Introduction to Psychology

Michael A. Cohen
mcohen@amherst.edu
Office Hours: Tuesdays 12:00pm-2:00pm, Wednesdays 1:00pm-2:00pm, Merrill 324
Class: Tuesdays and Thursdays: 2:30pm-3:50pm
Merrill Lecture Room 4

Course description and goals

There are two primary goals of this course: 1) To get you excited by the study of psychology and
to have a general foundation upon which you can take future courses. 2) To get you some
experience thinking about data. How can you use data to answer questions? How much can you
actually conclude from certain data points? When/why do people make conclusions that are not
supported by this data? In the 21st century, I firmly believe that more and more jobs are going to
require people to have an ability to think about, understand, and analyze data. So a goal for me in
this course is to get you thinking about results and empirical findings in the context of psychology.
This will become more and more apparent as we talk about many results and findings in class (as
opposed to just ideas and theories), and when the tests come around (data will be front and
center).

How will I be evaluated? (percentages are subject to change)

-10% - In class attendance and pop quizzes: The vast majority of days, I’ll take attendance in
the first minute or two of class. The class is big, but it isn’t so big that I can’t look around the room
for the first minute and just quickly put a check mark next to people’s names. Pop quizzes,
meanwhile, will entirely be based on the reading for that class. The quizzes are not meant to trip
you up; they are just to give me a sense of who is doing the reading and who is not. If you do the
reading (and I mean ACTUALLY do the reading and process what is being said and think about it
and pay attention), you should be totally fine and get full credit.

-60% - In class exams: There will be three in class exams taking place on February 20th, March 29th,
and April 26th. Each exam will only cover material since the last exam (i.e., not cumulative) and material
on these exams will come both from in class lectures and the reading (Note: There definitely, without
question, for sure, undeniably, with 100% probability, absolutely will be material on the exams that come
from the reading that are not discussed in class, so please realize that this is undoubtedly going to
happen). I should mention now, and I will mention it later, that the overwhelming majority of stuff on the
exams will be from what we do in class. In addition, stuff on the exams just from the reading will not at all
be “gotcha” questions. They’ll be pretty big, obvious questions that anyone should be able to answer if
they actually did the reading each week and then reviewed the main thesis/idea of the article before the
exam. We’ll go over the specific format of the exams as they get closer to us in the semester.

-10% - First Paper: One of the realities of any science is that even the most introductory ideas usually
have their critics. While this isn’t the case for every single result out there (i.e., I think most people would
agree that gravity exists, for example), it definitely applies for a large majority of them (especially in Intro
Psych). Thus, you will write a relatively brief paper “What is wrong?” paper where you explore one of
these issues. In your paper, you will do some independent research to find some criticisms or alternative
interpretations of an idea we read/talked about in class. Your paper will then explain what those
criticisms are, whether they are valid, whether they disprove the idea we read/talked about in class, and
whether or not I should keep teaching that idea in light of these criticisms. This may sound kind of
overwhelming, but we’re going to go over it at length, so don’t worry. It’s really just you picking a topic
you find interesting and reading more about it and learning about different views of a psychological idea.
This paper will be due on March 22nd.

-15% - Final Paper: For your final paper, you will propose a psychology experiment. In this
paper, you will explain the question/hypothesis you are exploring, the methods you would use,
the variables you are manipulating, the measurements you are taking, the (predicted) results, and
your interpretation of those results. The goal of this paper is to get you to actively think about
psychological science and work through the steps of how research is conducted. You do not
HAVE to actually collect any data, but I’ll give a little extra credit for people who do in fact collect
some (relatively simple) data and write that up. We’ll go over this more in class since it won’t be
due until near the end of the semester. This paper will be due after the last day of class.

-5%- Participate in a Psych Study: In order to gain research experience, each student is
required to fulfill the Psych 100 research requirement by participating as a subject in three credits
for psychology studies (1 credit for studies that are under 1 hr; 2 credits for those that are 1+ hr)
or by critiquing three scientific articles that have been pre-approved by me. Students who are
interested in fulfilling the requirement through studies should refer to the handout, “Guide to
Participating in Psychological Research” on the Moodle website. Participation in these studies is
ungraded, but failure to complete the research participation requirement will lower your final
course grade. Your final grade will be lowered 1% for each credit that you do not complete. Thus,
if your average for the semester was an 80% and you failed to participate in two credits, your final
course average would be a 78%, and therefore a B- would become a C+. The last day to
complete the research participation requirement is the last day of classes.

