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· Home Page (<-Start here) · Syllabus · Comments on Reading Assignments This class is designed to help you think about complex human social behavior. It emphasizes methodology and critical analysis of ideas and evidence. The class examines the assumptions that different social policies make about the nature of human behavior. It asks what type of psychological (behavioral) evidence would be needed to fairly test these assumptions. It then examines the evidence that has been presented by people for and against the policies. It also examines evidence in the psychological sciences. Some of the policy areas that have been considered in prior classes are: · The control of crime and aggression · Affirmative Action · Improving the Education System · Health Care Delivery Within each of these areas various psychological issues such as the role of intelligence (e.g., What does it mean? How is it measured? Are the tests culturally biased? What does it mean to say that it is genetically determined?) and the role of early childhood experiences (e.g., poverty, education, age of parent, single family homes, parental discipline) are covered. In addition, the relevance of different theories in psychology (e.g., equity theory, attribution theory, cognitive biases and heuristics, theories of emotion and aggression) are examined. The readings for the class come from a wide array of different sources, magazines, newspapers, op-ed articles, chapters, and journal articles. Access to and familiarity with the World Wide Web is encouraged because of much of the argument and some of the evidence used to support those arguments for different social policies can be found on the Web. Many different institutes on all sides of the political spectrum publish material trying to support their favored positions with regard to the various social policy issues that we cover. |
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Psychology and Social Policy |
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