400:294:01

Advances and Developments in Social Psychology

Fri. 12-12:50, Baker 315

Helen C. Harton, Professor

Course description: This course is a formalization of the social brownbag series. Students and faculty from UNI and elsewhere will do presentations of research related to social psychology. The research projects may be completed or in progress. Presentations may also take the form of discussions of research articles or statistical or methodological techniques.

Student expectations: Students are expected to come to and participate in each class session. Participation entails listening critically and responding to the information presented, offering helpful suggestions, observations, and critiques. One or more article or chapter (assigned by the presenter) should be read by all prior to each session. Students will also turn in a list of "strengths" and "weaknesses" of each in house presentation before the end of each class. If there is not good and fairly equal participation, I reserve the right to start requiring thought papers for each session. These papers would be 1-2 pages of critical analysis of the material presented. Students are also expected to make one or more presentations per semester. Students doing presentations should assign a background reading a week before the presentation.

Presentations should include some Powerpoint, but may be more or less formal. First year students will present their first year project sometime in the first year, and in the second year, their thesis. Other presentations could include research projects that you have done or are currently working on as well as discussions of areas of research (e.g., the actor-observer effect, stereotypes of criminals).

Grading criteria: Students who fulfill the obligations above will pass the class; students who do not, will not. You may miss one class for good reason (e.g., illness, conference presentation), but if you do, you will be required to read and complete written critiques of 3 social psychological articles from major journals on the topic to be discussed that day.

Talk schedule:

August 28	Introductions—meet at 11:30 at OP
September 4	Helen, spatial regression
September 11	Marybeth Stalp, sociology, qualitative methods
September 18*	Adam Butler, moderated regression (10am?)
September 25	Dan McCarthy
October 2	Ryan Betts
October 9	Jennifer Waldron, HPLS, sports hazing
October 16*	Heather Caspers, reschedule class to Monday?
October 23	Julie Lowell, anthropology, responses to disaster
October 30	Matt Bunker, marketing
November 6	Jason Clark, psychology, UI
November 13*	Nick Schwab, psychology (10am?)
November 20	Zack Lemka
December 4	Tom Dirth
December 11	Sara Estrada
December 18 (or other TBA)	tba