Textbook

Gleitman, Henry, Alan J. Fridlund, and Daniel Reisberg. Psychology. 6th ed. New York, NY: Norton, 2004. ISBN: 0393977676.

About This Course

"Psychology is the study of human behavior and human mental life." That is the first line (or a close approximation of the first line) of most Introductory Psychology texts. That line describes an immense territory that includes single cells in the brain, your memories of childhood, the motivations of terrorists, and the nature of dreams...for starters. This course is an introduction. We can't hope to exhaust the topic but we can show you the lay of the land and invite you to continue exploring when the course is done.

The Text

I picked the Gleitman et al. Psychology text because it has been the best written, most intelligent of the texts on the market for many years. The book has many pages. Students who discover this fact the day before the exam are usually unhappy. The text is most useful when read in small quantities over the course of the term. I have provided handouts with some questions and notes to help you to focus on the points that I consider most important.

Please Note: We expect you to have done the reading by the date listed on the syllabus.  

FAQ: The book is out in its 6th edition. Can you use the 5th that you found cheap somewhere?

Answer: Yes but don't fuss if some factoid on the exam turns out to be in the 6th but not the 5th. It is your choice but there is a risk.

The Lectures

Lectures are scheduled two days a week, each of one and a half hour duration .

There will be a handout for most lectures.

Quizzes

Quizzes are provided to help you test yourself.  Click the Exams hyperlink on the left-hand-side of the page.

Exams

A number of old exams and jeopardy questions are provided for you to use to test yourself.  Click the Study Materials hyperlink to access them.

The Writing Assignments

There are four writing assignments. The assignments are described in a separate handout.

Some Notes about Writing

• Length: The desired length of these papers is given in the handouts. Nobody is going to sit around counting words BUT 350 words is not the same as 1000 words even if you use a big font and 2000 words is not twice as good as 1000 if we asked for 1000.
  
  

• Citations: Remember, if you use someone's ideas, give them credit by means of a citation (Franklin, 1776). The basic rules are a) You are not likely to get in trouble for having too many citations and b) it should be possible to track down the source of any assertion in your paper. If the source isn't you, state who it is. If you use someone's exact words, "put them in quotes" (Lincoln, 1864).
  
  Read Me! Use your own words: This is important and, for some reason, some people don't get it. Most of the Dangerously Bad Papers in this class are cut-and-paste collages. These are papers that are made up of direct quotes or close paraphrases of your sources. Even if the citations and bibliography are flawless, this is not a good way to write. Worse, people tend to forget the citations and then this looks like plagiarism (see below). Use your OWN WORDS. Use direct quotation sparingly. Read, think, and then write.
  
  

• Honesty: Every now and then someone turns in work that is not their own. Plagiarism occurs when one person tries to take credit for the ideas or work of another. Fake data is academic fraud. Plagiarism is academic theft.  All of this is easier to detect than one might think.
  
  Accidental plagiarism is easy to avoid. Let's say you found some good ideas in a book. You can use those ideas in your own paper; just make sure you state the source. You can even use the same words (sparingly...see above.) Just make sure that they are in "quotes" and the source identified.

A Final Note

It may strike you as somewhat unusual that Intro. Psych. is being taught by a Professor of Ophthalmology from the Harvard Medical School. Trust me, you are much better off having me as your Psychology Professor than as your ophthalmologist. All of my undergraduate (Princeton) and graduate (MIT) training is in Psychology. I have been teaching some version of this course at MIT since 1981. In my research life, I run the Visual Attention Lab. It is part of Brigham and Women's Hospital.