Extra Credit--Due Fri 9/25

Applying Personality Theories to TV Characters
Think of a potentially interesting television character to focus upon (a favorite character or one with a particularly vivid or unique personality. Select your character. Focus upon a specific episode of the show that features the character.
Write a two to three page essay in which you briefly describe the circumstances and plot of the episode. Devote the remainder of your essay explaining your character’s behavior in terms of one of the major personality theories (e.g. Psychodynamic, Humanistic, Trait, or Learning).
Additional Points:
· You may use more than one theoretical perspective
· You are not restricted to characters with negative or maladaptive personalities (healthy characters are interesting too!)
· Feel free to be creative and original in your application of the theory

Personality Theories

As promised, here are some links that you may want to check out related to personality theories and online personality tests. I want to caution you about the validity of the online tests--be careful when interpreting the results. Proceed with caution.

http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/perscontents.html
This link is contains links to all aspects to studying personality theories

http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/jungtype.htm
This contains information about and a link to a Jung-based personality test

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/index_surveys.shtml
the BBC has a collection of a variety of different kinds of tests including personality tests

http://www.freud.org.uk/
The Freud Museum in London

http://davideck.com
contains a variety of different kinds of online tests

http://www.vanguard.edu/faculty/ddegelman/amoebaweb/index.aspx?doc_id=850
A giant list of online personality tests--be careful, you could spend a lot of time on these links

http://www.vanguard.edu/faculty/ddegelman/amoebaweb/index.aspx?doc_id=869
Links to all things personality theory-based--an incredible resource

For Tues 9/16/08--Psychodynamic Personality Theory

I was gone last class and will be gone next class. We will examine Trait Theories in class with a brief Q/A. I will also be going over Psychodynamic Theories as well on Tuesday. We will examine Freud's theories and focus on defense mechanisms. We will have practice quizzes next week when I return.

HW for Wed 9/4--Stats

Read the pages on Statistics--691-699. It covers all the basics that you need to know about stats that you need for this course. I will have some practice work for you in class. Check the comments from the previous blog for some hints on dealing with stats. I will post some more here. In terms of content:

• descriptive stats
• inferential stats
• measures of central tendency
• normal curve
• standard deviation
• graphing stats
• correlation--more detail

Remember that Stats are simply a way for researchers to quantify and understand the results from the research that they do.

A great website overall:
http://www.vanguard.edu/faculty/ddegelman/amoebaweb/
it has links to so many wonderful psych web sites

Stats link on amoebaweb
http://www.vanguard.edu/faculty/ddegelman/amoebaweb/index.aspx?doc_id=876