Psychology

This is the first course, in a two-semester course series, designed primarily for undergraduate psychology majors or minors who anticipate future applications of statistical methods. Topics covered in this course include an overview of descriptive statistics, foundational concepts in inferential statistics (probability, population, sample, sampling methods, sampling distributions, estimation of population parameters, binomial, normal, t, and F distributions), hypothesis significance testing (Type I and II errors, statistical power), and comparisons of means (t-tests, oneway analysis of variance, multiple comparisons of means, and effect sizes). 

Course prerequisite: Mastery of algebra and analytical geometry at the high-school level. 

This course will take you on a journey from the microscopic to the macroscopic, showing you how social and natural scientists answer basic questions about human nature. The course is an introduction to the sciences of mind, including foundational concepts from neuroscience, evolution, genetics, philosophy, and experimental methods, and specific topics such as perception, memory, reasoning and decisionmaking,consciousness, child development, psychopathology, personality, language,emotion, motivation,sexuality, survival in the world, and social relations.

This course introduces the basic theories of developmental psychology and existing empirical research results, then focuses on the integration of various development themes in adolescence and the correlation between them. 

This course introduces some basic logical methods used in symbolic artificial intelligence and their philosophical foundations. It looks at some of the techniques that have been used to represent and reason about knowledge, belief, time, and agency.  The course also analyzes some of the ways logical tools can be used to study games, strategies, and planning, as well as the basics of formalizing concepts and commonsense reasoning.  

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.