Freud and Jung relax

Freud is a cultural icon, of course, and we have treated him in a purely academic manner in the course. This way of speaking about people sometimes makes it difficult for students to recall that such big name intellectuals were just ordinary people with their own desires, ambitions, jealousies, fears, etc. What was Freud actually like in day-to-day life? I can't answer that question completely, but today I came across some photographs taken of Freud just kind of hanging out with his friend Carl Jung. (Many thanks to Ramin from my tutorial group who got me thinking about Jung this morning in class.) You can see more of the photographs and some interesting comments here about the personal relationship between Freud and Jung as well as about their influence on each others' thinking.

Thinking outside of consciousness

Is it possible that one might make better decisions by not giving them any conscious thought and instead letting the unconscious deal with the matter? The Dutch psychologist Ap Dijksterhuis has studied unconscious processes and claims their superiority over consciousness for some types of problems. You can read a summary of his work here.

However, Arnaud Rey and colleagues have followed up Dijksterhuis’ work. They propose that the inclusion of proper control comparisons shows that the best interpretation of the data is not that unconscious processing helps, but rather that in some situations too much conscious processing hinders decision making. Their article is available here.

A recent New Yorker article mentions Dijksterhuis’ studies in the context of the importance of replicability. Attempts to replicate the unconscious decision-making effect have not yielded as impressive results as did the original study. You can read the report here.

Determinism and moral responsibility

In this morning's lecture I raised the question of what happens to our concepts of moral responsibility and moral accountability if we work from the assumption that human thinking and behaviour are part of totally deterministic system. To promote some reflection on this question I briefly mentioned an example of a man who suddenly began to engage in highly inappropriate sexual behaviour, perhaps as a result of a tumour found to be growing in his brain. A recent episode of the Radiolab podcast presents a similar example which I think you might find very interesting for further reflection. The episode deals with the psychological phenomena of assigning blame and is available by clicking on the link above.  

NCR: Not Criminally Responsible, is a video documentary also related to the topic of determinism and moral responsibility. It deals with a case of attempted murder and is scheduled for broadcast next Thursday (Oct 17) at 9pm on CBC TV. Follow the link for a trailer and more information.

You may have noticed that Radiolab is one of the podcasts listed on the sidebar of the website. This podcast and the others listed are a great source for discussion of ideas related to our course. Here are links to a few other podcast episodes that I think you might enjoy:

Kid Logic -- more examples of ways in which children's ability to reason about the world around them differs from that of adults. 

Childhood memories  -- how accurate are your childhood memories, especially those which have played a key role in your personal identity as an adult?

Quitting  -- "set goals, develop a plan, and stick with it" is the advice we usually receive about getting ahead in the world. Is quitting ever the rational thing to do?

E-book links that don't work

In this morning's class several people indicated that the links in their copy of the e-book were not functioning. I wrote to the publishers, and it appears that they have figured out the source of the problem and developed a solution. Here is the email I received: 

Hi Ron,
 
We have fixed the issue. Anyone who already purchased it can now go to Account>Update Booklist and download the revised version with active hyperlinks.
 
Please let me know if there are any other problems with it.
 
Thanks!
Kristy

On my cell phone and on my iPad the trick seemed to be to look for the arrow symbol in the photo here. When I went to "Collections" and clicked on that arrow, one of the choices that came up was "Update Booklist." The update should result in a functioning copy of the book being downloaded to your device. (I think you will then have 2 copies of the book - one with active links, one without.) Don't hesitate to comment here if you have found another strategy that works. or to report success, or failure. 

Dialogue Forum Registration

The Dialogue Forum for our course is now available for registration. The primary use of the forum is for posting your weekly homework assignments. The forum is also the best place for asking questions about the course format and content. The TAs, discussion facilitators, and I all monitor and contribute to the forum regularly, so questions generally receive a same-day response. The Dialogue Forum url is http://ron-sheese.forumatic.com. The instructions for registering appear on the forum site. Please use your York email address when you register so that I can more easily recognize who you are and place you in the correct group on the forum. And please register as soon as possible, as it can take a few days for me to complete a group assignment. Thanks,

ron

Friday tutorials

Although the timetable you received from the university indicates that we have lectures from 8:30 to 10:30 on Friday mornings in 102 ACE, we actually divide into groups for one-hour tutorials in a different location. Click on the phrase "Tutorial Lists" in the header above to find a list indicating the tutorial leader, tutorial time, and tutorial location for each student in the course. In general we will follow the pattern of 2 lecture hours on Wednesday morning and 1 tutorial hour on Friday morning throughout the course.

Psychology 1010 about to begin!

Welcome to Psychology 1010. Section I of the course will meet for the first time on Wednesday, September 11. Just above this post you will find a link to the Course Outline, which provides many details of the course. The first meeting will take place in 102 Accolade East. I will introduce myself and all the members of the course team at the lecture and explain more about the work that we will be doing and the structure of our meetings. In this webspace you can expect to see announcements about activities in the course, answers to frequently asked questions, and comments about topics or ideas I forget to mention during my lectures. I hope the website will prove to be a valuable resource for you and that the course will prove to be an excellent experience.

While you are here today, please have a look around. Along with the Course Outline, you will find links above to lecture outlines and discussion questions based on the course material. On the sidebars you will find links to a number of different resources, blogs, and podcasts relevant to Psychology and to our work in the course. 

I look forward to meeting everyone in the course soon,

ron