Fall 2004

S S 301 • Social Science: Psychology

Course Description

Psychology is a discipline that is broadly concerned with the ways in which people perceive, understand and interact with the world. As such, it addresses questions that range from the micro level of perception within the eye to the macro level of social interactions among people. The SS 301 in psychology is designed to introduce students to a representative range of the topics subsumed within this discipline. We will be taking a levels-of-explanation approach, in which we will simultaneously explore the biological, environmental, and cultural aspects of each of the selected problems. We will also specifically consider the ways in which psychology investigates these problems, in terms of both methodology and epistemology. The hope is that students will leave the SS 301 with an understanding not only of what psychology studies, but also of how and why.

About the Professor Wendy Domjan has a Ph.D. in psychology from The University of Wisconsin, with specialties in perception and cognition. As a result of her children’s experiences in high school and college, she has developed an interest in alternative approaches to teaching and is currently piloting a program to incorporate interactive learning strategies into large psychology classes, a component of which involves teaching undergraduates to act as discussion and lab leaders for small sections of the larger class.

Texts

M. Gazzaniga and T. Heatherton, The Psychological Science: the Mind, the Brain and Behavior Roger Hock, Forty Studies that Changed Psychology

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