Psychology

This course explores the ways in which psychology allows us to understand the mechanisms behind the choices we make – including situations such as addiction, where people seem to have a reduced ability to choose. Across a series of lectures and seminars, students see how varied the approaches to this topic area can be, taking in attempts to measure the degree to which an action is freely willed, analysis of choices in terms of expected outcomes, the influence of environments (physical, informational and social) on your choices, habitual choices where we may not be aware of making them, and addiction to both substances and gambling, where people’s short-term choices may directly conflict with their longer-term aims. Students learn how information from a range of approaches can be integrated to develop our understanding of the topic. In addition, through a series of practical sessions students design, implement, and report a novel piece of research on choice behavior. 

This course focuses on the development of the individual and their interaction with their environment and considers what the consequences are, both when this interaction proceeds smoothly and when it does not proceed smoothly. It explores questions concerning human development; gives attention to cognitive and social-emotional aspects; covers some basic issues in human development; and examines the nature and development of personality and human interaction in social groups and cultural settings. Students are introduced to the tools used in psychology to find answers to these questions.

This course examines experimental findings and theory documenting the plasticity of the brain and its relationship to behavior. It covers gene regulation, neurogenesis, and cell morphology changes in relation to learning and experience.

The course examines language as a system of human communication, focusing on its biological, cognitive, and social foundations. It introduces key concepts in psycholinguistics, pragmatics, language comprehension, and production, and explores how language is processed in the mind and used in social interaction.

This course examines the main psychological phenomena at play in economic decisions including how knowledge about psychology and economic behavior can be used in practice.

This course familiarizes students with fundamental issues in the area of self-regulation, motivation, and emotion. Topics include basic self-regulatory processes such as goal setting and goal striving, self-control, and self-knowledge and facilitating and disruptive factors that influence self-regulatory processes, such as motivation, emotion (regulation), habits, and automatic influences. Strategies for improving self-regulation are also discussed. These topics are focused on four specific themes of interest: health, education, finance, and sustainability. The course consists of lectures and tutorials with assignments.