APU PSYC221 2018 September Full Course Latest (No Short Essays & Learning Reflection Journal Summary)

PSYC221 Personality Theories

Week 1 Forum

Introduce Yourself

Per University policy, students who do not complete the Week 1 forum work by its deadlines are auto-dropped from the course. Instructors don't have authority to re-enroll auto-dropped students, so it is critical that you post on time to the Week 1 Forum.

 Future weeks’ forums will require 300 word length “initial posts” (the ones posted in response to the Forum topic prompts) and 200 word length responses to classmates.

Quoting should not be used in the forums. Since we are conversing about a course topic, it is important to use a scholarly tone while conveying your understanding of the information. 

The purpose of this week's forum question is to give us a chance to get to know each other.

By the end of Week 1 of the course, introduce yourself to your fellow students by sharing in a minimum of 300 words (there is no maximum limit), who you are, where you are from, where you currently reside, what brought you to this course, what your academic and non-academic interests are, and the most interesting thing about your personality.

NOTE: You must post something about your personality, but what is and isn't interesting is entirely up to you as long as you post something substantive and don't short change this part of your submission. You don't have to be an expert on personality development to respond to this part of the assignment. Do keep in mind that all of your classmates can see your post--you get to decide how personal you want to be here.

To submit your initial post, click on "New Thread" and type your message into the blank box that appears, then click on "Post Message" at the bottom of the page.

 

PSYC221 Personality Theories

Week 2 Forum

Personality Theories Today

Which one of the theories discussed in Chapters 3 and 4 of our course textbook do you think is most useful in understanding and explaining personality development in contemporary society? Explain your position. Be sure to select a theory, briefly describe it and name the theorist, rather than a general concept. Link your chosen theory directly to aspects of personality development in contemporary society you are attempting to explain rather than only summarizing the theory.  No points can be assigned if you do the latter.

 

 

 

 

 

PSYC221 Personality Theories

Week 3 Forum

Dr. Steinberg on Nature/Nurture

Click on the link below or copy and paste it into your web browser URL address box at the top of your screen and watch the brief interview of Dr. Laurence Steinberg about nature's versus nurture's impact on human development.

Laurence Steinberg Interview

http://bigthink.com/ideas/17986

In this video with accompanying transcript, Dr. Laurence Steinberg, Professor of Psychology at Temple University, explains the latest research findings into the nature versus nurture debate, highlighting the need to break down the false dichotomy between genes and the environment.

By Wednesday of this week, in at least 300 words for your initial post, share your thoughts on the message from Dr. Steinberg combined with the following based your own knowledge and experience:

Think about and compare two people you know. Each one of these two individuals has what you might suspect is a genetic propensity for being a leader. In other words, you have seen evidence that both of these acquaintances of yours were born with leadership ability. However, one of your acquaintances has become a leader and the other has not. What can you identify as the difference, today, between these two personalities?  First share why you think both of them have a genetic temperament to be a leader and then why you think one became a leader and the other did not. What main cause do you believe is the reason that one of them is a leader and the other is not?  Remember to take into account what Dr. Steinberg told us.

Remember that all posts are graded for substance and thoughtful consideration of the forum topic.

 

PSYC221 Personality Theories

Week 4 Forum

Cognitive Therapy Techniques

Discuss the theory of personality behind cognitive therapy. How can you recognize automatic thoughts? How can you identify your irrational beliefs? Discuss assessment and research in Beck's theory.

 

PSYC221 Personality Theories

Week 5 Forum

Humanistic and Existential Perspectives

Contrast the Humanistic and Existential perspectives as they pertain to the concept of personality. Which philosophical assumptions were most important to Rogers? Using the Existential framework, how do times of change and crisis lead us to reconsider our values?

PSYC221 Personality Theories

Week 6 Forum

Gender Differences in Personality

This week, your forum assignment is about male and female differences in personality. What male and female differences in personality have you observed and where do you think they come from (e.g., are they learned, inborn, etc.)?

NOTE: If you believe more than one personality theory explains male/female differences, give concrete examples. Link the theory you choose solidly to the personality differences you describe to provide evidence of your thorough comprehension of your selected theory by your accurate application of it rather than just picking a theory by name and listing characteristics believed by the general public to differ between genders. You must describe how the theory you choose explains specific differences.

 

PSYC221 Personality Theories

Week 7 Forum

The Role of Love in Personality Theory

Choose at least three (3) different theoretical perspectives that have been covered in this course to date and discuss how the construct of love is conceptualized by each theoretical framework. How is love defined?  What role does it have in development and the human condition?  Which view appeals to you the most? Why?

 

PSYC221 Personality Theories

Week 8 Forum

Course Wrap-Up

(1) First, identify one or two aspects of the course that added to your knowledge of personality development, in general, and explain why.

(2) Then, identify at least one thing you learned that is directly related to your own area of interest. For example, if your area of interest is criminal justice, what can you take away from this class that will help you with your future work in that area? If your area of interest is psychology, how will what you learned in this class help you be successful in future psychology courses? If your area of interest is being a better spouse and/or parent, then what new tools can you glean from this course for that purpose? If there is more than one area in which you think you can apply what you have learned, you may, of course, discuss more than one, but only one application of learning to interest area is required for this last post.

