Course ives

1. To become acquainted with the subject matter of personality, motivation, and emotion. Study in personality, motivation, and emotion involve familiarity with many different phenomena, theories, constructs, discoveries, and explanations, and this course will introduce each and help you understand each in some depth. By participating in class, by reading the textbook, and by reading journal article and books, you will gain an ever-increasing understanding of these phenomena.

2. To understand where personality, motivation, and emotion come from and how to facilitate them. From where does personality come? From where does motivation come? From where do the emotions come? How does one facilitate motivation and emotion? Can personality change? What conditions undermine motivation and emotion? With each passing week, you should become increasingly able to answer questions such as these, as your understanding grows from an introductory level to an ever-more sophisticated one.

3. To appreciate personality, motivation, and emotion study from a theoretical, empirical, and data-d perspective. Personality, motivation, and emotion study offers theoretical explanations to its questions(e.g., Why did she do that?), explanations that have been validated through empirical results (data-d research studies). In trying to answer a question such as, “How can teachers spark students’ classroom engagement?”, this course enables you to articulate a theory-d answer, such as “Well, according to a trait approach to personality, …” This ive is for you to grow in your capacity to think theoretically about personality, motivation, and emotional issues.

4. To appreciate personality, motivation, and emotion study from a practical, applied, and application-d perspective. This course presents many practical concerns. Some concerns revolve around your own personality, motivation, and emotion, but most concerns revolve around the personality development and motivational status of others (e.g., students, children, athletes, workers). Many personality, motivation, and emotional problems exist, and this course will grow your capacity to solve practical problems and to design interventions to improve people’s lives. This ive is for you to grow in the capacity to think practically about personality, motivation, and emotion issues.