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Science B‐62 / Mind, Brain, & Behavior 1 The Human Mind: An Introduction to Mind, Brain, and Behavior
Catalog Number 3167 Spring 2008
Harvard University Instructor: Steven Pinker Johnstone Family Professor Department of Psychology William James Hall 970 x5‐0831 [email protected] http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu Office Hours: Tuesday 3‐4 PM, and by appointment. Lectures: Tuesday & Thursday 1:30‐3, Science Center B. Web Sites: Course web site: http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~scib62 This site will contain the class handouts, copies of the lecture slides, assignments, information about sections and exams, and links to relevant sites. Textbook web site: http://www.worthpublishers.com/gray Head Teaching Fellow: Rebecca Sutherland 301 Larsen Hall x5‐3945 [email protected] Administrative Assistant: Katherine Chan William James Hall 967 x5‐0873 [email protected] Sections: One one‐hour discussion section. Sections will be assigned by February 10. The sections will first meet the week of February 11.
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Texts: Psychology, Fifth Edition. By Peter Gray. Available at the Coop and www.redlinetextbooks.com. Required. Please note that the current edition of the textbook is not the same as the edition used in this course in previous years. You must obtain a copy of the fifth edition of the textbook. How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997. Much of the lecture material that is not in the textbook may be found here. It is therefore recommended. Available at the Coop and most bookstores. A few additional readings will be put on the course web site. Library Systems Consultant: Librarians from the Harvard College Library System are familiar with the course requirements and will introduce you to the library resources that will help you with assignments. The course liaison is Susan Gilroy ([email protected]). Requirements and Grading: Written assignments, 40%: 10%: 4 one‐page mini‐papers. 15% paper, first draft. 15% paper, final draft. Mid‐term exam, in class during the 7th week (March 13), 15% Final exam, exam period, 35% Section participation, 10% Grades for each part are assigned on a 100‐point scale in which A = 90‐100, B = 80‐89, C = 70‐79, D = 60 – 69; F < 60. About the Course: Catalogue Description: An introduction to the workings of the human psyche as illuminated by experimental psychology, neuroscience, genetics, evolution, artificial intelligence, and the social sciences. The course will introduce major approaches to the study of the mind such as psychoanalysis, behaviorism, cognitive neuroscience, and evolutionary psychology; controversies such as nature‐nurture, consciousness, and free will; and specific topics such as perception, reasoning, language, emotion, sexuality, violence, morality, and self.
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Remarks: The sciences of the human mind cover a vast territory, from the gill‐withdrawal reflex of the sea slug to the thought processes that make people fight wars. The main academic discipline that studies the human mind is psychology, but insights about the mind can come from fields ranging from molecular biology to literary criticism. This course focuses on the scientific study of the mind, that is, on research that aims to explain the greatest number of facts with the fewest number of assumptions, that formulates hypotheses which are falsifiable by empirical tests, and that connects its findings to other sciences, particularly biology. At the same time, the course will touch on the social sciences, because social phenomena arise when individual people perceive and react to one another. And it will touch on the arts and humanities, because works of art and scholarship are products of the human mind. The course will expose you to four streams of information. The Psychology textbook presents the smorgasbord known as psychology in all its wondrous variety. My lectures try to weave this material into a coherent story, based on the syntheses I have fashioned in my books The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, and The Blank Slate. The readings for your papers will introduce you to competing viewpoints and the primary scientific literature. Lectures: You must attend all the lectures; as a rule lectures will not be videotaped. Anything mentioned in a lecture may be on the exams, including material that is not in any of the readings. If you miss a lecture, it is your responsibility to find out what was covered. All the lectures have handouts. They are intended to spare you from having to write down every diagram and term mentioned in the lecture; they are not a substitute for attending the lecture and taking notes. Sections: Also required. The main purpose of the section is discussion of the topics in the preceding week’s lecture and readings. Sections give you the opportunity to clarify your understanding of concepts and terms introduced in the lectures and readings, ask questions and argue the issues‐‐many are controversial, and you will no doubt have opinions on them. To facilitate the weekly discussions and to provide a regular feedback mechanism about your mastery of the course material, short quizzes will be given at the beginning of each section meeting. Ten percent of your grade will come from section participation, including completion and discussion of the quiz questions (which will not themselves be graded). In addition, your Teaching Fellow will get to
