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About Tests
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• David G. Myers, Social Psychology. Seventh Edition. ISBN 0072413875

Check in the USC bookstore for availability of the text before ordering online. If you are having difficulty locating the text, you may contact a number of online book sellers including amazon, barnes & noble, borders, campusi, ecampus, and others.

Professor: Dr. Kelton Rhoads
Office: ASC 227 (That's in the Annenberg School of Communication)
Office Hours: For this class, office hours are Thursday 12 pm-2 pm. If I'm late to office hours (usually due to traffic on the 110) I'll make up the hours after class. (I also hold office hours for a different class on Tuesday from 4-6 pm, but you're welcome to stop by if you have an urgent issue.) Please note that, as an adjunct professor, I am on campus only two days a week (T & Th). Please talk to my teaching assistant (TA) before calling me; it's the TA's job to answer student questions. In an emergency, however, you can reach me at work, number given in class. Leave a message if I'm not in and if an answer is required, the TA or I will call you back. Please call me rather than use my email. My email is set up so that it rejects messages where the sender is not recognized. (You can email the TA.) You are also welcome to stop by my Rolling Hills Estates work office: 27520 Hawthorne Blvd Ste 275, Rolling Hills Estates, CA 90274 (you should call before visiting to make certain I'm in).

Teaching Assistant 1: Yang Yu (Yang Yu is a PhD student in social psychology, and is devoting 1/2 time to this class.)
TA's Office: SGM 801 C.
TA's Office Hours: Tuesday 11:00 am to 2:00 pm
TA's contact information: Please visit during office hours or email at placeholder@usc.edu. Please note that your email MUST include the number "355" in the subject line. If it does not, it won't be filtered correctly and your email may not be recognized or answered. Please contact Yang Yu for questions about class policy, grading, & etcetera. If he can't answer your question immediately, he will research your question and get back to you. Remember that email may only be checked every other day, so please allow sufficient time for a response. For email correspondence, please contact either Yang Yu or Mathew Curtis; don't take up the same issue with both or we'll get our lines of communication crossed.

Teaching Assistant 2: Mathew Curtis (Mathew is also a PhD student in social psychology, and is devoting 1/4 time to this class.)
TA's Office: SGM 801.
TA's Office Hours: Monday 12.00-1.30 pm.
TA's contact information: Please visit during office hours or email at placeholder@yahoo.co.uk. Please note that your email MUST include the number "355" in the subject line. If it does not, it won't be filtered correctly and your email may not be recognized or answered. Please contact Mathew for questions about class policy, grading, & etcetera. If he can't answer your question immediately, he will research your question and get back to you. Remember that email may only be checked every other day, so please allow sufficient time for a response. For email correspondence, please contact either Yang Yu or Mathew Curtis; don't take up the same issue with both or we'll get our lines of communication crossed.

This course is an introduction to social psychology. It covers the three main areas of social psych, including cognition, influence, and interdependence. After a review of the methodology of the social sciences, we'll discuss topics such as attitudes & beliefs, conformity, persuasion, prejudice, aggression, attraction, and altruism.

Week of Jan 14
Introduction
Short intro classes will be held during the first week, while students add and drop classes and iron out their schedules. During this week, you should read the entire syllabus and decide whether or not you agree with the class rules as outlined in the "Take This Class?" page (see link above left). If you do not agree with the class policies and rules, please drop the class. If you decide to stay in the class, please complete the on-line questionnaire. See the link in the upper left hand corner, "Questionnaire."

Week of Jan 21
Social Science Methods
Ch 1, Introducing Social Psychology
Assignment: Hand in the questionnaire to Yang Yu at the end of class on Jan 23. There's a quiz over the syllabus this week.

Week of Jan 28
Individual & Group
Ch 2, The Self in a Social World
No class this week -- your professor is keynoting at the National Conference for Political Involvement Professionals in Florida. Please read the assigned chapter. This is a great time to locate your chapter or article for your presentation.
Assignment: Find Your Articles in the Library!

Week of Feb 4
Judgment
Ch 3, Social Beliefs & Judgments
Assignment: Find Your Articles in the Library!

Week of Feb 11
Attitude & Behavior
Ch 4, Behavior and Attitudes
Assignment: Find Your Articles in the Library!
Test 1 on Feb 11 - remember to bring scantron forms.

Week of Feb 18
Intro to Social Influence: Person Variables
Ch 5, Genes, Culture, Gender
Presentations Begin!
Student Presentations: See Presentation Schedule

Week of Feb 25
Conformity
Ch 6, Conformity
Student Presentations: See Presentation Schedule

Week of March 4
Persuasion & Compliance
Ch 7, Persuasion
Student Presentations: See Presentation Schedule

Week of March 11
Group Influence
Ch 8, Group Influence
Test 2 on March 13 - remember to bring scantron forms.

Week of March 18 - Spring Break
No class this week.

Week of March 25
Judgment Revisited
Ch 9, Prejudice: Disliking Others
Student Presentations: See Presentation Schedule

Week of April 1
Aggression
Ch 10, Aggression: Hurting Others
Student Presentations: See Presentation Schedule

Week of April 8
Attraction
Ch 11, Attraction and Intimacy
Student Presentations: See Presentation Schedule

Week of April 15
Altruism
Ch 12, Altruism: Helping Others
Student Presentations: See Presentation Schedule

Week of April 22
Conflict
Ch 13, Conflict and Peacemaking
Student Presentations: See Presentation Schedule

Week of April 29
Wrapup on April 29 - last day of class lectures.
Study day on May 1. No class this day.

