Psychology

This practical application course covers the basics of conducting research in psychology and how to conduct a study on cultural psychology topics. As a unique combination of two different courses, Research Methods and Independent Study in any APA (American Psychological Association) accredited universities, this course encourages students to take advantage of their immersive cultural experience in Korea. 

Students should be prepared to bring their own phenomenon of interest to class: observations of certain individual behaviors, social systems, and cultural norms that intrigue you are the starting point. We will develop a researchable question from the phenomenon, design a study to answer the research question, collect data to test your hypothesis, and write up the entire process as a research paper. Potential opportunities to present your work for a larger audience can be provided.  

Topics include Science for descriptive and applied methods and their design, Theories and hypothesis testing in descriptive and applied research, Research question development, Ethical issues, Observational research, Measurement and measurement construction, Survey research, Single-case and small-n research, Data entry and analysis, Writing in psychology, Implications. 

Prerequisite: An Introductory or General Psychology course is required. 

This course extends understanding of historical and contemporary theories in social psychology and challenge students to use their knowledge to engage with real-world issues. For example, what brings people together, and what keeps them apart? The emphasis is on fostering ethically minded and socially responsible psychology graduates, through critical reflection of our personal place in a social system. Students consider one’s potential to help others in need, and to be critically and responsively aware of known biases in social perception and judgement. The course equips students with enhanced employability skills through a focus on the ability to understand and articulate complex arguments, and to support claims by making sense of and explaining empirical evidence. Students are encouraged to engage with compelling experimental paradigms and debates in social psychology to move beyond directed textbook material and to become independent, active, and self-directed learners.  

Tourists' decisions and behaviors are influenced by their desires and motivations, as well as their personalities. Tourism not only provides job opportunities and money, but also provides opportunities for human interaction and encounters. Hosts and guests meet, discover their differences and similarities, and thus rediscover themselves. This course introduces psychology-based research findings in the field of tourism and explains the mechanisms and influences of modern tourist behavior. 

This course explores traditional psychological explanations of pro-social and anti-social behavior as well as more recent research findings in the field. Various psychological approaches to pro- and anti-social behavior are considered, including evolutionary and biological perspectives, learning and social-learning perspectives, cognitive-emotional perspectives, cultural and cross-cultural perspectives, and psychodynamic perspectives. Students learn about various theoretical explanations of pro-social and anti-social behavior, including catharsis, deindividuation, the development of empathy, personality factors, the influence of media and other environmental factors. Strategies to increase pro-social behavior and reduce and control anti-social behavior are evaluated. Students develop a more sophisticated understanding of the field of pro-social and anti-social behavior and critically evaluate variables influencing pro-social behavior and anti-social behavior.

In this course, students explore mental health issues and how disorders impact people throughout their lives. Students learn how psychologists make diagnoses and use theory to guide treatment. Topics include anxiety, depression, dementia, and modern evidence-based treatments, such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).

The course "Psychology of Happiness" starts from the question “what happiness is,” and based on the relevant theories and research results of positive psychology on happiness, combing with practical cases, analyzes and explains the factors that affect happiness. Through real case analysis, this course guides students to view and deal with problems from a positive perspective. At the same time, this course introduces and expounds that "mindfulness" can effectively help people to improve their sense of happiness, and is supplemented by the preliminary study of meditation (mindfulness). It is hoped that students can strengthen their hearts, maintain positive knowledge and positive emotions about external things, and improve their subjective well-being by learning the practical methods of regulating emotions.

This course provides a systematic introduction to the key concepts and theoretical frameworks of tourism psychology. It focuses on the psychological and behavioral characteristics of tourists, tourism practitioners, and destination residents. By integrating theory with case-based practice, students will gain a deeper understanding of psychological mechanisms in tourism and learn how to apply them in areas such as product development, service enhancement, and organizational management.

This course uses an application-oriented approach to introduce students to the core concepts of psychometrics, a rigorous, scientific discipline of psychological testing and measurement. Students are provided with hands-on experiences to apply statistical methods for constructing and developing psychological measurement scales empirically as well as introductory exposure to instruments used by psychologists to assess intelligence, personality, and occupationally relevant attributes. Topics covered include: the context of testing and measurement; the testing process; test standardization; reliability and validity; intelligence and its appraisal; personality assessment; special domain testing; occupational applications; large-scale measurements; ethics and prospects.

In this course, students focus on how children learn to communicate in the real world, with a particular emphasis on the communicative skills needed for survival and success in educational settings. In the first half of the course, students consider how children learn to use the kinds of complex language needed in the classroom; to what extent language learning is impacted in atypical populations (e.g. autism, DLD); how language interventions can support children’s learning; how cross-linguistic differences might impact children’s use of the language of the classroom. In the second half of this course, students consider the challenges and benefits of bilingual language development; how children engage in mind-reading for successful communication; and how children reason with one another, collaboratively think and solve problems with other individuals such as peers.

Humans and other group-living species, such as bees, songbirds, nonhuman primates and dolphins (to name a few) face a number of challenges. Sociality provides benefits to individuals, but also exposes them to conflicts and competition. Understanding how these challenges are resolved is one of the most dynamic areas of research in evolutionary biology and comparative and developmental psychology. This course looks at sociality from an evolutionary perspective and focuses on how animals - humans included - use communication to live and cooperate with others (as well as deceive and manipulate them). Content includes: How language has evolved in humans, how non-linguistic communication evolved in humans and other species, the role of gesturing in communication, the flexibility of vocal signalling in nonhuman animals, the role of language for cognition and communication, the evolution of sociality, and game theoretical approaches to social interactions.