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.