Syllabus for Psychology 238

Syllabus for Psychology 238:	Instructor: Dr. John A. Johnson
Introduction to Personality Psychology	Office 172 Smeal 375-4774
Spring Semester, 2013	Office Hours: MWF 10-10:50
MWF 1:30-2:20 111 Swift Building	Email: j5j@psu.edu

Required Textbook:

Funder, D. C. (2012). The Personality Puzzle, 6th edition. New York: W W. Norton & Co.

[Available as an e-book. See: http://books.wwnorton.com/nortonebooks/]

Course Materials on the Web:

The syllabus and other course materials are available on ANGEL, https://angel.psu.edu/, for students who are registered in the course.

Cancellations due to Weather:

Please read the campus procedures concerning delay or cancellation of classes due to weather
conditions at: http://www.ds.psu.edu/weather.htm . If the campus announces a
delay due to weather, this will not affect our class because the
shortened class periods occur only before noon. Obviously, if the campus
announces cancellation due to weather, we will not be meeting. If the
weather is bad but the campus does not announce a cancellation, and you
believe that driving conditions are too dangerous for you, please do not risk
your life for the sake of class. This is a valuable class, but your life is
more important!

Course Description:

Personality psychology, or personology, is the
scientific study of the whole person. Through lecture and discussion, this
course compares and contrasts the major views of
personality according the root ideas in the personological tradition:
motivation, personality development, self-knowledge, unconscious processes,
psychological adjustment, and the relationship between the individual and society.

This course is organized into four parts
that follow the structure of the textbook. After each of the four parts there
will be an exam that focuses on the material covered in that part.

Part I of the course covers the goals of personality
psychology, the kinds of data gathered in personality research, and personality
research methods.

Part II of the course covers the trait
approach to personality. This section considers what kind of consistency is
necessary to ascribe a personality trait to someone and examines behavioral
consistency and inconsistency across situations. It also looks at how
personality psychologists measure traits with tests and how ordinary people
make judgments about personality traits in everyday life. Finally, this section
reviews representative research on personality traits and types.

Part III of the course begins with the
biological approach to personality, specifically genetics and evolution. Due to
time limitations, Chapter 8 on the brain will not be covered. Next, Part III
turns to what is called psychoanalytic or depth psychology. Psychoanalysis—the
school of thought founded by Sigmund Freud—emphasizes irrational influences
from the hidden part of the mind called the unconscious. The more
general term for personality theories that emphasize influences hidden deep
within the unconscious is depth psychology. Important depth
psychologists after Freud include Alfred Adler, Carl Jung, Karen Horney, Erik
Erikson, and the ego psychologists. Modern research on the unconscious and on
attachment relationships arose in part because of psychoanalysis.

Part IV of the course covers the phenomenological approach
and learning approach to personality. These two approaches move away
from biological and unconscious influences. In contrast, these approaches consider
the influences of awareness and experience with the environment
on personality. Part IV begins by explaining the role of the European
existential philosophers on the study of awareness and freedom. Next it moves
on to American psychologists who emphasized awareness, including the humanists
(Gordon Allport, Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow), cognitive theorist George Kelly,
and the modern positive psychologists.

Part IV next turns to the role that learning about the
environment has on personality. Due to time constraints, we will skip
Chapter 16 on personality processes and Chapter 17 on the self. Part IV next
looks at personality disorders. It ends with a review of the major ideas in the
course.

Objectives:

As you work through this course,
you will be expected to become familiar enough with personality research and
the five basic approaches to personality (trait, biological, psychoanalytic,
phenomenological, and learning) to:

• list the questions of greatest interest to each approach;
• describe the preliminary answers to the questions asked
  within each approach;
• describe the position of each approach on the root ideas;
• compare and contrast the trait, biological,
  psychoanalytic, phenomenological, and learning approaches;
• evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each approach.

Exams:

Each exam consists of 40 multiple-choice questions worth one
point each. Although each exam focuses on the material immediately prior to it,
the second, third, and fourth exams are cumulative in the sense that new
material is related to previous material. For example, you cannot learn about
types of personality data only for the first exam and then forget about this
concept, because we will be talking about personality data throughout the
course. In order to compare the ideas of American and European personality
psychologists, you have to remember enough about Freud after the third exam to
compare his ideas to the American theories discussed in the fourth part of the
course. And so forth.

To help prepare yourself for the exams, you can visit the
textbook publisher’s Web site, http://wwnorton.com/college/psych/personalitypuzzle6/,
which contains chapter outlines and reviews, flash cards, and practice multiple
choice quizzes for each chapter. (To access these materials, click on a chapter
number near the top of the Web page.) Some of the multiple choice questions
from these quizzes will appear on the course examinations.

Examinations are open book, open notes. Do not be misled,
however, into thinking that you can look up the answer to every question during
the test, because you will not have enough time to do this. There is a
50-minute time limit for each exam. Furthermore, many of the exam questions are
not the kind that test for a simple, factual answer that can be looked up.
Instead, you will sometimes be asked to apply what you have learned to a new
situation. For example, a question might describe a research study and ask you
to identify what kind of data is being gathered, based on the descriptions of
different kinds of personality data described in the textbook. You therefore
need to understand the ideas in the course, not just memorize facts that
can be looked up. It would probably be a good idea to prepare for exams as if
you were not able to refer to notes or the book, so that you have a firm
grasp of the material. Then, during the exam, you can use your notes or the
book to double-check on your answers if need be.

Grades:

Your grades will be based on the total points you earn on the four multiple-choice exams.

