Syllabus
Mind, Brain, & Behavior 2
Basic Information
Class hours, location: Tuesdays & Thursdays 11:40 am - 1:00 pm @ Seigle L003
Course website: on Blackboard
Instructor: Elizabeth (Lizzie) Schechter
Contact info: eschech@wustl.edu
Office hours, location: Mondays 4:15 – 6:15 pm, & by appt., @ Whispers
(back-up location: Wilson 108)
Teaching assistants: Sarah Malanowski and Felipe Romero
Contact info: smalanowski@go.wustl.edu and carlosfeliperomero@gmail.com
Office hours, location: Sarah: Tuesdays 1-3 pm @ Wilson 114
Felipe: Tuesdays & Thursdays 3-4 pm @ Wilson 114
Dedicated research librarians: Deborah Katz and Melissa Vetter
Contact info: dkatz@wustl.edu and mvetter@wustl.edu
Readings
There are two required books for this course. The first is:
Mook. 2004. Classic Experiments in Psychology. Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-31821-2.
Most of the assigned readings will come from this text, though some may also be posted on
Blackboard.
The second required text for this course is:
Feinberg. 2014. Doing Philosophy. Cengage. ISBN-10: 1285055012
This is a helpful reference book that will help you write essays in this class and in all your future
philosophy courses. Keep it!
Course description
This course will survey important psychological experiments of the 20th century, while relating such
experiments to contemporary and ongoing research. Our focus throughout will be on the
philosophical questions raised and (potentially) answered by such research.
Learning objectives
The course provides an introduction to the philosophical side of the PNP major. It will provide
students with the basic concepts in the philosophy of mind and psychology and the basic repertoire
of philosophical skills that will allow them to understand work in their future, empirical PNP
coursework from a philosophical perspective. More particularly, the course aims to develop, in
students, the following:
1) familiarity with many of the most important psychological experiments of the 20th century, the
questions such experiments sought to answer and their methods
2) ability to analyze how well-suited the studies’ methods and designs are to answering the research
questions that guided them
3) ability to identify and raise philosophical questions about particular empirical works in psychology
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4) ability to evaluate how and how successfully particular empirical works bear on and answer
philosophical questions about the mind
5) ability to create brief, well-structured philosophical arguments that draw on or concern empirical
work on minds, brains, and behavior.
Evaluation
Sources of points: There are three exams in this class. Each is worth 30% of your final grade in the
course. The additional 10% will come from participation and engagement. “Pop” quizzes and writing
assignments are also a possibility, if necessary to motivate reading and review of articles.
Exam structure and content: Each exam will consist of long-answer questions of various lengths,
as well as a brief research paper assignment (expect to write about 750-1000 words).
You will receive the paper assignment well before the deadline and the long-answer questions at least
a couple of days before the deadline.
Being a student is your job, and taking exams is a necessary and important part of that job.
Other events in your life—flights home, job interviews—should be arranged to accommodate your
exam schedule, rather than vice versa. If a conflict is unavoidable, contact the instructor as early as
possible.
**Please note that you are required to submit a hard copy of each exam.** Do your future self
a favor and come up with a plan to access a printer and a back-up printer, now.
Quizzes: On some days there may be an (unannounced) quiz on the assigned reading for that day or
on previous lectures. Quizzes cannot be made up. This policy isn’t meant to be punitive, but
practical. If you happen to miss or blow a single quiz, don’t worry—I won’t let a single bad score
impact your final grade.
Incompletes: Incompletes will be awarded only under exceptional circumstances, and only when
arrangements are made prior to the last class.
Important dates
The following information is contained in the detailed description of lecture topics and readings
below, but is consolidated here for your convenience:
Exam 1 Part 1 due at noon, Monday 17 February
Exam 1 Part 2 (essay) due at noon, Wednesday 19 February
Exam 2 due at noon, Monday 24 March
Exam 3 due at noon, Monday 28 April
Spring Break 9 March – 15 March (no classes)
If you’re going to be here, really BE here
Promptness: Arrive at 11:30 so that you have time to ready your materials and review your notes
from previous classes. Please do not enter the classroom after 11:45 p.m.
Attendance: Attendance will not be directly factored into your grade. (Obviously it can be expected
to make a great difference to your grade indirectly!) I will take attendance as part of keeping track of
your contributions to the classroom environment. I don’t expect perfect attendance from everyone,
but I do expect you to be a force for good in the classroom.
You can’t be a positive force in the classroom when you are absent, of course, but on the
other hand at least you can’t be a negative force! If you know that you won’t be engaged in class on a
particular day, for whatever reason, and that you’re likely to just sit there staring glassily off into
space (or checking for texts every five seconds), then it’s best if you don’t come.
LAPTOPS: Laptops are so amazing; what would we do without them? Well, you’re about to find
out. NO LAPTOPS (or tablets) IN THE CLASSROOM please—starting at 11:30! (If you need to
use yours before class, please do so from the hallway.)
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Obviously I will make an exception for those who genuinely need laptops for note-taking
purposes; please simply provide documentation from Cornerstone.
Seating: While I won’t assign seating per se, I will often assign you to a particular group (varying
from week to week), which means you’ll be moving around the classroom. Change makes you
stronger!