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know you in the sections, will be your main contact with the subject, and will influence your final grade and other decisions. Textbook: Any material in the assigned passages from the Gray textbook may be quizzed in the mid‐term or final. Read the assigned chapters every week, preferably before your section; donʹt try to save them all for the week before the exam. It will be more fun, and youʹll remember more. Exam questions will cover major ideas, major findings, and major thinkers: we won’t nitpick, for example, about the names of the people who did particular experiments. Backup readings: The passages from How the Mind Works are a backup to the lectures, and will overlap with them, though not perfectly. They are not a substitute for the lectures. Many sections of the recommended chapters will not be covered in the lectures (or exams), and you wonʹt know what they are if you havenʹt been to the lectures. And many parts of the lectures will not be in any of the readings. The readings will clarify major parts of the lectures; you are not responsible for any material in them that was not mentioned in the lectures. Papers: Forty percent of your grade will be determined by written assignments. The primary paper, about fifteen pages for the final draft, will require you to research some topic in greater depth than you will find in the readings. These assignments have a number of goals. Research on the human mind can be intensely controversial. I have opinions on many of these controversies, which are reflected in the lectures and the selection of readings. The assignment presents you with an opportunity to explore contrasting opinions. In addition, the assignment will force you to immerse yourself in an empirical literature on a topic and to read articles in the primary scientific literature. Because revising is essential to the process of writing, you will be asked to rewrite and resubmit your paper taking into account your TF’s feedback. The first and final drafts will be graded independently and given equal weight. You will also be asked to submit four short assignments during the semester. They include requests for you to think about some issue, previews of your major paper, and reports of participation in psychology department experiments. Serving as a participant is an excellent way to get a feel for what research on the human mind actually consists of, and to learn about areas of ongoing research that are not covered in the lectures or textbook. You will receive detailed guidelines about the writing assignments, beginning in the second week of class.
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A note about plagiarism: This course adheres to the university’s standards regarding plagiarism. Without exception, discovery of plagiarized text will result in a grade of “zero” for the assignment in question, and, as is required by the university, a formal report to the Administrative Board of Harvard College. Further penalties may apply at the instructor’s discretion. Students are responsible for knowing what constitutes plagiarism; please refer to pp. 10‐11 in “Writing with internet sources: A guide for Harvard students” for a detailed description of the different types of plagiarism. Late paper policy: Mini‐assignments that are late will get a grade of zero. Papers that are late will be subject to a late penalty of ten percentage points (about a letter grade) per day. A little arithmetic will show that getting a zero for a mini‐assignment, or losing points for a paper, will have a good chance of lowering your letter grade for the course as a whole. The late penalty will be waived only in cases of sickness, inescapable conflicts, or other emergencies, and only with a letter from your House Master or Senior Tutor or, in the case of freshmen, Assistant Dean of Freshmen. Students intending to write a thesis should plan ahead to avoid deadline conflicts; this course has not allowed assignment deadlines to be moved in order to accommodate thesis deadlines. Assistance in Writing: Harvard has a number of sources of support for assistance in writing. We encourage you to use them, especially if your first assignment shows that you could use the help. Exams: Both exams are closed‐book. The mid‐term will cover the first part of the course. It will be given during a class period and will last about an hour and a quarter. The final exam will cover the entire course. It will be given during the exam period and will last three hours. Both exams will have a mixture of multiple‐choice, short answer, and short essay questions.
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Schedule: Lectures and Readings (Gray = Psychology; HTMW = How the Mind Works. The readings are keyed to the lectures. When page numbers are given, begin reading at the major section heading on the indicated page.) Thursday, January 31: Introduction to the human mind and to The Human Mind. Making the familiar seem strange. Reverse‐engineering the psyche. Examples of remarkable feats of the human mind: seeing, thinking, moving, emotions about things, emotions about people. (HTMW: Chapter 1, pp. 3‐21.) Tuesday, February 5 & Thursday, February 7: Major Approaches. Psychoanalysis (Freud); Behaviorism (Skinner). Components of the modern approach: Cognition; computation; neuroscience; evolution. Gray: Chapter 1; Chapter 2; Chapter 15, pp. 558‐563; Chapter 3, pp. 159‐162; Chapter 17, pp. 632‐637, 649‐653; Chapter 4, pp. 91‐117, 124‐131. (HTMW: Chapter 1, pp. 21‐44; 2, pp. 59‐69.) *First mini‐assignment will be handed out on Thursday. Tuesday, February 12: Evolution. Where life and mind come from. Adaptations and by‐products. The Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness. Gray: Chapter 3, pp. 49‐67, 87‐89 (Concluding Thoughts). (HTMW: Chapter 3, pp. 149‐164, 186‐190.) *Instructions for second and fourth mini‐assignments will be handed out. Thursday, February 14: Nature & nurture. How genes do and don’t shape behavior. Phony dichotomies in nature and nurture. Ethical and political controversies surrounding nature and nurture: race, sex, & class inequality; perfectability & social change; determinism & responsibility; nihilism & meaning. Gray: Same as February 12; also chapter 10, pp. 372‐381. (HTMW: Chapter 1 pp. 44‐56.) (Students interested in these topics are also encouraged to read Chapters 6‐11 in my book The Blank Slate, published in paperback in 2003.) *FIRST MINI‐ASSIGNMENT DUE. Tuesday, February 19 & Thursday, February 21: The Brain. The major parts of the brain and what they are for. Neurons, neural circuits, and elementary information processing. Gray: Chapter 5; Chapter 8 pp. 263 ‐ 278, 286‐289.
