Psy 313: Syllabus

Feb. 2  |  Feb. 9  |  Feb. 16  |  Feb. 23March 2  |  March 9
March 23  |  March 30  |  Apr. 6  |  Apr. 13  |  Apr. 20  |  Apr. 27



Week 1:
Going beyond the data: Gestalt principles, subjectivism, and automaticity in social perception

Readings:
Asch  (1952). Structured properties of experience and action.
Wegner & Bargh (1998). Control and automaticity in social life.
Bargh  (1997). The automaticity of everyday life.

Lectures:
Feb. 2
Feb. 4

Precept:
Quote 1
Research in psychology.
How aware are we of our thought processes and judgments?
Reading: Nisbett & Wilson (1977)
Presenter: Amanda



Week 2:
Construction in social perception: Coherence and "sameness"  in impression formation (Feb. 9th & 11th)

Readings:
Hastorf & Cantril (1954). They saw a game. A case study.
Vallone, Ross, & Lepper (1985). The hostile media phenomenon.
Asch  (1946).  Forming impressions of personality.

Lectures:
Feb. 9
Feb. 11

Precept:
Quote 2
Illusory correlation: Seeing is believing
Reading: Hamilton & Rose (1980)
Presenters:



Week 3:
Limited capacity, least effort, and the need to categorize (Feb. 16th & Feb. 18th)

Readings:
Bruner, Goodnow, & Austin.  (1956).  A study of thinking.
Fiske & Taylor  (1991). Social cognition: Social categories and schemas.
Macrae, Hewstone, & Griffiths (1993). Processing load and memory for stereotype-based information..

Lectures:
Feb. 16
Feb. 18

Precept:
Quote 3
Cognitive structures allow decisions to be made and judgments to be formed "mindlessly."
Reading: Langer, Blank, & Chanowitz (1978)
Presenters:



Week 4:
Dual process accounts of attribution (Feb. 23rd and 25th)

Readings:
Heider  (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations.
Brown (1986). Attribution theory.
Kelley  (1971). Attribution in social interaction.
Fiske (1999). The continuum model.

Lectures:
Feb. 23
Feb. 25

Precept:
Quote 4
Attribution and counterfactual thought: The preoccupation with thoughts of "if-only" and "why?"
Reading: Wells & Gavanski (1989)



Week 5:
The preconscious analysis of behavior: Effortless inference; the features of the data (March 2nd & March 4th)

Readings:
Jones & Davis (1965). From acts to dispositions: The attribution process in person perception.
Uleman, Newman, & Moskowitz (1996). People as flexible interpreters; Evidence and issues from STI
McArthur & Apatow (1983). Impressions of baby-faced adults.

Lectures:
March 2
March 4

Precept:
Quote 5
Attention grabbing properties of other people and their impact on correspondent inference
Reading: Taylor, Fiske, Close, Anderson, & Ruderman (1978)
Presenters:



Week 6:
Errors and biases in judgment (March 9th & 11th)

Readings:
Ross  (1977). The intuitive psychologist and his shortcomings: Distortions in the attribution process.
Jones & Nisbett (1971). The actor and the observer: Divergent perceptions of the causes of behavior.
Bradley (1978). Self serving biases in the attribution process.
Nisbett & Ross (1980). Judgmental heuristics and knowledge structures.

Lectures:
March 9
March 11

Precept:
MIDTERM EXAMINATION


Spring Break



Week 7:
Correspondence bias (March 23rd & 25th)

Readings:
Jones  (1979). The rocky road from acts to dispositions.
Gilbert  (1989). Thinking lightly about others: Automatic components of the social inference process.
Trope & Liberman (1993). The what, when, and how of dispositional inference.

Lectures:
March 23
March 25

Precept:
Quote 7
Overattribution to disposition despite blatant situational forces
Reading: Ross, Amabile, & Steinmetz (1977)
Presenters:



Week 8:
Unconscious influences on conscious judgment (March 30th & April 1st)

Readings:
Postman, Bruner, & McGinnies (1948). Personal values as selective factors in perception.
Higgins, Rholes, & Jones  (1977). Category accessibility and impression formation
Strack et al. (1993). Awareness of the influence as a determinant of assimilation versus contrast.

Lectures:
March 30
April 1

Precept:
Quote 8
One's theories about the influences on one's judgment
Reading: Petty & Wegener (1993)
Presenters:



Week 9:
Expectancies and implicit personality theory (April 6th & April 8th)

Readings:
Jones (1986). Interpreting interpersonal behavior: The effects of expectancies.
Snyder & Swann (1978). Hypothesis-testing processes in social interaction.
Schneider (1973). Implicit personality theory.
Devine (1989).  Stereotypes and prejudice: Their automatic and controlled components.

Lectures:
April 6
April 8

Precept:
Quote 9
Expectancy effects on behavior
Reading: Word, Zanna, & Cooper (1974)
Presenters:



Week 10:
Stereotyping (April 13th & April 15th)

Readings:
Darley & Gross  (1983). A hypothesis-confirming bias in labeling effects.
Banaji, Hardin, & Rothman (1993). Implicit stereotyping in person judgment.
Fiske (1993). Controlling other people: The impact of power on stereotyping.

Lectures:
April 13
April 15

Precept:
Quote 10
Stereotypes and Naive realism: The consequences of failing to see one's stereotype-relevant biases.
Reading: Robinson, Keltner, Ward, & Ross (1995)
Presenters:



Week 11:
Control over cognition: Effects of goals and motives on person-perception processes (April 20th & April 22nd)

Readings:
Tetlock (1985). Accountability: A social check on the fundamental attribution error.
Thompson, Roman, Moskowitz, Chaiken, & Bargh (1994). Accuracy motivation attenuates priming...
Neuberg (1989). The goal of forming accurate impressions during social interactions...

Lectures:
April 20
April 22

Precept:
Quote 11
When stereotyping is attenuated by attending to individuating (and stereotype-inconsistent) information.
Reading: Stangor & Ruble (1989)
Presenters:



Week 12:
Exerting motivated control over cognition does not guarantee unbiased and accurate judgments
(April 27th & April 29th)

Readings:
Wilson & Brekke (1994). Mental contamination and mental correction.
Macrae, et al. (1994). Out of mind but back in sight: Stereotypes on the rebound.
Kunda (1987). Motivation and inference. Self-serving generation and evaluation of evidence.

Lectures:
April 27
April 29

Precept:
Quote 12
When elaboration leads to subtyping rather than a bias-free judgment.


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last updated: 2/2/99 23:41ET