Tuesday, May 6 - Test 3 from 2:00-4:00 p.m. as per USC finals schedule. No changes will be made to this exam time, according to USC policy. The final may not be taken early, no exceptions. Remember to bring scantron forms.

A typical class will consist of a lecture, sometimes followed by an in-class exercise or by concurrent student presentations.

Readings, Participation, Attendance: You may read the assigned readings either before or after class, your choice. Either way, it's important to keep up with the reading. If you wait until the week before the test to read all the assigned material, you won't learn or retain the material as well and you'll likely do poorly on exams. There will be some additional readings in addition to our text. These readings will be found linked to this website under the calendar section above, and will appear shortly before the time you'll need to read them (ie, they're not available in advance). A thorough understanding of the assigned readings will be necessary in order to obtain top grades on the exams and in your project. If you must miss a class, please contact a fellow student for notes, since class notes are not available from the instructor. Not allowed in class: phones or pagers or other electronic or manual devices that are audible; no audio or visual recording devices--no exceptions! Allowed in class: computers (if they are used for writing notes and don't become a distraction) and PDAs (ditto). If you bring food to class, please be quiet and discreet about it. Class participation will be considered for scores that border between a higher and lower grade; poor attendance can cause the loss of points. An unexcused absence on the day you are assigned a presentation or on a test day will result in your losing points. Excused absences require documentation and a compelling reason for your absence. You are allowed a total of 4 free absences total, for whatever reason. Only when you provide appropriate documentation for all 4 will your request for further unpenalized absences be considered. Requests for further unpenalized absences beyond 4 must be made in writing.

Seating: Our classroom is packed! In large classes, I ask students to sit in assigned sections, based on the first letter of the last name. You may sit anywhere you like within your section (front, back, whatever) as long as you are sitting in your section. No physical "lines" exist between sections, but let's not get overly technical--sit as close to your section as you can. Please leave the front rows for those who can't see well, and the back rows for students in black leather jackets and sunglasses who need to maintain their images as "bad kids." (Just kidding.) There are 4 sections in this class:

Sectional seating helps in the following ways:

• Sectional seating allows several class attendance sheets to circulate concurrently and thus, more quickly. Without sectional seating, a single attendance sheet might not make it across the room before class is over.
• Sectional seating allows the professor and the TAs to start to associating faces with names in certain parts of the room.
• Sectional seating allows smaller audiences for presenters, and allows audience members to hear all of the presenters, not just a subgroup of presenters as would be the case otherwise.
• Sectional seating allows exercises to be conducted in groups of reasonable size, and also allows for different sections to arrive at different answers that can be compared and contrasted.

Exams: There will be 3 multiple choice exams which will collectively count for 75% of your grade total (25% each). An exam will be given at the end of each major section in the text: Social Thinking, Social Influence, and Social Relations. The exams will concentrate on your knowledge of the material we've covered and your ability to apply the principles we've learned. You should know 1) the material assigned as reading, 2) the material presented in lectures, and 3) the material given in the student presentations, to do well on the tests. I rely on the tests to motivate your reading of the text assignments and class attendance. Some of the standardized test questions that come with the textbooks will be used in the construction of tests. No tests will be dropped or averaged; all three will count toward your grade. The final is not comprehensive, it concentrates on the final section. See more information at the "About Tests" link in the upper left hand corner of this page.

Information Presentations: One of the "deliverables" of this class is a database of information to which you may refer later in your career. To that end, one of our collective goals is to acquire and understand topic relevant information that's found in journal articles or book chapters. Information of this sort will be collected, analyzed, and presented in a number of student presentations that pertain to the topics found in this course. Students in this class are asked to create presentations based on articles or chapters they're assigned to read, and then present their findings to small subgroups within the class (depending on class size, subgroups may be quite small). Students who have participated in "poster sessions" already have a good idea of what student presentations are like. The presentations are given in a casual and interactive atmosphere--peer-to-peer teaching can be an effective and fun way to learn! Our class will foster a supportive atmosphere for the presentations. Students are not graded on presentational style, but on the ability to summarize the information assigned. Questions from the student presentations will appear on the tests. Student presentations are worth 25% of the grade. (There's a lot more information you need to know about presentations -- see the "About Presentations" link at the top left of this page. Please not that we won't be able to start working on presentations until registration stabilizes and a stable count of the number of students in the class is available. Usually, presentation assignments are posted during the second week of class.)

Paper: There is no theme paper required for this class.

Subject Pool Participation: It is standard operating procedure for PSYC 355 to offer several percentage points for participation. You can attain up to 3% extra credit by participating in the psychology department's subject pool this semester. Every 4 credits you earn in the subject pool is worth 1% extra credit in this class (4 for 1%, 8 for 2%, 12 for 3%), to a maximum of 12 for 3%. However, if you don't wish to participate in the subject pool, please see the TA or the professor for an alterative extra credit assignment (a theme paper). If you wish to do a theme paper, you need to arrange it with a TA around the time of the second test. No last-minute theme papers, just as there are no last-minute subject pool credits. Plan ahead for extra credit and have it underway by the second test. Here is information sent to me by the psychology department about how to participate in the subject pool. Additional information and approved experiments are found at http://experimetrix.com/socal.

Grade Percentage Review:

• Test 1 = 25%
• Test 2 = 25%
• Test 3 = 25%
• Presentation = 25%
• Subject Pool Participation =3% extra credit
• Poor class participation (poor attendance, not handing in presentation reviews in a timely manner, late presentations, etc.) can lower your grade from the calculated percentage. On the other hand, good participation can help you up to the next higher grade if you're on the borderline between two grades.

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