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(HTMW chapter 2 pp. 98‐111.) *Instructions for third mini‐assignment will be handed out. Tuesday, February 26 & Thursday, February 28: Perception: Visual scene analysis, object recognition, auditory scene analysis, depth perception, stereo vision, stereograms. Gray: Chapter 8, pp. 280‐286, 292‐301; Chapter 7, pp. 245‐254. (HTMW: chapter 4, pp. 211‐233, 266‐284.)
Tuesday, March 4 & Thursday, March 6: Cognitive Processes. Attention, memory, mental representation, consciousness. Gray: Chapter 8, pp. 278‐280; Chapter 9; Chapter 6, pp. 202‐203. (HTMW: Chapter 2 pp. 84‐93, 131‐148.) Instructions for first major paper and paper preview. *SECOND MINI‐ASSIGNMENT DUE TUESDAY, MARCH 4. Tuesday, March 11: Midterm Review Session *THIRD MINI‐ASSIGNMENT (PAPER PREVIEW) DUE. Thursday, March 13: MID-TERM EXAM Tuesday March 18: Concepts & Reasoning. Concepts, categories, & stereotypes. Deductive and probabilistic reasoning. Gray: Chapter 10, pp. 345‐351. (HTMW: Chapter 2, pp. 126‐129; Chapter 5, pp. 306‐312, 343‐351.) Thursday, March 20: Language. Universality of language; language and thought; components of language; how language works. Gray: Chapter 11, pp. 406‐421. S. Pinker, The Language Instinct, chaps. 2 & 4 (on course web site). Tuesday, March 25, and Thursday, March 27: Spring break; no class. Tuesday, April 1: Development. Maturation & cognitive development. Piaget. Domain‐specificity. Theory of Mind. Gray: Chapter 11, pp. 383‐405. (HTMW 5, pp. 314‐333.) Thursday, April 3: Emotions: theory & background. Function of emotions. Darwin’s Expression of Emotions. Ekman & universal expressions. Emotions about the physical world: fear, disgust and happiness.
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Gray: Chapter 3, pp. 68‐75 ; Chapter 4, pp. 124‐128; Chapter 6, pp. 219‐222. (HTMW: Chapter 6, pp. 363‐374; 378‐389.) *FIRST DRAFT OF PAPER DUE. Tuesday, April 8: Social emotions: Sympathy, gratitude, anger, guilt, trust, shame, passion; reciprocal altruism; Prisoner’s Dilemma; Ultimatum Game. Gray: Chapter 8, p. 86; Chapter 14, pp. 522‐527, 530‐535. (HTMW: Chapter 6, pp. 396‐416.) Thursday, April 10: Kin & socialization. Kin selection, parents & offspring, relationship‐specific social psychology, socialization and personality development, behavioral genetics. Gray: Chapter 3, pp. 84‐86; Chapter 13, pp. 471‐473; Chapter 15, pp. 537‐554. (HTMW: Chapter 7, pp. 429‐455.) Tuesday, April 15 & Thursday, April 17: Love and sex. Sexual selection, attraction, beauty, commitment, conflict, sexual politics. Gray: Chapter 3, pp. 76‐82; Chapter 12, 451‐458; Chapter 15, pp. 554‐557. (HTMW: Chapter 7, pp. 455‐503.) *FOURTH MINI‐ASSIGNMENT DUE TUESDAY APRIL 15. Tuesday, April 22: Violence. Individual aggression; Hobbes & the dynamics of aggression; aggression between groups; group psychology; the decline of violence. Gray: Chapter 3, pp. 82‐84; Chapter 12, pp. 448‐449; Chapter 14, pp. 527‐529. (HTMW: Chapter 7, pp. 493‐520.) Thursday, April 24: Obedience to authority. Chapter 14, pp. 517‐521 Tuesday, April 29: The self and others. Self‐deception, self‐presentation, cognitive dissonance. Gray: Chapter 13, pp. 465‐482, 493‐496, 504‐513. (HTMW: Chapter 6, pp. 421‐424; Chapter 7, pp. 499‐502.) Thursday, May 1: The psychology of religion and morality. S. Pinker, “The Moral Instinct,” The New York Times Sunday Magazine. On course web site. (HTMW: Chapter 8, pp. 554‐558.) *SECOND DRAFT OF PAPER DUE
