Information for Students Taking

Introductory Psychology from Prof. Evan Pritchard

Course Outlines

Introductory Psychology - 44.1000 - Section 007 - MWF 11:30

The text is Psychology 2nd Edition by John Seamon and Douglas Kenrick.

The Exam is on December 15, 1998 at 13:30 in the regular classroom. Be Prepared!

The December 15 Exam will cover all of the material covered in the fall term, which includes the material
in chapters 1, 2, 11, 12, 10, 13, 14, 17, and 18, as well as the Appendix, of the textbook.
The exam in December will have 107 multiple choice questions and 12 short answer questions. The short
answer questions are on the material presented since the 2nd test.

Some people have asked whether it is important to know the names of psychologists for the exam. The
names of psychologists associated with the history of psychology may be answers to some multiple
choice items, but no items on any other topic will require knowing the specific name of a psychologist.
However, some psychologists created significant theories that are often referred to by the name of the
creating psychologist. It would be beneficial to know the names of those psychologists. The names of
these psychologists may appear in the text as part of a major heading in a chapter (e.g., "Organizing and
remembering: Piaget's sequence of cognitive development"). Piaget will not be the answer to any
question, but a question may begin "In Piaget's theory of cognitive development...."

Advice on taking tests by Dr. Pritchard.

More study skills information is available from the Counseling Centre at University of Victoria.
How To Study is a web document written by psychology teacher in the US.
More psychology links are on this page, which is maintained by The Society for the Teaching of
Psychology.

You are going to major in psychology, then you may want to join the U of W's Psychology Students
Association.

Test Taking Advice

Pre-Test

The best way to prepare for taking a test is well in advance of the test. Research shows that spaced
practice - that is, practice that is spread out or spaced out over time - results in better performance than
the same amount of massed practice - that is, practice that is done all at once (massed together, or
crammed together). Thus, it's best to study a little bit each day than to save it all for the last couple of
days (hours) before the test.

Also, it is best to keep up to date reading the text with what the lectures are in class. This way you will
know what is different in lecture from the text. You may even find yourself sitting in class thinking "I
know this; I read this last night," which is a good feeling.

The way that I studied textbook material when I was an undergraduate student (and this method was also
used by a friend) involved making notes from the text and reading over those notes many, many, many...
many times. Part of learning anything is commiting information to memory, and that commitment takes
time to develop. Hence, reading the material again and again over an extended (spaced out) time.

In preparing for the test itself, consider the questions that might be asked. What topics have been covered
in class or in the text? What have the sub-topics been? Can you name each topic and sub-topic? What
concepts were discussed under each topic and sub-topic? Can you give examples of those concepts? What
questions would you ask about?

The night before a big test, you might want to do something relaxing, if you feel that you have studied
enough. I remember a couple of times as an undergraduate that I watched a movie the night before the
tests in a difficult course.

At the Test

At the test, when the test is being passed out what you can do is to take a few deep breaths. Deep breaths
will help you relax. You don't want to be anxious when taking the test, so a taking a minute before doing
the test to relax can be very beneficial. The breaths should seem to come from your belly, because your
belly will expand as your diaphram is expanding to allow the maximum amount of air into your lungs.
Deep breaths actually involve little, if any, expansion of the chest. Using deep breaths to relax can be
used anywhere and at anytime. If you practice deep breathing, then your breaths will become even more
effective at relaxing you.

When you read each question, make sure that you understand what the question is asking for before
starting your answer. You want to ensure that what you write answers the question asked. For example, if
the question is "what is the capital of Canada?" and a student answers "6 x 7 = 42," the student will not
receive any points for that answer, because it does not answer the question, even though it is accurate. Be
sure to answer the question!

Also, make sure to answer all parts of the question. If the question asks for an example, then give and
example. If the question asks for a description of something, give a description. Similarly, if examples
and descriptions are not asked for, then they need not be given. For example, if the question is "what is
the capital of Manitoba?" and a student answers "Winnipeg is the capital of Manitoba, and it has a
population of 660,000, with a climate that ranges from cold winters, which are ideal for winter sports, to
hot summers, which feature many music and cultural festivals" the student has given more information
than is necessary for the question asked. However, such an answer would be appropriate if the question
was "Name and describe the capital of Manitoba."

