Students' reactions to a first course in psychology

Abstract

An attempt was made to analyze a first course in psychology according to the topics discussed. A list of topics, selected so as to be approximately equal in the amount of class time spent on them, was presented to a group of 87 women students at Hunter College. The highest ranks for both preference and value were assigned by these students to intelligence, character, and decision. The topics of least preference were perception, sensation, and physiological substrata, and those of least value were sensation, history, and language. The correlation between preference rankings and value rankings was .81 ± .06. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)