Winter 2004

This information effective for Winter 2004. Check with instructor the first day of class for any changes.

Psychology

[PSYC-060] [PSYC-133] [PSYC-138]

60. Introduction to Personality Psychology

Note: This syllabus from Fall 2002

(Subsequent quarters will be similar but may use different readings and projects.)

Instructor: Avril Thorne
Office: 361 Social Sciences 2
Office hours: TBA
E-mail: avril@ucsc.edu (best way to contact me)
Phone: 459-3613

Course Description:

What do we know when we really "know" a person? Personality psychology lies at the crossroads of clinical, developmental, social, and cognitive psychology. An understanding of current personality theory and research is essential for careers in clinical and counseling psychology and personnel selection and management. It is also useful for teaching and parenting. In this course, we will approach personality from three directions: traits, motives, and narratives/life stories. Each approach is paved with different philosophical assumptions and uses different methods for getting to know a person. Students will get hands on experience with assessing personality and with conducting personality research. Requirements include two exams, a small-group research project (ungraded), and a term paper based on a case study. This course is required or highly recommended for the following upper division courses: Psychology 100N, 155, 162, 166, 167, and 170.

Class Meetings: The lectures will sometimes expand on the readings and will sometimes introduce new material. I strongly advise you to attend all class meetings.

Readings: Because lectures build on and transcend the readings, students should complete the day's assigned readings before coming to class. You will learn a lot more that way, and you will also increase my chances of learning something from you. A textbook and a reader are required and available at Bay Tree Bookstore. Two copies of the textbook are on reserve at McHenry Library.

Textbook: McAdams, Dan P. (2000). The person: An integrated introduction to personality psychology. NY: Harcourt, Brace, & Jovanovich. Third edition. (note: NOT the second edition!)

Reader: Zirkel, S. (Ed.). (2000). Perspectives: Personality. Bellevue, WA: Coursewise Publishers.

Labs: Labs will begin the second week of class. Labs will be used to launch research projects, to get help with term papers, and to review for exams. Each student must sign up for either the Monday or Wednesday lab. You are only required to attend the lab session devoted to your research project, but I suggest that you reserve that time slot to meet other weeks to work together on your group research project. You will benefit from lab sessions on term papers and exams as well. A schedule of weekly lab activities is attached.

Small Group Research Projects. Each student must satisfactorily complete one of six possible group research projects. Sign-ups for group projects will take place the second day of class, Friday, Sept. 20. A description of each project and its due date is attached. The TA will help you launch the project during a lab meeting and will help you to organize your findings for presentation in class. Instructions for oral presentations and the write-up of the projects will follow.

Term Paper. A 10-page term paper is due Tuesday, December 3. You will choose an older person to interview for your paper. The paper interprets this person's personality by connecting information about the person's traits, motives, and life stories. Detailed instructions for the term paper will follow. Evidence of plagiarism on the paper will result in a failed paper. The last page of the syllabus defines and gives examples of plagiarism.

Exams. There will be two exams, on Friday, October 18, and on Friday, November 8. No blue books are necessary; you will write on the exam. No make-up exams will be allowed without a doctor's excuse. Do not enroll in the course if you will be out of town for either exam. DRC students must submit a DRC approval form to the instructor no later than October 4.

Evaluation. Student performance will be based on the following:

• Two (2) exams (weighted 30% each)
  
• Final paper (weighted 30%)
  
• Satisfactory participation in the group project (10%)
  
• Extra credit: for outstanding individual oral presentations of group projects

Calendar of Class Meetings

Group Research Projects

(About 6 students per group; about two groups per project; all data collected must be anonymous).

These projects will be launched in the labs and will then meet on their own timetable thereafter. Sign-ups for projects will take place in class on Friday, Sept. 20. Each group member must contribute data for the project. The group members will decide who will take responsibility for coordinating these tasks: 1) organizing insights or analyzing data, 2) making meaning of the overall findings, 3) writing up the findings with any raw data attached, and 4) co-presenting a lively 20-minute report about the findings in class. The findings should be summarized in 1 or 2 succinct overheads (the TA will help you with this). You may want to take turns describing what you found from your interviews. Both the group write-up and group presentation are due in class on the indicated presentation date. The following projects are suggestions only. If your group would like to take a different approach, please clear it with the TA.

Group Research Projects: Topics

1. The cross-time consistency of personal stories (e-mail narratives). Meet 9/23; present 11/13

How do personal stories change when we tell them to different people? E-mail four peers whom you know pretty well and ask them to e-mail you a story about a specific event in their life that was important or problematic to them. Then, a few days later, e-mail them again and ask them to e-mail you the version of the story that they would tell their parents. Discover what is going here! Each group member is responsible for four cross-time e-mail stories (including oneself as one of the informants).

2. Oops! Wrong audience! Telling personal stories to others (interviews). Meet 9/25; present 11/15

Have you ever told someone about an important personal event and gotten a response that was less than satisfying? Recall some of your own experiences in this regard, and interview friends about their experiences. Are some experiences best told to some people and not other people? Why? What stories, what audiences? Explore this topic! Each group member is responsible for four interviews (including a self-interview).

3. Extraversion and introversion in different cultures (interviews). Meet 9/30; present 11/18

These projects will examine whether extraversion and introversion have different meanings across cultures. For example, do some cultures value extraversion more than other cultures? Do some cultures value introversion more than other cultures? Each group should decide which two cultures, or ethnic heritages, to compare. The TA will help you to craft your interview questions and to make meaning of the responses you get. Each group member is responsible for four interviews, ideally with people who share his/her ethnic background. Use yourself as one of the informants.

