Psychology

The course introduces the rapid growing field of health psychology, which could be defined as an interdisciplinary field concerned with the application of psychological knowledge and techniques to health, illness and health care. The primary purpose of health psychology is to understand and improve the well-being of individuals and communities. A better understanding of psychosocial factors and behaviors associated with health outcomes would inform strategies or policies aimed to promote health, prevent illness, and enhance the quality of health care by facilitating changes in beliefs and behaviors about health.  

This course introduces brain and media, media equation, media and attention, media and memory, priming, emotion and neuroscience. 

This course examines the role of the body in human cognition, through what has come to be known as the 4E (embodied, enactive, embedded and extended) approach to cognition. 4E cognition theories are radically opposed to dualism – the binary division between mind and body, prominent over millennia of Western philosophy – and view the currently dominant computational models of cognition as problematically preserving some aspects of it. From this perspective, the brain is now understood as a part of a broader system: physical, embodied interaction with our environment is a crucial and inseparable part of how thought and meaning making take place. Embodied approaches to cognition see thought, perception, and action as interwoven. They suggest an innovative approach to cognition as a dynamic process, emerging from the interaction between human minded-bodies (or bodyminds) and their lived environments. In addition to embodied and enactive, the mind is thus treated as extended beyond the brain and embedded in relationality to the outside world. Thinking is not something purely abstract that occurs with new ‘sense data’ entering the closed system of our heads, interpreted there and expressed in our behavior: it is a constant, multi-layered process, keenly involving our bodies and the world we inhabit, that is enacted in our consciousness and perceptual experience. This perspective has paved the way for new intersections and collaborations between cognitive science and the arts and humanities. 4E approaches shed new light on questions of experience and understanding in the arts and humanities, and vice versa: newly emerging collaborations between the arts and humanities and cognitive studies contribute to further understanding of the role of the body in how we experience, make sense and think. Art has long been a field where meaning is communicated, experienced, and explored through tangible images, bodies, objects, environments and movements, where understanding and inspiration are not purely mental and abstract but take place through embodied encounters with the world. Art is, therefore, of immense potential value for furthering our understanding of embodied aspects of the mind. In this course case studies from different forms of art and media as gateways to concretize and better grasp this theoretical perspective through are discussed.

The course takes an interdisciplinary perspective and approach and is jointly conducted by the Department of Psychology and the Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies (LUCSUS). It is aimed at those who wish to learn about the complex linkages between psychology, climate change, and sustainability, and apply them in their respective fields of work or study. Explore the ways our changing climate affect individuals and groups, including climate distress and its consequences, the psychological and behavioral factors that can drive the climate crises, and the theories and practices that can support skillful action across individual, collective and system levels. The course draws upon research from several fields, such as evolutionary, cognitive, social, industrial/organizational, and clinical psychology, behavioral economics, and sustainability science. The course includes experiential learning and practices drawing from evidence-based psychological methods (e.g., journaling, listening and communication exercises, values reflections), contemplative methods such as meditations and mindfulness, and nature explorations. The course is taught in English and includes both on-site and online education.

Perception is a fundamental function of the interaction with the environment. For example, perceiving an object or a person is a prerequisite for proper behavior in everyday activities or communication. This course mainly focuses on vision because it is a particularly important modality among others but it aims to learn the mechanism of the visual system and its function. In most psychological studies, researchers draw an inference of an underlying (covert) mental mechanism and its function from the observable (overt) psychological phenomena. This course examines how a certain visual phenomenon can be interpreted as a clue to understanding a mental process that is hard to measure directly. Some cases of visual deficits will be introduced to promote the better understanding of the visual system by comparing with “normal” function. 

Although it is desirable that other topics should be covered such as attention or memory, almost all lectures in this course are about sensation and perception, especially vision.

This course explores various philosophical proposals that attempt to conceptually capture the activity of bullshitting and the mental state of those who engage in it. It addresses suggestions from the psychological debate related to the recipients of bullshit, focusing on the susceptibility to and the detection of bullshit. The focus of the seminar is on interdisciplinary discussion of the weekly seminar readings. Using Harry Frankfurt’s essay “On Bullshit,” questions include what is this phenomenon of misleading speech referred to as bullshit? How can bullshitting be distinguished from lying and deceiving? What are the bullshitter's goals? Who is particularly susceptible to falling for bullshit? And how can bullshit be recognized, exposed, or even overcome?

This course helps students appreciate the philosophical foundations for conducting qualitative research and to understand why and how qualitative research is carried out in psychology. A sample of current qualitative methodologies and examples of how qualitative methods may be applied in psychological settings are provided. The student is introduced to the processes involved in making sense of qualitative data and how qualitative data can and should be analyzed. Designing qualitative research reports is also covered.

This course examines the role of human psychology - human thought and behavior - in the climate and biodiversity crises. Students learn about topics such as political and social identities, motivated reasoning and cognitive biases, money and power, human and social systems, morality, and the psychology of protest and civic action. 

Students study memory systems, language comprehension and production, thinking and reasoning, problem solving, decision making and creativity as well as examples of applications of the contribution of these processes in understanding real-life applied situations (e.g. driving; food choices; navigating the environment; etc.). The applied settings also relate to perception and attention. Students learn how to describe the memory systems and demonstrate an understanding of speech and language production and comprehension. They explain thinking and reasoning and their fallacies. This course teaches students to describe and critically evaluate the contribution of cognitive psychology in explaining real-life situations.