A note on participation in class

Unfortunately in a class this size, it isn’t realistic for me to tie your participation to your grade. However, I
should say that it’s easy to notice who is coming to class regularly, who is engaged with the lectures, who
is answering/asking questions, and who has obviously missed a bunch of classes, never speaks, stares at
their computer the whole time, and doesn’t seem particularly engaged. To be totally honest, students are
TERRIBLE at hiding the fact that they aren’t paying attention in class. If ever I am up there giving a
lecture and I notice someone hasn’t looked up at me or the slides in a few minutes, I basically just assume
they are totally checked out and not paying attention. I notice this and it definitely paints the way I think
of your participation in class. But again, there are so many students in this class that it’d be impossible for
me to keep accurate records on this. So how is this going to relate to your grade? For a lot of people, their
final grade is usually right on the border between, say, a B+ and an A-. If you are in that situation, but you
are clearly engaged with the class and are regularly attending/participating, you’re waaaaaaaay more
likely to get bumped up to the A- than if I barely know what your face looks like because it is only in class
3/4 of the time and is often buried in Netflix when you do make it. So while I won’t take points off for a
lack of attendance/participation, it can certainly help you (And it’s fairly often the case that your final
grade requires a bit of subjective judgment on my part. In fact, I’d say for many people, their grades will
be in that “subjective zone”).

Required and recommended readings

Required: Gary Marcus (editor). “The Norton Psychology Reader.” 1st edition.
This isn’t a normal textbook. It’s a collection of short bits from books/essays. These readings are intended
to sort of “prime the pump” regarding whatever we’re going to talk about that day in class (even though
we sometimes won’t go into the specifics that day).

In addition, there will almost always also be readings from other sources. Sometimes those other
readings will be Scientific American articles. Those are informative and interesting but should be read
differently than empirical articles. We’ll go over this more in class, but if there is an empirical article
assigned, you are expected to fully understand a) the question/hypothesis, b) independent variable (IV),
c) dependent variable (DV), d) results/findings, and e) conclusions. There is always A TON of info in
empirical articles, but those are the critical factors you should focus on and the only things you’ll be
tested on.

Required: That being said, even though we won’t be using a textbook for class, there are many textbooks
you can look at while studying that would be really helpful. Effectively everything we talk about in class is
super Google-able or can be found in textbooks. So if your notes and the slides don’t make much sense,
I’d recommend you check some of these out. Some of them are even online. Like this one:

http://www.doralacademyprep.org/ourpages/auto/2016/4/2/44580505/Myers%2010th%20edition.pdf

BTW, If one of the readings doesn’t make its way onto the website, don’t email me about it right away.
That means there was some mix-up with the library system (I’m actually not allowed to post those
readings to Moodle myself for some reason I don’t totally get). Luckily for us, if you are on the Amherst
network, you should be able to find the article if you just spent a moment or two searching for it on the
internet (or through the Amherst College Library system). If you can’t find it, email some friends of yours.
If after all that you STILL can’t find it, then let me know. Sometimes it gets legitimately hard, which is
annoying and I apologize in advance.

Course schedule (I’d suggest reading these articles in the order I put them here)

1. T: January 23rd: Introduction

2. Th: January 25th: Psychological Data: What is it? How do we understand it?

 www.inf.fu-berlin.de/lehre/pmo/eng/Sagan-Baloney.pdf
 Lehrer (2010). The truth wears off. New Yorker

3. T: January 30th: Brains 1.0: Are you just your brain?

 I’ll put these up on Moodle as PDFs in case people haven’t been able to get their copy of the
book by this point.
 Marcus reader. Chapter 4. Antonio Damasio section.
 Marcus reader. Chapter 4. Oliver Sacks section.

4. Th: February 1st: Brains 2.0: Are you just your brain?
 Burns et al. (2013) Right orbitofrontal tumor with pedophilia symptom and constructional apraxia
sign. Archives of Neurology

5. T: February 6th: Perception: How do you perceive the visual world?

 Marcus reader. Chapter 5. Donald Hoffman section.

 Gandhi et al. (2015) Immediate susceptibility to visual illusions after sight onset. Current Biology.

6. Th: February 8th: Perception: How do you perceive the rest of the world?

 Hubbard and Ramachandran (2003) Hearing colors, tasting shapes. Scientific American
 Witthoft and Winawer (2013) Learning, Memory, and Synesthesia. Psychological Science.

7. T: February 13th: Memory: How do you remember what you’ve perceived?

 Marcus reader. Chapter 9. Daniel Schacter section.

 Godden and Baddeley (1975) Context-dependent memory in two natural environments: On land
and underwater. British Journal of Psychology.