Give it thoughtful consideration. What did you learn and why was it interesting enough to make you want to discuss it here?

 

PSYC221 Personality Theories

Learning Reflection Journal Summary

The Learning Reflection Journal requires weekly learning experience reflection across Weeks 2, 3, 5 6 and 7. In week 7, a Learning Reflection Journal summary compilation will be submitted, compiling these weekly experiences into a single document.  The summary document should conclude with and additional two substantive summary paragraphs (500 hundred words in length) combined.

Weekly Journals: During each of the assigned weeks, you will write two paragraphs, each 300 words in length (i.e., 600 words total). The first paragraph will describe a topic that you found particularly interesting during that week and what made it interesting, and the second paragraph will describe something that you have observed occurring in the real world that exemplified that topic.

Only one topic may be recorded in the journal for each assigned week and the observed real word occurrence must be clearly related to it. Your weekly journal entries must be attached to the Learning Reflection Journal assignment screen as an individual document each week to demonstrate completion during its scheduled week but it will not be graded until the compilation of all the weeks' journal entries in single new document submitted the end of Week 7. Please label your MS Word files Week 2, Week 3, etc.

 

PSYC221 Personality Theories

My Personality Theory Paper

Instructions:

For this assignment, you will write a paper no less than 7 pages in length, not including required cover and Reference pages, describing a single personality theory from the course textbook that best explains your own personality and life choices. You are free to select from among the several theories covered in the course to date but only one theory may be used.

Your task is to demonstrate your knowledge of the theory you choose via descriptions of its key concepts and use of them to explain how you developed your own personality. It is recommended that you revisit the material covered to date to refresh your knowledge of theory details. This is a "midterm" assignment and you should show in your work that you have studied and comprehended the first four weeks of course material. Your submission should be double-spaced with 1 inch margins on all sides of each page and should be free of spelling and grammar errors. It must include source crediting of any materials used in APA format, including source citations in the body of your paper and in a Reference list attached to the end. Easy to follow guides to APA formatting can be found on the tutorial section of the APUS Online Library.

Your paper will include three parts:

I.        A brief description of the premise and key components of the theory you selected. You should be thorough and concise in this section and not spend the bulk of the paper detailing the theory, but rather just give enough of a summary of the key points so that an intelligent but uniformed reader would be able to understand its basics. If you pick a more complicated theory, you should expect explaining its premise and key components to take longer than explaining the same for one of the simpler theories but, in either case, focus on the basics and keep in mind that a paper that is almost all theory description and little use of the theory described to explain your own personality will receive a significant point deduction as will the reverse case of the paper being largely personal experience sharing with little linkage to clearly described key theory components.

II.       A description of how your chosen theory explains your personality and life choices with supporting examples.

III.      A description of the limitations of the theory in explaining your personality or anyone else’s.

NOTE: Although only your instructor will be reading your paper, you should still think about how much personal information you want to disclose. The purpose of this paper is not to get you to share private information, but rather to bring one of the theories covered in the course to life by applying it to your own real world experience.

 

PSYC221 Personality Theories

Theory Compare / Contrast Paper

For this assignment, you will write a paper no less than 7 pages in length, not including required cover and Reference pages, comparing and contrasting two personality theories from the course. You are free to select from among the several theories covered in the course to date but only two theories may be used.

Your task is to demonstrate your knowledge of these theories you chose via descriptions of their key concepts and detailing the most important aspects of each theory in explaining personality. It is recommended that you revisit the material covered to date to refresh your knowledge of theory details. This is a comprehensive assignment and you should demonstrate in your work that you have studied and comprehended the similarities and the differences between your two chosen theories.  This is a fact based paper only.  It should not be based upon your preference for a theory or your opinion.

Your submission should be double-spaced with 1 inch margins on all sides of each page and should be free of spelling and grammar errors. It must include source crediting of any materials used in APA format, including source citations in the body of your paper and in a Reference list attached to the end. Easy to follow guides to APA formatting can be found on the tutorial section of the APUS Online Library and on the following website.  Upon submission your paper will automatically be submitted to Turnitin.

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/

 

PSYC221 Personality Theories

Final Exam

Question 1

Describe the 8 basic perspectives used to define "personality".

Question 2

Explain how a personality develops through shaping and conditioning.

Question 3

Imagine that TWO of the theorists below were invited to speak at a symposium on personality theory development and are both on the stage. Someone in the audience raises her hand and asks, "So what do you think was your theory's greatest contribution to our current understanding of human personality?" What would each of the theorists you chose say in answer to the question? Freud Jung Adler Rogers Horney

Question 4 of 5 50.0 Points

McCrae and Costa (1990) think their "Big 5" Five Factor model is THE most complete personality theory. Some theorists would beg to differ! What theorist would say the Big 5 is thorough but by no means a complete model and describe what the theorist would say is missing?

Question 5

What did you learn about your own personality from this course. What “spoke” to you…what did you learn about you? This question will be graded as rigorously as the other four on the exam!