Fifth Set of Essay Questions: Due Friday of Week 15

1. Compare Tajfel's (1972) critique of social psychology with Neisser's (1978) critique of memory research.

2. What does Moscovici mean by "lonely paradigms"? How can this sorry state of affairs be ameliorated?

3. What effective role can experimentation play in social psychology?

4. Jerome Bruner (1990) feels that the cognitive "revolution has now been diverted into issues marginal to the impulse that brought it into being" (p. 1). How would you describe the originating impulse?

5. How does the culturally oriented psychology prescribed by Bruner differ from the discipline of anthropology?

Fourth Set of Essay Questions: Due Friday of Week 12

1. Baars claims that the computational metaphor has been widely misunderstood (p. 184). Discuss the various levels of application of the machine metaphor of mind and assess its historical significance.

2. Why was the linguist Noam Chomsky so influential in bringing about the cognitive shift in psychology?
Was there a cognitive "revolution"?

3. What brought about the shift from cognitive psychology to cognitive science in the 1970s? What is the significance of the switch in nomenclature?

4.How did the transplantation of the Gestalt psychologists to the U.S. influence the development of the cognitive revolution?

5. What role did social psychologists play in fueling the cognitive shift?

6. Mandler's question on p. 273 of Kessel & Bevan: What was it about the decades just preceding this period [late 50s], what was it about the conditions of the times, that provided the context within which common themes among diverse disciplines could occur?

7. Elaborate on the specific developments in 20th century psychology which propelled the emergence of cognitive psychology.


8. What are your views on the main arguments for or against the computer metaphor?

9. Does cognitive psychology represent a paradigm shift, a revolution, or the cumulative development of the discipline towards a metatheoretical perspective.

10. Characterize the two strands of the cognitive revolution associated with Miller and Bruner.

Third Set of Essay Questions: Due Friday of Week 9


1. One of the key concepts in Lewin psychology is the Life Space. Explain this concept and discuss why it was important to his overall conceptual approach to psychology.

2. The phrase most often associated with Kurt Lewin is, "There is nothing so practical as a good theory." Use our class readings to explicate this statement.

3. Discuss the points of convergence and divergence between the work of Kurt Lewin and that of the commonly identified Gestalt psychological trio, Wertheimer, Koffka, and Köhler.


4. The belief that psychologists could use their scientific neutrality to assume an intermediary role between the citizen and the state emerged during WWII. Discuss this self-image as well as its impact on the discipline later in the postwar period.

5. Use Danziger's historical analysis of the concept of 'attitudes' to account for the difference in tone between the 1947-48 and the 1979 Cartwright articles.

 

Second Set of Essay Questions: Due on the WebBoard on Friday of Week 8

Gestalt Psychology

Write a short essay (7± 2 double spaced pages) on one of the following
questions:


1. The formal emergence of Gestalt psychology dates to 1910 when Max Wertheimer initiated experiments on the phi phenomenon. Explain this phenomenon and discuss why it was so important to Wertheimer.


2. How was Gestalt theory shaped by influences from science, philosophy, and psychology?


3. What would be the Gestalt psychologists' approach to the scientific method, to thinking, and to learning? Contrast their approach to that of the behaviorists.

4. How did a theory that initially focused on perception develop into a more general psychological perspective that integrated cognitive and social psychologies?

Assignment 2: Due on the WebBoard on Friday of Week 5

Write a short essay (7± 2 double spaced pages) on one of the following questions:

1. How did Mead's 'social behaviorism' differ from Watson's 'classical behaviorism'?

2. Why was Watsonian behaviorism so influential?

3. Mead described the theoretical tenor of his time as shifting from functionalism to behaviorism. How and why did this transformation occur?

4. Mead is the first theorist that we have studied who integrated his cognitive and social psychologies. How did he achieve this, and why was he not more influential?

First Assignment

Provide a brief biographical sketch of one of the following individuals. Focus on the interaction of social and cognitive themes in their work.

Post your papers of no more than 4 pages onto our class WebBoard by next Wednesday, the 18th of September.