8. Th: February 15: Law: What does the legal system need to know about psychology?

 Lofuts and Zanni (1974) Eyewitness testimony: The influence of the wording of a question.
Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society
 http://www.nytimes.com/1993/06/11/us/studies-reveal-suggestibility-of-very-young-as-
witnesses.html?pagewanted=all
 Loftus et al. (1987) Some facts about “Weapon focus.” Law and Human Behavior.

9. T: February 20th: Test 1

10. Th: February 22nd: Awareness: What determines what we are aware of?

 Martinez-Conde and Macknick. “Magic and the Brain.” Scientific American. 2008
 Rensink et al (1997) To see or not to see: The need for attention to perceive changes in
scenes. Psychological Science.

11. T: February 27th: Consciousness: What happens in altered states (i.e., sleep)?

 SHORTER DAY (Going over exam)

 Owen et al. (2006) Detecting awareness in the vegetative state. Science.
 Owen. (2017) Is anybody in there? Scientific American. (In case the Science article doesn’t
make 100% sense, read this nifty write up on this stuff).
 Anderson (2017) The risk of going under. Scientific American.

12. Th: March 1st: Language: How do we acquire it? How does it influence thought?

 Marcus reader. Chapter 6. Steven Pinker section.

 Boroditsky. (2011) How language shapes thought. Scientific American.
 Boroditsky (2010) Remembrances of times east: Absolute spatial representations of time
in an Australian aboriginal community. Psychological Science.

13. T: March 6h: Learning: How do you learn new things about the world?

 Marcus reader. Chapter 7. John Watson and Rosalie Rayner section. (Note: This is basically just a
reprint of an experiment run in the 1920’s, read this like any other empirical article in terms of
understanding the question/hypothesis, IV, DV, and results, etc.).
 Marcus reader. Chapter 7. Marc Hauser section.

14. Th: March 8th: Intelligence and enhancement: What can you do to get smarter?

 Zimmer. (2008) The search for intelligence. Scientific American.

 Kramer et al. (2008) Breastfeeding and child cognitive development. Archives of General
Psychiatry.
 Mulainathan and Shafir. (2014) Freeing up intelligence. Scientific American.

=====================SPRING BREAK: NO CLASSES====================

15. T: March 20th: Decision-making: How are you predictably irrational?

 Stanovich. “Rational and irrational thought.” Scientific American. 2009

 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/02/25/what-was-i-thinking
 Johnson and Goldstein (2003) Do defaults save lives? Science.

16. Th: March 22nd: Development: How does a young mind make sense of the world?

 First paper due today, though I’m open to changing the date.
 Marcus reader. Chapter 8. Alison Gopnik et al. section.
 Marcus reader. Chapter 8. Paul Bloom section.

17. T: March 27th: Development continued

 Marcus reader. Chapter 14. Judith Harris section.

 Hamlin et al. (2007) Social evaluation by preverbal infants. Nature.

18. Th: March 29th: Test 2

19. T: April 3rd: Social Psychology: How do we perceive the social world.

 Todorov et al. (2005) Inferences of competence from faces predict election outcomes. Science.
 Rule and Ambady (2008) The face of success: Inferences from chief executive officers’ appearance
predict company profits. Psychological Science.

20. Th: April 5th: Social Psychology: What is the benefit of being a social animal?

 SHORTER DAY (Going over exam)

 Denworth (2016) With a little help from our friends. Scientific American.
 http://ncase.me/trust/ (btw, this is like a reading and should be done all the way and could
be pop-quizzed if I want!)

21. T: April 10th: Social Psychology: What is the downside of being a social animal?

 Reicher and Haslam (2011) Culture of shock. Scientific American.

 Darley and Latane (1968) Bystander intervention in emergencies: Diffusion of responsibility.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

22. Th: April 12th: Emotions and motivation

 Marcus reader. Chapter 13. Paul Eckman section.

 Schmidt and Schwabe (2011) Splintered by stress. Scientific American

23. T: April 17th: Happiness, stress, and morality: What makes us happy? What is right?

 Killingsworth and Gilbert (2011) A wandering mind is an unhappy mind. Science.

 Wiederman (2007) Why it’s so hard to be happy. Scientific American

24. Th: April 19th: Disorders: Depression, anxiety, and schizophrenia.

 Marcus reader. Chapter 16. Sylvia Nasar section.

 Marcus reader. Chapter 16. Kay Redfield Jameson section.
 Marcus reader. Chapter 17. Peter Kramer section.

25. T: April 24th: Disorders: Autism

 Marcus reader. Chapter 16. Temple Grandin section.

 Makin. (2015) What really causes autism? Scientific American.

26. Th: April 26th: Test 3