Katherine Watier's Academics: Attitude Change Class Evaluation

HAMPSHIRE COLLEGE COURSE EVALUATION

Name: Katherine Watier Year of Entry: Fall 1994

Term: Fall 1995

Number and Title: SS 138: Attitude Change

Instructor- Donald B. Poe, Jr., Associate Professor of Psychology

This Division I course explored the general topic of attitude change and persuasion. We approached the subject matter from the perspective of experimental social psychology and thus included in our readings and discussions issues associated with the various components of attitudes, their functions, how they are formed, how they are changed and how they are studied. We began with an examination of classic approaches to the study of attitude change that included looking at variables associated with the source of the communication, the message and the audience. Since it was the beginning of a national election season, we followed this with a special section on political attitudes and political campaigning. Following this we explored persuasion as exhibited by advertising, and finished with several special topics, including cognitive dissonance theory, brainwashing and the foot-in-the-door phenomenon. Throughout the course we applied an information processing perspective to an understanding of the topic under discussion. For evaluative purposes students presented a short paper comparing two studies on the effects of distraction on persuasion, another on a deceptive ad of their choosing, a longer book critique and a final course project.

Katherine was in class regularly and contributed on occasion to ongoing discussions, although this was not easy to do in such a large class. Her written work, along with hallway conversations outside of class, showed that she took the assignments seriously and put a good deal of effort into her work. Her papers were to the point and demonstrated a nicely developed analytical ability on Katherine's part, although they consistently suffered from a less than perfect presentation of her ideas due to poor proofreading. She needs to work on this because silly errors of syntax and grammar get in the way somewhat of an effective presentation of what are otherwise excellent ideas. Her book critique was on Ervin Staub's The Roots of Evil in which the author examines the origins of genocide and mass violence, complete with an explication of examples of genocidal governmental actions around the world in this century. At a substantive level, Katherine's critique of this book was a strong one. She was one of the few students in the class to eschew the recommended paper organization of presenting the book first and reacting to it second, in favor of presenting and reacting simultaneously, but she was able to carry this off seamlessly, and this speaks strongly to her analytical abilities. She was able to take something away from the book while reacting critically to writing style and pointing out times when Staub seemed to over interpret his data.

For her final course project Katherine tackled a large topic, namely how citizens of Nazi Germany could kill Jews on a grand scale. She researched the topic on her own and argued that the factors that allowed for genocide to happen in this place and time included: the search for powerless scapegoats for the humiliating defeat in World War 1, the prestige offered by membership in the Nazi party, the fact that German Jews tended to maintain strong internal bonds of association within their group, the suppression of external forces such as the church and judiciary that might otherwise have exerted a ameliorating influence, the tendency to allow ourselves to become the psychological agents of authority figures (e.g., as in the Milgram experiments) and the process of psychological splitting. Obviously with so many subtopics Katherine was forced to spend less time on each than she could have, but even so she was able to pull the paper together into a coherent whole, and she did more than merely seldom the surface of each of her points. Overall this was an excellent paper, and was exactly the sort of effort that one would expect to see of a somewhat more experienced student in an introductory level course. Katherine obviously challenged herself on this paper, and she also showed noticeable improvement in her written presentation. Katherine is an intelligent student and it was a pleasure having her in the course.

1/2 DIV I Y





				HAMPSHIRE COLLEGE COURSE EVALUATION Name: Katherine Watier Year of Entry: Fall 1994 Term: Fall 1995 Number and Title: SS 138: Attitude Change Instructor- Donald B. Poe, Jr., Associate Professor of Psychology This Division I course explored the general topic of attitude change and persuasion. We approached the subject matter from the perspective of experimental social psychology and thus included in our readings and discussions issues associated with the various components of attitudes, their functions, how they are formed, how they are changed and how they are studied. We began with an examination of classic approaches to the study of attitude change that included looking at variables associated with the source of the communication, the message and the audience. Since it was the beginning of a national election season, we followed this with a special section on political attitudes and political campaigning. Following this we explored persuasion as exhibited by advertising, and finished with several special topics, including cognitive dissonance theory, brainwashing and the foot-in-the-door phenomenon. Throughout the course we applied an information processing perspective to an understanding of the topic under discussion. For evaluative purposes students presented a short paper comparing two studies on the effects of distraction on persuasion, another on a deceptive ad of their choosing, a longer book critique and a final course project. Katherine was in class regularly and contributed on occasion to ongoing discussions, although this was not easy to do in such a large class. Her written work, along with hallway conversations outside of class, showed that she took the assignments seriously and put a good deal of effort into her work. Her papers were to the point and demonstrated a nicely developed analytical ability on Katherine's part, although they consistently suffered from a less than perfect presentation of her ideas due to poor proofreading. She needs to work on this because silly errors of syntax and grammar get in the way somewhat of an effective presentation of what are otherwise excellent ideas. Her book critique was on Ervin Staub's The Roots of Evil in which the author examines the origins of genocide and mass violence, complete with an explication of examples of genocidal governmental actions around the world in this century. At a substantive level, Katherine's critique of this book was a strong one. She was one of the few students in the class to eschew the recommended paper organization of presenting the book first and reacting to it second, in favor of presenting and reacting simultaneously, but she was able to carry this off seamlessly, and this speaks strongly to her analytical abilities. She was able to take something away from the book while reacting critically to writing style and pointing out times when Staub seemed to over interpret his data. For her final course project Katherine tackled a large topic, namely how citizens of Nazi Germany could kill Jews on a grand scale. She researched the topic on her own and argued that the factors that allowed for genocide to happen in this place and time included: the search for powerless scapegoats for the humiliating defeat in World War 1, the prestige offered by membership in the Nazi party, the fact that German Jews tended to maintain strong internal bonds of association within their group, the suppression of external forces such as the church and judiciary that might otherwise have exerted a ameliorating influence, the tendency to allow ourselves to become the psychological agents of authority figures (e.g., as in the Milgram experiments) and the process of psychological splitting. Obviously with so many subtopics Katherine was forced to spend less time on each than she could have, but even so she was able to pull the paper together into a coherent whole, and she did more than merely seldom the surface of each of her points. Overall this was an excellent paper, and was exactly the sort of effort that one would expect to see of a somewhat more experienced student in an introductory level course. Katherine obviously challenged herself on this paper, and she also showed noticeable improvement in her written presentation. Katherine is an intelligent student and it was a pleasure having her in the course. 1/2 DIV I Y
					-Resume -Personal -Academics -Rainforest Challenge-Email-