If you are stuck on a question, try to examine the parts of the question. That is, take the question piece by
piece and think of each piece. So, if the question is "what is the capital of Ontario?" you might think
something like this: "ok, Ontario's a province in the east of Canada, so no Canadian city outside of
Ontario is going to be the answer. Capitals are usually in bigger cities. Some of the bigger cities in
Ontario are Ottawa, London, Toronto, Kitchener, Waterloo, Thunder Bay. I think I'd remember if it was
London, because that would be unusual. Thunder Bay is not in southern Ontario, which is where most of
the people are, so it's probably not the capital. Ottawa is the capital of Canada, but I don't think it's the
capital of Ontario too. Kitchener and Waterloo are too small I think, so I'll say Toronto is the capital of
Canada." What is you are still stuck after considering each piece of the question? Generally, there are no
points taken off for guessing, so guess if you are truly stuck, because it can't hurt.

If you have time after finishing the test, take a few moments to look over the test and check to see that
you have answered each question. Make sure that your answers do speak to the questions asked, and that
you have answered all parts of the question. If you are satisfied that you have answered the questions
sufficiently, then get up, hand your test in, and leave. You're done!

HOW TO STUDY
by Ronald C. Blue

Permission granted to duplicate for non-profit educational or research purposes.

Countless times students have asked me what is the best way to study. While the recommendations that I
am about to make to you are no guarantee of success, I believe they will optimize your chances of
success.
Perspectives on the problem:

Research shows that the average student will study for a test. The average person will study four hours for
a daily quiz, four hours for a weekly quiz, four hours for a major test, four hours for a midterm, and four
hours for a comprehensive final. The outcome of this four hours of study will vary from an A for a daily
quiz to an F for the comprehensive final. This means that in high school grades are strongly determined
by intelligence since everyone studies the same amount of time.

College is different. Most of the students are highly intelligent and some are highly motivated.

In almost all college courses if you have a poor vocabulary and do not really like to read, you are in
serious trouble. If you can succeed with your weird teachers, then you can succeed with your even
weirder bosses. Your study habits formed in high school may vector you toward failure because you have
never experienced what it takes to perform at the college level. That is why the freshman year is the
hardest year you will ever experience in college.

It takes about one year to learn how to learn at a college level. Most people never learned to learn at a
college level. They then encourage their children to get the education they never got. They rarely read and
talk about intellectual ideas, thereby predisposing their children for low academic achievement.

You should break the pattern. There is no gain in life without some pain.

Based on my extensive observation of student performances on college tests, I recommend the following
study time per test: (For Tests every 3 to 4 weeks)

TOTAL HOURS HOURS PER WEEK

22 hours for an A 6 hours per week
16 hours for a B 4 hours per week
14 hours for a C 3.5 hours per week
10 hours for a D 2.5 hours per week
0 hours for an F 0 hours per week

An hour of study is defined as studying for 45 minutes and a break of 15 minutes. Ten hours of
continuous study without a break is defined as one hour of study.

The brain does not process and store information the way students prefer studying. Occasionally, some
succeed by studying at the last minute, but they are exceptions to the rule. Some people's brain and life
experiences reduces the time required to learn particular types of material. In other types of material they
have to spend more time to master the material.

Research suggests that the slowest 10 percent of the students may need 5 to 6 times as much time to learn
the same material as the fastest 10 percent. Each person is highly likely to have strengths and weaknesses.
Overcoming your weakness increases your strength.

In other words, you can succeed if you pay the price necessary for success.

The price of success:

The price is too high you say. Or I would like to succeed but don't have the time. It isn't fair you say.

Life is not fair. Reality is not your parents. There is no free lunch. Anything of value requires great effort.
If you pay the price, the price required of you in the future will be less. In the past a college degree has
meant about $100,000 to $250,000 more in a lifetime than no degree. Each college test is worth about $36
per hour of study or $800 over your life.
If you were offered $1,000,000 if you had an A in a college course, could you accomplish the goal?
Probably. You do not have to be a genius to graduate from college. You have to work hard, be persistent,
and pay attention to details. These traits are ultimately why a college degree is valuable, plus the capacity
to learn.

How to get started:

Believe you can succeed. Be willing to pay the price. The price is always what you don't want to pay.
Make success in college your number one goal. You cannot have multiple goals. Everything comes in its
own season. There is a time to learn; a time to play; and a time to work.

