Type your essays, responses, and short answers to be turned in to me as hard copy at the beginning of the Final Exam Period — OR you may submit your essays to the assignment dropbox just like the Midterm Essays. Use double spacing or 1.5 spacing and include your full name, class, section, and the title of the assignment (i.e. Final Essay Exam) single-spaced in the upper right corner with anywhere from .5 to 1.0 inch margins for the entire document (APA Writing Style – see sample on last page of this document with further advice). Indicate the prompt number and give a title to your essays #1-3, but simply indicate the prompt # for each of the five short answer items that you select. Your essays will be judged by their clarity, precision, correct use of appropriate psych terms, text or class references, sincerity, and other evidence of your hard work.

Medium Essay Prompts (pick 3) – 1-2 pages (3 x 10 = 30 pts)

1. More than two millennia ago, the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote, “If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” Shakespeare also said, “Nothing is good or bad that the mind doth make it so” – implying the same. Does research in the text support this claim? Referring to emotional intelligence, self-control, rationality, mind-body interactions, coping, therapies, and perhaps learning theories outline what is important to know about our potential and limitations in dealing with “stress”.

2. The hedonic principle is the notion that all people are motivated to experience pleasure and avoid pain. According to Aristotle, all other motivations rest on this one. If this is true, then how can you explain war? (hint: evolutionary theory and especially Haidt’s ideas on multi-level selection, moral foundations, and the moral matrix are key. The text refers to his ideas under moral intuitionalist approach to moral development)

3. When your family gathers for Thanksgiving, your cousin Mary brings her new fiancé; it’s the first time he’s met the whole family, and his behavior is a little strained: He talks too much, laughs too loudly, and generally gets under everyone’s skin. Later, when you’re alone with your mother, she rolls her eyes. “It’s hard to imagine Mary wanting to spend the rest of her life married to someone whose personality is as annoying as that.” You decide to be more generous because you think your mother might have fallen prey to the correspondence bias. How could you explain the behavior of Mary’s fiancé using situational attribution rather than dispositional attribution? Does this excuse the behavior?

4. A classmate is shaken after learning about the Milgram (1963) study, in which participants were willing to obey orders to administer painful electric shocks to another human, even after he begged them to stop. Worse, the Burger (2009) study shows that it wasn’t just humans “back then” who were capable of this behavior—modern participants showed virtually identical obedience rates to those in the Milgram study. “It’s horrible to think that people are capable of such violence in the name of following orders,” she says. “I know that you or I wouldn’t behave like that, but it’s really scary that so many other people would.” Can we each really be sure that we would not, in fact, obey orders in a replication of the Milgram experiment? What type of social influence produces a tendency to obey people in authority even if their orders seem wrong or incorrect? If you could take a pill that made you completely immune to social influence, would you do it? Would you want others to take it? What would be the benefits and what would be the costs?

5. Back in Chapter 2, you read about Louise Hay, whose bestselling book You Can Heal Your Life promotes a kind of psychotherapy: teaching readers how to change their thoughts and thereby improve not only their inner lives but also their physical health. The chapter quotes Hay as saying that scientific evidence is unnecessary to validate her claims. Is there a scientific basis for the major types of psychotherapy described in chapter 15 (on Therapy)? How is scientific experimentation used to assess their effectiveness?

6. Some parents believe that teaching adolescents about birth control and then expecting them to abstain is like giving them the keys to a car and then expecting them not to drive. Other parents believe that adolescents make their own decisions about sex and that it is better for those decisions to be made on the basis of knowledge rather than ignorance. What does the text say on this topic and how would you design a study to help settle this argument (hint: the sort of study that would demonstrate cause and effect)?

7. According to rational choice theory, people evaluate all options when making a decision and choose the alternative with the greatest benefit to them. However, psychological research shows us that this is not always the case. Indeed, we are often forced to make decisions that we never even chose to consider, under stress, with limited attention, let alone without all the information present. In these conditions, we are often fooled into making a different decision than we normally would because of how the options are presented to us. Your instructor has referred many times to the growing “cognitive capture” of corporate marketing techniques and the increasing demands on individuals’ “cognitive resources”. Explain some ways that our much-vaunted freedom that we all take so for granted is constrained internally by our cognitive “hardware” and externally by our socio-cultural “software”.