Points	Grade			Grade
148-160	A		123-127	C+
144-147	A-		112-122	C
139-143	B+		96-111	D
133-138	B		0- 95	F
128-132	B-

Grades can be adjusted upward for students who demonstrate understanding of the course
material in class projects and discussions.

Course Outline:

Reading assignments should be completed before the topic is discussed in class. Blank areas in the
Topic column indicate a continuation of the previously listed topic.

WEEK	CLASS MEETING	TOPIC	READING ASSIGNMENT
		PART I: RESEARCH METHODS
1	1 M 1/7	Introduction to the course	Preface
	2 W 1/9	The Study of the Person	Chapter 1
	3 F 1/11
2	4 M 1/14	Clues to Personality: The Basic Sources of Data	Chapter 2
	4 W 1/16
	5 F 1/18	Personality Psychology as Science: Research Methods	Chapter 3
3	M 1/21	NO CLASS-Martin Luther King Day
	7 W 1/23
	8 F 1/25	* * * EXAM 1 * * * RESEARCH METHODS
		PART II: HOW PEOPLE DIFFER: THE TRAIT APPROACH
4	9 M 1/28	Traits, Situations, and Consistency	Chapter 4
	10 W 1/30
	11 F 2/1
5	12 M 2/4	Personality Testing and Its Consequences	Chapter 5
	13 W 2/6
	14 F 2/8

 

6	15 M 2/11			Personality Judgment in Daily Life		Chapter 6
	16 W 2/13
	17 F 2/15
7	18 M 2/18			Using Personality Traits to Predict and Understand Behavior		Chapter 7
	19 W 2/20
	20 F 2/22			* * * EXAM 2 * * * THE TRAIT APPROACH
			PART III: BIOLOGICAL AND PSYCHOANALYTIC APPROACHES TO PERSONALITY
8		21 M 2/25	Behavioral Genetics and Evolutionary Theory			Chapter 9
		22 W 2/27
		23 F 3/1
		3/4-3/8	* * * SPRING BREAK – NO CLASSES* * *
9		24 M 3/11	Basics of Psychoanalysis		Chapter 10
		25 W 3/13
		26 F 3/15	The Workings of the Unconscious Mind: Defenses and Slips		Chapter 11
10		27 M 3/18
		28 W 3/20	Case Study: Glenn Stewart
		29 F 3/22	Depth Psychology after Freud		Chapter 12

 

11	30 M 3/25
	31 W 3/27
	32 F 3/29
12	33 M 4/1	* * * EXAM 3 * * * THE BIOLOGICAL AND PSYCHOANALYTIC APPROACHES
		PART IV: EXPERIENCE AND AWARENESS: HUMANISTIC PSYCHOLOGY AND ENVIRONMENTALISM
	34 W 4/3	Experience, Existence, and the Meaning of Life: Existentialism		Chapter 13
	35 F 4/5	Gordon Allport
13	36 M 4/8	Abraham Maslow
	37 W 4/10	Carl Rogers
	38 F 4/12	George Kelly and Positive Psychology
14	39 M 4/15	Cultural Variation in Experience, Behavior, and Personality		Chapter 14
	40 W 4/17
	41 F 4/19	Learning to be a Person: Behaviorism and Social Learning Theory		Chapter 15
15	42 M 4/22
	43 W 4/24	Disorders of Personality		Chapter 18
	44 F 4/26	Conclusion: Looking Back and Looking Ahead		Chapter 19
Finals Week 4/29-5/3	Exact Date TBA	* * * EXAM 4 * * * PHENOMENOLOGICAL AND LEARNING APPROACHES; PERSONALITY DISORDERS

 

Attendance is Good—Unless
You Have the Flu

Attending class is essential to doing well in the course.
When you attend class, you have an opportunity to learn from both the
instructor and from other students. If you often miss class, you will miss
information, and your opportunities for raising your grade by participating in
class discussions will diminish. However, if you are ill, especially if you
have flu-like symptoms, please send me an email describing your illness as soon
as possible and do not come to class. Public health considerations are more
important than missed work, which can be made up.

Code of Conduct and Statement of Academic Integrity:

All students are expected to act with civility, personal
integrity; to respect other students’ dignity, rights and property; and to help
create and maintain an environment in which all can succeed through the fruits
of their own efforts. An environment of academic integrity is requisite to
respect for self and others and a civil community.

Academic integrity includes a commitment to not engage in or tolerate acts
of falsification, misrepresentation or deception. Violation of academic
integrity includes (but is not limited to) all of the following:

• Cheating on exams
• Having unauthorized possession of exams
• “Ghosting” (taking or having another student take an exam)
• Plagiarizing
• Submitting the work of another person as your own
• Using Internet sources without citation
• Facilitating other students’ acts of academic dishonesty
• Tampering with the academic work of another student.

Students charged with a breach of academic integrity will
receive due process and, if the charge is judged to be valid, academic
sanctions may range, depending on the severity of the offense, from no credit
for the assignment to an F for the course. More detailed information can be
found in University
Faculty Senate Policy 49-20, Academic Administrative
Policies and Procedure G9, Academic Integrity, and the Sanctioning Guidelines for
Academic Integrity Violations.

Note to Students with Disabilities:

Penn State DuBois welcomes students with disabilities into
the University’s educational programs. If you have a disability-related need
for modifications and/or reasonable accommodations in this course, please
contact Diana Kreydt at the Office for Disability Services, 142 Smeal Building,
at 372-3037.

For further information regarding the Office of Disability
Services, visit their web site at www.equity.psu.edu/ods/
. Instructors should be notified as early in the semester as possible
regarding the need for modification and/or reasonable accommodations.