PSYCH 6205 Fall 2015

Advances and Developments in Social Psychology

Friday. 12-12:50, Bartlett 34

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 broadly 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 articles or chapters (assigned by the presenter) should be read by all prior to each session. 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 background reading one 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), journal articles, or statistical/methodological techniques.

For dates that I’m unable to be here because of conference obligations, or when there are good alternative talks given on campus on that date, you will be asked to attend presentations on campus. You’ll need to write up a one-page summary and commentary on the talk you attended (including who it was, title of the talk, date, and location) and turn those in by the next class session.

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.

For the talk schedule, check out:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1A9Kavw1_H6H0QSbGBtH5N5pgAzJH7cogag3vtJQCBws/edit#gid=0

Note that you may have to be logged in to gmail through your uni account for you to edit or see this page!

Also note that we will meet exam week from 12-1 on Wednesday (the scheduled exam time overlaps with Readings).