8. A presidential candidate makes a Freudian slip on live TV, calling his mother “petty”; he corrects himself quickly and says he meant to say “pretty.” The next day the video has gone viral, and the morning talk shows discuss the possibility that the candidate has an unresolved Oedipus con# ict; if so, he’s stuck in the phallic stage and is likely a relatively unstable person preoccupied with issues of seduction, power, and authority (which may be why he wants to be president). Your roommate knows you’re taking a psychology class and asks for your opinion: “Can we really tell that a person is sexually repressed, and maybe in love with his own mother, just because he stumbled over a single word?” How would you reply? How widely are Freud’s ideas about personality accepted by modern psychologists?

9. While reading a magazine, you come across an article on the nature-nurture controversy in personality. The article describes several adoption studies in which adopted children (who share no genes with each other but grow up in the same household) are no more like each other than complete strangers. This suggests that the influence of family environment—and of parental behavior—on personality is very weak. You show the article to a friend, who has trouble believing the results. “I always thought parents who don’t show affection produce kids who have trouble forming long-lasting relationships.” Using text material – especially on Attachment Styles and Parenting Styles – how would you explain to your friend the relationship among nature, nurture, and personality?

10. A friend is majoring in education. “We learned today about several cities, including New York and Chicago, that tried giving cash rewards to students who passed their classes or did well on achievement tests. That’s bribing kids to get good grades, and as soon as you stop paying them, they’ll stop studying.” Your friend is assuming that extrinsic motivation undermines intrinsic motivation. In what ways is the picture more complicated?

11. While watching TV, you and a friend hear about a celebrity who punched a fan in a restaurant. “I just lost it,” the celebrity said. “I saw what I was doing, but I just couldn’t control myself.” According to the TV report, the celebrity was sentenced to anger management classes. “I’m not excusing the violence,” your friend says, “but I’m not sure anger management classes are any use either. You can’t control your emotions; you just feel them.” Your instructor has cited Jonathan Haidt’s text, The Happiness Hypothesis in which Haidt argues his thesis that “training your elephant” is essential for happiness and well-being and also referred to research on willpower, self-discipline, and other forms of training. Using our text and other class materials, what examples or suggestions could you give your friend of ways in which we can attempt to control our emotions – both in the immediate short term as well as longer term?

12. In late 2011, a federal judge ruled that the New York City Fire Department had long pursued discriminatory hiring practices, resulting in systematic exclusion of minorities from the force – which at the time included almost 97% Whites although the city’s population is about 25% Black. Your roommate reads about the case and scoffs. “People are always so quick to claim racism. And of course there are still a few racist people out there. But the fact is, ever since the 1960s, we’ve had equal rights in this country, and racism on a large scale just doesn’t exist in the United States.” What would you tell your friend about racism in the United States? What explanations could you give for why discrimination has been such a difficult problem to eradicate from human culture? Stereotypes are natural, essential, and harmful. Even though we can’t eliminate them, we might be able to eliminate some of their most harmful effects. How could that be accomplished?

Short Answer Questions (pick 5) – 1-2 paragraphs, 3-10 sentences, don’t forget to cite! (5 x 4 = 20 pts)

