PSYC20009: Personality and Social Psychology

Overall, if you like the idea of learning about psychology in a way that tells you a little bit about human nature and who you are, you might really like this subject! I did this subject as a compulsory core unit but even if it wasn't compulsory, I would've still taken it because it covers a lot of interesting topics. E.g. you learn about human nature and a lot of different social phenomenon (what do people see as immoral and moral? What influences our moral responses? How normal people can do evil things on the basis of following orders, how we conform to others behaviours and responses, How our behaviours are strongly governed by social influence (obedience/conformity/compliance), how mimicry increases liking, how and why we form relationships with each other and the different types of relationships, Attitude formation, The Self, and different ways of understanding Personality and traits). In terms of stats (which unfortunately, you can never run away from in psych), you learn about correlation and regression. If you're thinking of taking this as a breadth (and haven't done psych before), I wouldn't say it's an "easy" breadth to take but if you like the topics covered, I'd say you could do really well! You do go through HEAPS of studies in this subject and are required to remember all the names! Which can be a bit difficult but definitely do-able! However don't worry too much as the lectures in themselves are quite easy to understand and quite straightforward. The MOST IMPORTANT THING to do before starting this subject is to make sure you brush up on assumed research methods knowledge (know things like what a population, sample, IV, DV, different experimental sampling and allocation methods, different types of limitations and confounding variables and definitely understand the P-value of statistical significance!)

To do well in the lab report, it's important to gather good references to build up your intro and make sure you set out your results as per APA format (no spss tables) and also make sure you do all the statistical analysis properly (you're given good instructions in this area so dw ). Also, my tutor was saying that the main area in which marks are lost in the lab report is in 1) Not building up your intro in such a way that it links well to the hypotheses and Make sure you do mention previous work that has been done in the area of moral dilemmas and responses to impersonal/personal scenarios as it counts for a lot in your intro. and 2) Merely identifying improvements that could be made to the study or limitations, rather than explaining HOW those limitations could have hindered the results (this is just explaining what the limitations entailed for the study). Also, correct APA referencing is important, especially for how you display your results and in-text references. I found the lab report to be interesting - our one was about Moral responses to personal/impersonal moral dilemmas and we had to choose our own hypotheses from a list and based on the results we had to construct the lab report based on that. I found the Discussion Board on the LMS to be extremely helpful for the lab report and the staff were really helpful in answering Qs and I appreciated that! The Exam was 90 MCQs which most people will finish before the 2 hours. Most of the Qs were straightforward but some of the Qs were a bit badly worded and didn't make much sense haha but that was only a few! Most of them linked really well to the lectures and lab content is also assessed in the exams as well Speaking of Labs, a hurdle requirement is that you must attend at least 5 out of 6 lab classes (you can afford to miss one without having to bring any lab transfer or medical certificate). And iirc it was one lab transfer per student for the whole semester. Also, I'm not sure if this was a new component of the hurdle requirement but this year we also had to participate in an end-of-semester class debate (we formed affirmative/negative teams at the start of the semester) and that was a hurdle requirement but didn't contribute any marks to our grade (basically you put time aside out of class to research and prepare speeches and in the end you don't get any marks for it LOL ). I didn't mind the debate requirement as such, but thought it was an extra unnecessary assessment which was inconveniently placed close to exams and all the other assessment due dates haha.

1 Lab report of 2000 words (40%) and 1 2 hour multiple-choice examination (60%). Hurdle requirement includes attending at least 5 out of 6 Lab Classes AND participation in a class debate close to the end of the semester.

Yes, with screen capture.

Simon Laham, Garry Robins, Jennifer Boldero, and Luke Smilie

No past exams; however there are about 4-5 Questions posted for each lecture and they resemble the kind of MCQs you get in the exam so they're good practice Answers are also provided for these Qs.

4 out of 5

No prescribed textbooks, however most Personality/Social Psychology textbooks would cover the topics in this subject if you do find textbook learning helpful For the Personality component of this subject, Nick Haslam's 'Introduction to Personality and Intelligence' is especially helpful I think!

1x 2-hour lecture per week; and 1x 2-hour tutorial/lab class every fortnight.

Semester 2, 2013.

83 (H1)