4. Parents' stories as told to children and adolescents (interviews). Meet 10/2; present 11/20

What do know you about specific episodes in the lives of your parents? Are there some stories that they told you as a child, and are there other stories that they only disclosed when you got older? Compare the kinds of stories that are told to young children, older children, adolescents, and/or young adults. Each group member is responsible for four interviews; you may include yourself as one of the informants.

5. Cultural differences in family stories (interviews). Meet 10/7; present 11/22

Do family stories differ across cultures or ethnic heritages? Group members should decide which two cultures or ethnic heritages to compare. Each group member is responsible for four interviews, ideally with people who share his/her ethnic background. See if you can explain any differences that emerge.

6. Gender differences in parents' stories of personal transgressions. Meet 10/9; present 11/25

Stories of transgressions are stories about one's own misdeeds. Personal transgressions could range from small (scribbling on the wallpaper) to large (running away from home). Do fathers and mothers tell their kids stories of their (the parents') own transgressions, and, if so, what kinds of transgressions, and why? Each group member should interview 4 friends about stories they remember their mother and their father their telling them; the stories should focus on the misdeeds of each parent, but should not be about misdeeds that would make the parent feel uncomfortable if the misdeeds were revealed (even though all interviews will be anonymous). Also, ask why they think the parent told them each story. What similarities and differences emerge for the transgression stories of mothers and of fathers? Try to explain any differences you obtain.

Schedule of Lab Activities

133. Psychology and Evolutionary Theory

Instructor: Bruce Bridgeman
378 Soc. Sci. 2, 459-4005, bruceb@ucsc.edu
Office Hours: TBA

Note: This syllabus from spring 2001.

Course organization will be similar; we will be using my textbook, Psychology and Evolutionary Theory, published in 2003 by Sage publications.

Syllabus

Seminar Schedule

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138. Psychology of Interactive Media

Instructor: Dom Massaro
massaro@fuzzy.ucsc.edu
http://mambo.ucsc.edu/psl/dwm/

Course Description:

A laboratory course in which students work with state-of-the-art language technologies. The goal is to design, conduct, and analyze experiments in interactive media and human machine interface. Empirical and theoretical literature will be covered as a foundation for the research. Prerequisite: permission of instructor.

This course is available to graduate and undergraduate students in psychology, computer sciences and engineering, art, philosophy, linguistics, and related fields. The goal is to create a truly interdisciplinary experience in the understanding how people interact with the natural world and how technology will impact on this interaction. Topics include fundamentals of speech, language, and communication, virtual reality, human-machine interfaces, robotics, and computer-animated embodied conversational agents. Group projects will be the focus of the seminar. The aim is to have small groups composed of 1) undergraduates and graduates, 2) males and females, 3) physical and social science majors, and 4) students interested in programming and in human machine interaction.

Purpose of the Course:

This laboratory course offered in the winter 2004 quarter will cover aspects of speech, language, and communication, focusing on those domains of primary interest to the students taking the seminar. Understanding and communication among humans and machines involve many different levels and stages of information processing, and perceivers use many different sources of information (acoustic, visual, gestural, phonetic, prosodic, syntactic, semantic, and contextual) to impose meaning on the spoken input.

Under the guidance of the instructor and assistants, students will learn to use a general purpose speech toolkit, which runs on a PC and has been developed in several research laboratories. See:

http://mambo.ucsc.edu/psl/pslfan.html and http://www.cslu.ogi.edu/toolkit/).

Tutorials on various aspects of the toolkit are given at:

http://mambo.ucsc.edu/psl/tools/tutorial.html and http://cslu.cse.ogi.edu/toolkit/docs/2.0/apps/rad/tutorials/index.html.

The course will also make use of video conferencing and Internet facilities to connect with other instructors, students, and researchers who are also using these tools in various projects.

The Speech Toolkit, for example, allows the student to control and manipulate auditory speech, the speech movements of an animated face, and the hand gestures and body movements of a computer-animated agent. A user-friendly rapid application developer allows the creation of interactive dialogs and the recording of behavior. The data analysis modules allow the assessment of the manipulations and tests of theories of human performance. Students will use these modules and others in a hands-on computer lab to design, implement, carry out, and analyze experiments in face-to-face language processing for both in-class collaborations and homework assignments.

Instructional Strategy:

This course will require student engagement and initiative. Student involvement will be essential to the success of the course. Students will be expected to become toolkit users, as well as learning the intricacies of speech science and computer animation. The user-friendly nature of the speech toolkit makes speech science accessible and engaging to students while simultaneously allowing them to master quite difficult material. Student groups will make a class presentation and develop some prototype demonstrations or experiments using the speech toolkit.

Required Readings: Relevant readings will be chosen from the extant literature.

A Few Suggested Readings:

• Cassell, J.; J. Sullivan, S. Prevost, & E. Churchill (Eds.) (2000). Embodied conversational agents. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Kurzweil, R. (1999). The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence. Viking.
• Negroponte, Nicholas. Being Digital. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995.
• Reeves, B. & Nass, C. 1996. The media equation: How people treat computers, television, and new media like real people and places. New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Stephenson, Neal. Snow Crash. Bantam Books, 1992.
• Stork, D. (Ed.) (1997). HAL's legacy: 2001's computer as dream and reality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

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