1. One of your classmates spent the summer interning in a neurologist’s office. “One of the most fascinating things,” she says, “was the patients with psychosomatic illness. Some had seizures or partial paralysis of an arm, and there were no neurological causes—so it was all psychosomatic. The neurologist tried to refer these patients to psychiatrists, but a lot of the patients thought he was accusing them of faking their symptoms and were very insulted.” What would you tell your friend about psychosomatic illness? Could a disease that’s “all in the head” really produce symptoms such as seizures or partial paralysis, or are these patients definitely faking their symptoms?
2. One of your friends has just been dumped by her boyfriend, and she’s devastated. She’s spent days in her room, crying and refusing to go out. You and your roommate decide to keep a close eye on her during this tough time. “Negative emotions are so destructive,” your roommate says. “We’d all be better off without them.” What would you tell your roommate? In what ways are negative emotions critical for our survival and success?
3. Is it possible for someone to have too much self-esteem?
4. Psychological disorders can be caused by biological, psychological, and environmental factors. The diathesis-stress model suggests that a person may be predisposed for a psychological disorder that remains unexpressed until triggered by stress. Suppose that two identical twins (with the same genetic profile) grow up in the same household (sharing the same parents, the same basic diet, the same access to television, etc.). As a teenager, one twin but not the other develops a mental disorder such as schizophrenia. How could this be?
5. A good friend is out with you, buying groceries, when you spot a crying child in a stroller. The mother picks up the child and cuddles it until it stops crying. “Now, that’s bad parenting,” your friend says. “If you pick up and cuddle a child every time it cries, you’re reinforcing the behavior, and the result will be one spoiled child.” Do you agree with your friend? What do studies of attachment tell us about the effects of picking up and holding children when they cry?
6. One of your friends has just gotten news that his sister has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. He begins researching treatments online and comes across a website promoting a stress reduction treatment that, the author claims, can prevent or reverse many disorders—without requiring drugs, surgery, or anything but “positive thinking.” What would you tell your friend? Are most psychological disorders caused primarily by too much stress?
7. In September, 2011, Wired magazine ran an article discussing the “fourth down decisions” of NFL coaches. On the fourth down, a team can either take a big risk by trying to run or pass for a first down, or they can take a smaller risk by kicking the ball. Statistical analyses show that the riskier play is usually the better one but that coaches choose the safer play over 90% of the time. Reading this article, one of your friends is incredulous. “Coaches aren’t stupid, and they want to win,” he says. “Why would they always make the wrong decision?” Your friend is assuming that humans are rational decision makers. In what ways is your friend wrong? What might be causing the irrational decision making by football coaches?
8. You are watching a TV program that claims several international terrorist organizations specifically try to recruit adolescents, believing that early indoctrination into a belief or culture can be particularly effective in shaping lifelong attitudes and, indeed, in determining an individual’s whole personality. Is this belief accurate? How stable is personality across the life span?
9. Although there is a rich variety of human languages across the globe, evidence suggests that facial displays of at least six primary emotions—anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise—are universal. How can you explain this?
10. A friend is nearing graduation and has received a couple of job offers. “I went on the first interview,” she says, “and I really liked the company, but I know you shouldn’t go with your first impressions on difficult decisions. You should be completely rational and not let your emotions get in the way.” Are emotions always barriers to rational decision making? In what ways can emotions help guide our decisions?
11. One of your cousins has a young son, and she’s very proud of the boy’s accomplishments. “He’s very smart,” she says. “I know this because he has a great memory: He gets 100% on all his vocabulary tests.” What kind of skills do most IQ tests measure? What other forms of intelligence or cognitive skills or talents are left out and why?
12. One of your friends is outgoing and funny as well as a star athlete on the women’s basketball team. She has started to date a man who is introverted and prefers playing computer games to attending parties. When you tease her about the contrast in personalities, she replies, “Well, opposites attract.” Is your friend correct? Why or why not?
13. You and your roommate are watching a movie in which a young man tells his parents that he’s gay; the parents react badly and decide that they should send him to a “camp” where he can learn to change his sexual orientation. Your roommate turns to you: “Do you know anything about this? Can you really change someone from gay to straight, just by sending them to camp?” Based on what you’ve read in this text, what would you tell your friend about the factors determining sexual preference?

Sample format from top of first page (no cover pages!):
Joseph B. Student
PSYC 1-0? Danese
Final Essay Exam

Medium Essay #3: [Your Title Here] (e.g. Evolution: The Agony and the Ecstasy)
This is where you start the body of your essay using Times New Roman, Roman, New Times, or some very similar 11- or 12-pt font. Double-space the body of your essays (or use 1.5 spacing) and use in-text citations like this (Text, p. 32). Or, if you are going to refer to some specific information from a lecture or powerpoint, cite it like this (Lecture, Sept 12). Likewise, if you are going to use a quote that might “…look something like this…that continues to the end of your sentence, then your citation would look like this” (Freud, in Text, p. 121). Do not over-cite! It wastes space and is choppy to read. Generally, in academic writing, we only quote and cite ideas that seem unique to a particular author, or particular findings or data from specific studies, or ideas/arguments from particular readings or video (Stroke of Insight, March 10). Historical facts, special terms, theories, and generally anything that can be found in an encyclopedia or dictionary are considered common knowledge and do NOT need to be formally defined, explained, or cited. Remember to read your work back to yourself to see if it sounds clear, cohesive, and grammatical to you. Also, it is very good form and practice to tell me – the reader, your “audience” – the essay’s purpose somewhere in the first paragraph: “This essay will correct some common misconceptions regarding evolution and argue for its practical and explanatory power as one of several theoretical perspectives in Psychology,” or some appropriate organizing thesis statement of this sort.
And remember to use paragraphs appropriately (no one-paragraph essays, and no 1 or 2-sentence paragraphs either!) and to use the first-person if the essay prompt implies such (i.e. What would you say to your friend who just said….?). At the end of each essay, be sure to include a word count like the one after the final sentence (in MS Word, highlight/select the essay and under tools hit “word count”). And please note: there is nothing idiosyncratic about these guidelines; they are not “what I as your teacher want” – they are academic standards across disciplines, MLA, business, and APA styles, as you will learn when you take your 100W course. Also note that the indicated lengths for your essays and answers are only guidelines, not standards or rules. Good luck and happy writing. [word count: 184]