Failure begins in an excuse, a short cut. There is no royal road to learning or achieving excellence.

Do the following without wavering.

Survey:

Before you start your learning task, read over the major headings and summaries of the chapters in the
textbook. This gives you a feeling for the whole picture and to what material you should pay attention to
while reading the chapters. Research shows that students who do this make higher grades, and this simple
step is the most powerful thing you can do.

Reading, underlining, and taking notes:

As you read the material, you must take written notes and underline. Use only the left half of the page.
Transfer to the right side of the paper comments your teacher made about the material during lecture. You
must always be ahead of your teacher in your reading. Research shows that the more different ways you
present information to the brain the easier it is to learn. In other words hear it, see it, say it, write it,
practice it, highlight it, quiz it, etc. Underlining is a skill that must be developed. The tools of underlining
should vary based on your preference. Use highlighters or colored pens. I recommend red and blue Flair
pens. If you use these, you need a plastic ruler for underlining. Use a drafting plastic triangle and have it
cut off at the three ends about one inch each.

Now spray paint the underlining ruler with flat black paint. This reduces or eliminates glare from light
when reading and underlining. At first you should underline approximately 85 percent of material. Later
on as your skill increases, you should reduce the material underlined. Use red and blue Flair pens for
underlining important material as you read. Use red for extremely important material or to offset
important material, and blue for moderately important material. You should use a pink and yellow
highlighter when reading the material the second time.

The process of reading and deciding if the material is important enough to be underlined increases
memory for that material. It is the decision and thinking that creates the memory. It is best to over predict
your instructors at first. It is easier to cut back on the material to be learned than to increase the amount to
be learned. Use stars to arrange the material in hierarchies of importance. Three stars (***) would be
more important than two stars (**).

The 3"x5" card system

Using the colors of red and blue, now make 3"x5" cardsDDputting the vocabulary of the course, long lists
of items, experiments, and lecture on the cards. Key words should be written in red. If you have to be
different, go with 1"x3" instead of 4"x6". One theory, concept, or vocabulary word per card.

The biggest problem with textbooks and lecture notes is that we cannot separate the material that we
know from the material that we do not know. Because of this, we waste hours studying what we already
know, rather than concentrating our valuable time on what we do not know.
The red tells your mind that this is extremely important material. Writing the material stores the
information in the brain in a way that is not normally used. On the back of the cards is definition about
the material on the front. After numbering the cards so you can put them back in order later on, you
should start studying the cards until you feel you know the material.

Now then turn the cards over and try and answer your fill in the blanks orally. If you get the questions
right, place the material into a "I know this material" stack. Now continue working on the material that
you don't know until you can answer the questions on all the cards.

Review:

Now reread the material that you underlined in the book. Note that you do not read the material you did
not underline. This is why over prediction is important. As you reread the chapter, bracket and star the
material you believe is extremely important. Sometimes use a yellow highlighter for critical information.
Now reread the material you have bracketed or stored and high speed review the material on the 3"x5"
cards.

Audio option:

The more different ways that the material to be learned can be experienced the easier it is to remember
the material. If you have time, read the material that you have underlined to a tape recorder. Then play
back and listen to the material. Some people are so good at learning by listening that this is the only way
they have to study.

Overlearning:

The more you overlearn the material the easier it is to take a test with confidence and in a relaxed manner.
In addition, the more you overlearn something, the longer you will remember it.

Special problems:

Some people have reading difficulties. Current research suggests that blue or gray sunglasses may help
dyslexic people process and learn to read. (Another possibility is laying a piece of green, blue, or red
transparency film over the page to be read. Try them and see which workd best. These may be purchased
at office supply stores. - S. Shapiro) Self typing of the material is another way shown to have positive
benefits for dyslexics. The key concept is that learning requires work. Good nutrition helps learning.
Research suggest that zinc and B vitamins are essential for learning.

Lecture Notes
Introductory Psychology Prof. Evan Pritchard, PhD
Changed: November 29, 1998

First Day - Goals

Psychology & Science and Types of Psychologist
Statistics & Methodology
Biological Psychology
Developmental Psychology - Fundamentals
Developmental Psychology - Physical development
Developmental Psychology - Attributions
Piaget & Alzheimer's
Motivation: Attributions & Optimism
Emotion: Why do we have emotions?
Personality: Freud & Humanism
Stress and Conflict
Social Psychology: Interpersonal relations
Social Psychology: Self-esteem
Social Psychology: Self-perception

The notes that will be available here will be on topics that are not in the text. For information discussed in
class on topics that are in the text, you should see the text. However, there may be some information
presented in class on topics from the text that is not in the text; that is, topics in the text may be elaborated
on in class. Hence, it is still a good idea to come to class.

