Psychology

This course examines modern theories and empirical research findings on the structure and development of personality across a lifespan, using a combined perspective of developmental and personality psychology. This course provides an overview of the structure of human personality and its developmental milestones from early childhood to adulthood. It examines the big five factors of personality and various influences (e.g., genetics, temperament, parenting) that shape the development of personality over time. It also discusses correlates of different personality characteristics across multiple domains of development (e.g., self-esteem, achievement, morality).

Social Neuroscience is a new and rapidly growing field of research. It is an interdisciplinary field that asks questions about topics traditionally of interest to social psychology, economics, and political science using methods traditionally employed by cognitive neuroscientists, such as functional brain imaging. The course discusses functional MRI research within the following topics: self-reflection, emotion regulation, perceiving others/mirror neurons, intersubject/hyper-scanning designs, and moral judgment.  Students gain insight into the neural correlates of social behavior and acquire knowledge about designing a functional MRI study.

The International Internship course develops vital business skills employers are actively seeking in job candidates. This course is comprised of two parts: an internship, and a hybrid academic seminar. Students are placed in an internship within a sector related to their professional ambitions. The hybrid academic seminar, conducted both online and in-person, analyzes and evaluates the workplace culture and the daily working environment students experience. The course is divided into eight career readiness competency modules as set out by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), which guide the course’s learning objectives. During the academic seminar, students reflect weekly on their internship experience within the context of their host culture by comparing and contrasting their experiences with their global internship placement with that of their home culture. Students reflect on their experiences in their internship, the role they have played in the evolution of their experience in their internship placement, and the experiences of their peers in their internship placements. Students develop a greater awareness of their strengths relative to the career readiness competencies, the subtleties and complexities of integrating into a cross-cultural work environment, and how to build and maintain a career search portfolio.

This course examines disturbed, strange, unadjusted, and abnormal behavior. Students review prevalent clinical case studies and the resulting research on topics such as anxiety disorders, eating disorders, addictions, mood disorders, and psychotic disorders. Questions that are repeatedly discussed include: What does the clinical picture look like? What are the diagnostic criteria? When does normal become abnormal? How often does this disorder arise? How does such a disorder develop? What can be done about it? The goal of these questions is to understand why one person develops the disorder while another does not, how scientific research can reveal the causes of disorders, and insight into the mechanisms that maintain the disorder. Students become familiar with various forms of psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy as well as theories on etiology, empirical findings that support or contradict the theory, customary treatments, and the effectiveness of those therapies.

This course explores the features and methodology of the differential approach of the study of human behavior. It begins with a brief history of the concepts and objectives of the field before examining its theoretical models. The course identifies differences in personality, temperament, and emotions and their variations by sex, gender, and age, or along other inter-group differences like intelligence, disability, and multilingualism.

The purpose of this course is to provide positive psychological approaches to understand stress. Students gain a greater understanding of their values and choices, as well as learn effective skills to reduce their stress and to increase positive emotion for lifelong health. 

What causes jetlag? Why do you feel like having a cup of soup? How come smokers are so hooked on their cigarettes? These and other questions are discussed during the course Body and Behavior. This course mainly studies biological explanations for behavior based on themes such as sexuality, eating and drinking, sleeping and waking, medication, movement, and addiction. Knowledge of the biological basis of behavior is essential for psychologists. The most important structure for explaining human behavior is our brain. However, establishing a link between electrical and neurochemical activities in our brain to behavior is no easy task. You need sound knowledge of neuroanatomy (how parts of the brain are in connection to one another), neurophysiology (how brain cells operate), and neurotransmission (how brain cells communicate). During the first few weeks of the course, special attention is paid to the (further) development of this basic knowledge. Students learn that knowledge of the biological basis of human behavior does not only come from research on humans, but also on animals. Finally, research methods used by psychologists to study the biological basis of behavior is touched upon. Today, psychologists are able to carefully study the structure and function of the brain using these methods. The most important methods are discussed and the pros and cons are compared.

This course introduces students to the study of the neurobiology of behavior. It consists of five parts. Part 1: “Historical Perspectives, Neurons, Neuroanatomy and Methods” introduces foundational ideas that are built on in subsequent lectures. Part 2: “Sensory and Motor Systems” introduces core ideas and experiments in the study of sensation and action. For example, describing the visual and other sensory processing streams and how the motor system works, including the operation of ‘mirror neurons’ that respond during observation of a movement and making the movement. Part 3: “Emotion, Stress and Social Behavior” covers these topics at the large-scale population level to specific neural circuits. Part 4: “Learning and Memory” explore research examining how we and other animals remember the past and learn new information. Part 5: "Disorders and the Prefrontal Cortex" covers research on neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease and mental health disorders such as schizophrenia and post-traumatic stress disorder, and concludes with the role of the prefrontal cortex in controlling behavior.