

Chuck Huff huff@stolaf.edu	MWF 9:05-10:00 Holland Hall 501	Office Hours: Wednesday & Thursday, 3-5 PM Contact Darla Frandrup (x3142) to make appointment
Holland Hall 314, (507) 646-3169		Mail to our class

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How class will work

Class will be a mixture of informal lecture, questions, discussion of the topics in the chapters, and directed work on the exam and reading questions. On occasion we will take class time to work directly on the empirical projects you will be doing. You will actually need to read the assigned chapters for the day they are assigned. Please ask questions during the question sessions. It's one way you will learn.

Extra Credit Quizzes

Once a week, we will have an unannounced extra credit quiz. These quizzes can give you as much as 5% extra in your grade. They will be based on the reading questions for that week, up to the day of the quiz. These will be graded on a 0 to 3 scale: zero, check minus, check, and check plus. You should receive them back within 24 hours after a quiz.

Other Extra Credit

I will also give other occasional extra credit assignments. One you can expect will be attendance at a program that our career development center does. The program will introduce you to careers in psychology, but more generally to "what can I do with a psych major?"

Tests

There will be 4 exams. These will be a mixture of take home short essays and in-class multiple choice. These exams will ask you to integrate and reflect on the reading. Multiple choice items will be a mixture of background knowledge items and items that require application of the knowledge to cases. The short essay questions and the cases will be available at least one week before the exam is due.

The exams are open book and cooperative, up to, but not including the in-class time. That is, except when you are in class during the multiple choice part of the test, you can work on your answers using any sources available, including other students in the class, psychology majors, the assigned texts, supplementary texts or reference works, professors, friends at other colleges, strangers in the airport, etc. Do not directly copy other students' answers, and do cite them if you borrow an idea.

Glossaries

For each exam, I will list a set of terms that you will need to define in a glossary. These glossaries are to be turned in along with the take-home portion of your exam, at the beginning of the in-class portion of the exam. Do not staple them to the take home portion. These definitions need to be in your own words. You may certainly work in groups to generate initial glossary definitions. But the definitions you use should be in your own words. These will be graded on a binary scale: zero if you do not turn them in, 1 if you do. This is really a way of giving you some credit for studying for the exam.

Empirical Project

We will spend some class time in helping your group do an empirical investigation. This will require some extensive use of the library's encyclopedias and other reference sources, a good deal of time outside the class designing your study, collecting the data and writing it up for a poster presentation. There will be eight different minor due dates across the term for this project. The material for each of these due dates will be graded, and will count in your final grade for the course. The grade for this project is a group grade. I reserve the right to move a single member's grade up or down by one letter grade from the group product. I base this on ratings that group members do of each other's performance in the group. Please read the section on "group problems" to see my rules for handling problems in groups.

Grading percentages for the individual parts of the empirical project

Item Due	Grading Percentage
Empirical Question Report	10%
Annotated Reference Report	10%
Empirical Method Outline	10%
Data Collection Notification	10%
Analysis Summary	10%
Draft Poster	20%
Final Poster	30%
	100%

Research Participation

A portion of your grade will come from participating in 3 separate psychological studies, and answering a short questionnaire about each. These studies have been rigorously screened to make sure they are both ethically sound and educational. If you prefer not to participate in a study, there are alternatives involving reading about research. There may also be other alternatives announced in class. To receive credit for these alternatives, you must fill out the Alternative Credit Slip. If you do not want to sign up for studies in which you may be deceived (e.g. about the purpose of the study) or for studies which may subject you to unusual stress, there is a procedure that will allow you to identify such studies.

Grading

First Exam	10%
Second Exam	15%
Third Exam	20%
Fourth Exam	25%	70% is Exams
Empirical Investigation	20%
Quizzes	5%
Glossaries	5%
Research Participation	5%	35%

Grading Scale

This conversion scheme for percentage grades to letter grades is only used for the final conversion of your total grade to a letter grade for the registrar. Standard rounding schemes are used.

0 - 56%	F
57 - 59%	D-
60 - 62%	D
63 - 66%	D+
67 - 69%	C-
70 -72%	C
73 - 76%	C+
77 - 79%	B-
80 - 82%	B
83 - 86%	B+
87 - 92%	A-
93 - 105%	A

Late exams will be reduced in their grade according to the following schedule. An exam is late if any portion of it is late.
up to 24 hrs late	-05%
between 1 & 3 days late	-10%
1 week late	-20%
more than 1 week late	-50%

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Schedule of Topics & Assignments

Day	Date	Chapters in Topical Book	Chapters in Mynatt& Doherty	Other Reading	Topic	Assignment Due/Notes
F	7	Freud			Introductions
M	10	1	2, 5, & 6		Intro to Freud
W	12	2 & 3			Freud's Technique& Library	Library Terms
F	14	4 & 5	34 & 38		Freud's Theory	Volunteer groups deadline
M	17		23, 39, & 40		Critique of Freud	Group Assigments made
W	19				Exam Preparation
F	21				Exam 1	Glossary, Take Home Essay
M	24	Skinner			Finding References	Empirical Question Report Due
W	26		16		From Freud to Skinner
F	27	1-7	3 & Epilogue		The Design of Things and Experiments
M	1	8-18	12 & 13		Design of Life
W	3	19-22	14		The Good Life and Punishment	Annotated Reference Report Due
F	5	23-28			Politics and Heroes
M	8		2 & 3		Methods Primer	LVC
W	10	29-31		Huff Essay	Freedom & Control
F	12		4 & 33		Evolution
M	15		15 & 31	Classical Problems	Critique of Skinner	Empirical Method Outline Due
W	17				Exam Preparation	Group Ratings Due
F	19				Exam 2
M	22				Fall Break
W	24	Gilligan	24 & 25		Developmental Principles
F	26	Int. & 1			Gilligan's Complaint	Questionnaires for approval due
M	29	pp. 24-45			Women's development
W	31	pp. 64-85			Development of Self & Moral Reasoning	Final version of Questionnaires due
F	2		7, 30, & 42		Thinking about Gender
M	5	Milgram	8 & 9		Principles of Sensation and Perception
W	7	1-4	27		Milgram: The Basic Paradigm
F	9				REVISION STARTS HERE	In class questionnaires completed in class.
M	12	6,8,9	28		Variations on the theme
W	14	10-14			Explanations & Alternatives
F	16		17, 18, & 19		Memory
M	19				Introduction to Data Analysis
W	21				Thanksgiving Break
F	23				Thanksgiving Break
M	26				Exam Preparation Day
W	28	Ward			Exam 3
F	30	1 & 2			Creativity & Cognition	Analysis Summary Due
M	3	3			Creative Imagery
W	5	4	20, 21 & 43		Problem Solving	Draft Poster Due
F	7				Exam Preparation	Group Ratings Due
M	10				Buntrock Crossroads	Poster Session
Final: Mon., Dec 17, 9:00-11:00 a.m.						Take home essay and MC

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