1. To become acquainted with the three subject matters of personality, motivation, and

emotion.

Studying personality, motivation, and emotion involves familiarity with many different

phenomena, theories, constructs, discoveries, and explanations, and this course will

introduce each of these to help you understand these constructs and ideas in some depth.

By participating in class, by reading the textbook, and by reading journal articles,

you will gain an ever-increasing understanding of personality, motivational, and

emotional 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 emotions and emotional reactions 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 a vague,

introductory level to an ever-more specific and sophisticated one.



3. To appreciate personality, motivation, and emotion study from a theoretical, empirical,

and data-based 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-based research studies). In trying to answer a question such as, “How can

teachers increase students’ classroom engagement?”, this course enables you to articulate a theory-based answer, such as “Well, according to such-and-such theory, this is where

student engagement comes from, this is why it changes, and this is how you increase it.”

This objective is for you to grow in your capacity to think theoretically about personality,

motivational, and emotional issues.



4. To appreciate personality, motivation, and emotion study from a practical, applied, and

application-based 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—but especially the personality, motivation

and emotion of students. Many personality, motivation, and emotional problems exist,

and this course will grow your capacity to solve practical problems and to design

interventions and provide relationships to improve people’s lives.

This objective is for you to grow in the capacity to think practically about personality,

motivational, and emotional issues.