Class participation and engagement:
There are a number of ways to contribute positively to the classroom environment, including:
--being able to summarize readings and arguments for others
--coming into class with questions about the readings
--listening carefully to and commenting thoughtfully on what other students have said
--asking clarificatory questions when you are unsure of or confused by something—btw, if
you need me to repeat or restate something, it’s almost certain that several other
students do, too
--responding to difficult questions posed by me or by your fellow students
--encouraging everyone in your group (during group work) to contribute, rather than
allowing one or two students to dominate or carry all the work of the group
--nodding when you like or understand something, frowning or shaking your head when you
are troubled by or disagree with something, and looking confused and/or panicked
when you don’t understand something (I do look at your faces!)
--providing me verbal or written feedback—anonymously or not—if you have any concerns
about the way the class is being run
I understand that some students are naturally shy or self-effacing, even socially anxious, and
are therefore reluctant to voice their thoughts in front of a class. If you're one of these students, I'm
going to ask you to be brave; speaking in public does get easier with practice, and willingness to
speak in public, and practice at doing so, will benefit you in many contexts throughout your life.
Other students are naturally bold and socially confident, and happy to talk out loud and at
length about basically whatever. If you're one of these students, I'm going to ask you to be mindful
of your quieter peers, and to give them time to gather their thoughts before jumping in with a
question or an answer each time. Please trust me when I say that quantity of participation ≠ quality
participation!
All students seem to agree (and I also believe) that the most interesting class environment
are those in which a variety of voices are heard from, including those of more introverted students,
who tend to work out their thoughts not by but before speaking. If you find it easy to speak in front of
a class, and find yourself doing it often, please use your social calm and confidence for the benefit of
the class as a whole, to help create an environment in which everyone feels both safe and encouraged
to speak.
Cheating is beneath you
When you cheat or plagiarize, you gain an unfair advantage over other students, you lie to me, and
you take something really personal and important from someone: their labor and ideas.
My life is too short to spend dealing with plagiarizers myself; instead, students suspected of
academic dishonesty will be immediately reported to the Academic Integrity Office. I follow their
recommendation at that point. At a minimum, you get a zero on the plagiarized assignment with no
possibility of a revised or made up assignment. You’re better off writing the worst paper in the world
and getting a 50%.
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Schedule of Lectures and Readings
Note that this schedule is only tentative. We may speed up or slow down.
Readings may be added or dropped.
--Please keep in touch via email and Blackboard.-Week One: Experimentation
Tuesday 14 January
Chapter 1—About experiments
Thursday 16 January
Week Two: Philosophy and Psychology
Tuesday 21 January
Chapter 13—Harry Harlow: A tale of two mothers
Chapter 26—Gordon Paul: Learning theory in the clinic
Chapter 56—Solon Asch on conformity
Thursday 23 January
Week Three: Empirically Investigating the Mind
Tuesday 28 January
Chapter 2—A brief history of experimental psychology
Thursday 30 January
Week Four: Modularity
Tuesday 4 February
Chapter 44—Ernst Weber: The Muscle Sense and Weber’s Law
Chapte 34—Gordon Bower on State-Dependent Memory
Chapter 30—Frederic Bartlett: Meaning and Memory
Thursday 6 February
Week Five: Modularity
Tuesday 11 February
Chapter 4—Paul Broca and the speech center
Chapter 5—Karl Lashley: Brain mechanisms and learning
Chapter 50—Jerome Bruner: Motivation and perception
Chapter 15—Teitelbaum and Epstein: Hunger, thirst, and the brain
Thursday 13 February
Exam 1 Part 1 due at noon, Monday 17 February
Exam 1 Part 2 (essay) due at noon, Wednesday 19 February
Week Six: Nativism vs. Empiricism
Tuesday 18 February
Chapter 19—Edward Thorndike and the law of effect
Chapter 20—Ivan Pavlov and classical conditioning
Chapter 23—B.F. Skinner and operant conditioning
Thursday 20 February
Week Seven: Nativism vs. Empiricism
Tuesday 25 February
Chapter 22—Edward Tolman and cognitive maps
Chapter 23—John Garcia: Conditioned taste aversion
Chapter 28—Lepper et al. on the costs of reward
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Thursday 27 February
Week Eight: Representation
Tuesday 3 March
No new readings
Thursday 5 March
No new readings
Spring Break 9 March – 15 March
Week Nine: Representation
Tuesday 18 March
Chapter 52—Lettvin et al.: What the frog’s eye tells the frog’s brain
Chapter 41—Roger Shepard and mental rotation
Thursday 20 March
Exam 2 due at noon, Monday 24 March
Week Ten: Rationality
Tuesday 25 March
Chapter 40—Festinger and Carlsmith: Cognitive dissonance
Chapter 43—Tvserky and Kahneman: The framing of decisions
Chapter 17—Herman and Polivy: Human hunger and cognition
Thursday 27 March
Week Eleven: The Self
Tuesday 31 March
No new readings—watch Ramachandran video
Thursday 3 April
Class cancelled
Week Twelve: Human Animals
Tuesday 8 April
Chapter 18—Walter Mischel and self-control
Chapter 16—Schachter and Singer: Cognition and emotion
Thursday 10 April
Week Thirteen: The Self
Tuesday 15 April
Chapter 9—Roger Sperry and the bisected brain
Chapter 31—Brenda Milner and the Case of H.M.
Chapter 33—Elizabeth Loftus: Leading questions and false memory
Thursday 17 April
Week Fourteen: Responsibility and Moral Psychology
Tuesday 22 April
Chapter 58—Stanley Milgram on obedience to authority
Chapter 59—Latane and Darley: The unresponsive bystander
Thursday 24 April
Exam 3 due at noon, Monday 28 April
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