Similarly, the notes presented here may have slightly more information that was presented in class, but
that extra information is there to help you further understand the material, and you won't be responsible
for anything that appears here and was not presented in class.

Self Esteem

There are people in the world who seem to think that the problems that people have would all be solved,
if we could just raise their self esteem. Poor academic achievement, poverty, unemployment, you name it,
according to this argument, people are in those situations because they have low self esteem. Raising their
self esteem will get them out of those situations.

However, self esteem is not related to any objective qualities or attributes, save a weak association with
physical attractiveness - and that only for people who highly value attractiveness and are preoccupied
with it. Thus, raising self esteem will not cure all of society's social problems.

There are two components of self-esteem: a feeling of being lovable, and a feeling of being competent. It
is best to have both lovability and competence in one's life, so to have a balance. To focus on one to the
exclusion of the other is like putting all of your eggs in one basket - not good. Low self esteem essentially
means a feeling that one is unworthy, so one has a negative self-view. Low self-esteem is differnt from
depression, although they are related.

There two strong motivations that people have. One is a need for praise or positive feedback. People want
to be praised. However, two is a need for self verification; people need to have their selves verified. That
is, people need others to confirm the view they have of themself. These motivations can conflict with
each other, which can put one in a trap. The conflict occurs when one's self view is negative, or when one
has low self-esteem.

People with negative self views will see like to get small amounts of praise, but when they receive large
amounts of praise they will become anxious, because they do not feel worthy of large amounts of praise.
If they took large amounts of praise seriously, then that would be questioning their self view, which is a
very scary thing to do.

Opportunity Structures

We negotiate an identity for ourselves with the people we interact with. Thus, social interactison are very
important for our self identities, and self esteem.

We will create opportunity structures for ourselves that will allow us to satisfy our need for self
verification. These structures are like ecological niches, so they allow us to preserve our view of our self -
our self-view. We create these structures by giving other people cues as to the type of person we are -
through our behavior or appearance.

People tend to recall comments that confirm their self views better than comments that disconfirm their
self views. Also, low self esteem people will emphasize their weaknesses, not their strengths, while high
self esteem people do the opposite. Thus, people's perceptual biases are essentially creating the world that
they believe exists.

Marital Bliss Study

Do a Self Attributes Questionnaire (SAQ) for one's self, SAQ for partner, then rate one's commitment to
the relationship.

The finding is that people with positive self-views are more committed to partners who have positive self
views of them. People with negative self views are more committed to partners who have negative self
views of them. People with moderate self views are equally committed to people who have positive or
negative views of them. Gender not a factor. Also, people with positive self views are less committed to a
partner if that partner has extremely positive views of them - suggesting that you can have too much of a
good thing - i.e., positive view of me. We want self verifying partners. Partners can help us satisfy our
need for self verification.

Often people are in bad relationships, because they think that is what they deserve. That is, I see myself
as bad - have a negative self-view, or low self-esteem - so I think that the person who I am with is treating
me appropriately. That is, treating me in a manner that is consistent with my self view.

Changing Self Esteem - Raising Low Self Esteem

It is possible to increase your self esteem, but it's not easy. Raising one's self esteem means changing
one's self view, and that can create anxiety. People generally like predictability and continuity. They like
novelty or variety, but only within a broad context of predictability and continuity. Their present self
view is predictable and keeping that self view would be continuing the course that the person has been on,
although that course might not be the best one for the person. It is comfortable.

Some people in chronic pain who then have their pain relieved do not feel their life has improved,
because taking away their pain has made them a different person. They're not sure they like that person,
or want to be that person.

If someone's going to change their self views, then they need to change their social interactions. They
won't necessarily have to change who they interact with, but they will have to change how they interact
with them at least.

Also, people are complex, so a self esteem change can be initiated by emphasizing the things that the
person does feel they do well. That is, even people with low self esteem feel they do some things well,
and those things should be emphasized while the other things that they want to change are allowed to
drop away.