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Course
Goals
This course is designed to be a capstone course for senior psychology majors. The goal of this course is to bring together psychology majors for an intellectual experience in a seminar format to culminate your study of psychology, emphasizing reading in the discipline, critical thinking, and class discussions.
You will study how the profession of psychology has evolved from its inception to its present manifestation and how it has been applied to real-world problems. You also will have an opportunity to consider some cutting edge issues in psychology by reading and discussing four current bestsellers in the field, three chosen by the instructors and one chosen by each of the 4 sections of this course.
Finally, we will spend some time talking about your life as a psychologist after Wheaton--job opportunities, graduate programs, and the like.
TEXTS |
| Required: |
1. Gladwell, M. (2007). Blink: The power of thinking without thinking. New York: Little Brown. 2. Sapolsky, R. M. (2004). Why zebras don’t get ulcers, 3rd edition. New York: Holt. 3. Tavris, C. & Aronson, E. (2008). Mistakes were made (but not by me): Why we justify foolish beliefs, bad decisions, and hurtful acts. New York: Harvest Books. |
Additional Reading:
A fourth text will be selected by the class. In addition, the following articles will be available on electronic reserve for this course:
Basoglu, M., Livanou, M., & Crnobaric, C. (2007). Torture versus other cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment: Is the distinction real or apparent? Archives of General Psychiatry, 64, 277-285.
Burkley, M. & Blanton, H. (2005). When am I my group? Self-enhancement versus self-justification accounts of perceived prototypicality. Social Justice Research, 18, 445-463.
Cole, E.R. & Stewart, A.J. (2001). Invidious comparisons: Imagining a psychology of race and gender beyond difference. Political Psychology, 22, 293-308.
Hergenhahn, B.R. (1986). Introduction. In: B.R. Hergenhahn, An introduction to the history of psychology (pp. 2-22). Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Co.
Malhotra, N. & Kuo, A.G. (2008). Attributing blame: The public's response to Hurricane Katrina. The Journal of Poltics, 70, 120-135.
Stanovich, K.E. (2004) Psychology is alive and well (and doing fine among the sciences). In K.E. Stanovich, How to think straight about psychology (pp. 1-18). Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Wade-Benzoni, K.A., Li, M, Thompson, L.L., & Bazerman, M.H. (2007). The malleability of environmentalism. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 7, 163-189.
Zimbardo, P. (2004). Does psychology make a difference in our lives? American Psychologist, 59, 339-351.
For this course, you MUST subscribe to the class listserv, psychseniorsem@wheatoncollege.edu. The listserv will be used to post announcements, study guides,news, and other information relevant to this course. But most of all, it gives us a way to talk to one another quickly and at any time of the day or night. Since discussion is the primary work for this course, that kind of communication opportunity will be important!
All information posted to the list is considered valid class material for use in discussion and quizzes. You can also use the list or our class Blackboard site to have discussions about topics we cover in class, to ask questions of your classmates or instructor, and/or to form workspaces for your discussion teams.
You can subscribe to the class listserv now by clicking on this link. Leave the subject heading and the body of the message blank. You should get a confirmation message back from the listserv (a listserv is a computer, by the way--not a person!), to which you must reply in order to be subscribed to the list. Follow the instructions provided by the listserver in order to be subscribed to the list. NOTE: If you use an email account outside of your Wheaton account to do this (a gmail or Comcast account, for instance), you need to contact the Wheaton Systems Administrator (Brian Gibson: bgibson@wheatonma.edu) to ask to be subscribed to the list. Once subscribed, you need to check your email at least once a day, to look for announcements, study guides that your classmates might post, or other course information. REMEMBER: Material posted to the list is fair game for testing.
Thus, it should come as no surprise that a majority of the discussions in this course will be managed by you, the students.
To manage discussions, students will work in teams of three. Each team will choose a portion of one of the three assigned books and will be responsible for facilitating two seminar meetings on that section of the book. Teams will develop discussion questions, exercises and a brief quiz on their chosen book. The class as a whole will discuss a fourth book chosen by the seminar students.
Our seminar will meet twice a week. In most of our sessions the class will meet together to discuss the readings. The other meetings will consist of consultations in which teams will meet with the instructor to prepare for the team’s seminar facilitation, panel discussions in which alums come back to talk about their experiences after leaving Wheaton, and individual consultations on the final papers.
We hope you will enjoy working together, learn from one another, and have a good capstone experience for the psychology major.