Psychology

Cognitive psychology is a branch of psychology that regards humans as information processing systems and aims to study its mechanism by the scientific method of measurement and observation. This course instructs on how basic human cognitive activities (e.g. perception, memory, learning, language comprehension, attention, etc.) are examined, from classic research methods to the latest research technology, such as functional magnetic resonance brain imaging.

This course explores the ultimate influences on the human mind and behavior by taking an evolutionary psychological perspective to study (modern) cognition, emotion, motivation, and behavior. The course revisits cognitive, clinical, and social psychology – and topics, however, the type of questions asked to uncover psychological mechanisms and processes is different. Evolutionary psychologists focus on the ‘why’ question, and the adaptive functions of modern-day cognition, emotion, and behavior. Topics range from psychopathology to human mating and sexual conflict, and from parenting and kin selection to aggression. During the discussion of these topics, prominent assumptions – and misunderstandings – about evolutionary psychology are critically assessed.

Psychology Now! introduces students to a variety of contemporary topics in psychology and a variety of ways in which psychological knowledge is applied to understand and solve everyday problems. The course covers topics related to well-being, mental health, the psychology of work and rest, hypnosis, gender differences, educational psychology, and how the presence of others affects our behavior.

This course introduces general theories of happiness psychology, existing foreign and domestic methods for happiness measurement, and basic skills at applying happiness psychology to building up mental health and society.

This course examines the development of human cognitive function in terms of elements like perception, representation, reasoning, social cognition, memory, and language, and to comprehend the process of human cognitive ability based on existing cognitive theories and a number of recent research findings.

This in-depth seminar on the general methodology of psychotherapy focuses on child and adolescent psychotherapy with a focus on the consequences of trauma and child protection. The heart of the seminar is the dream-focused behavioral therapy, a modular and component-based therapy with about 16 sessions with the children and a caregiver. In addition, further methods of trauma therapy with children and adolescents and other trauma-related topics such as experiences of racism and discrimination and their consideration in psychotherapy are examined in more detail.

Students review and apply research on social behavior and collaborative practices from the broad range of social sciences to the context of online social interaction and computer-mediated collaboration. They explore how social identity theory, network theory, actor-network theory, and research on communities of practice, public formation and computer-supported cooperative work explain online and digitally-mediated social interaction. Research frameworks and methods such as text-based qualitative analyses are introduced and applied. The challenges in working collaboratively in online distributed teams is examined critically.

The themes, methods, and ideas in the fields of social psychology and individual differences is introduced in this course. Students focus on social psychology and individual differences as scientific disciplines that uses experimental methods for data collection to formulate and empirically test theories of human nature.

This course allows students to identify research papers relevant to a health psychology topic, summarize and evaluate published evidence, relating to a health psychology topic, apply health psychology theory to a practical problem, and describe and think critically about a number of health psychology theories, models, and concepts. 

In this course, students investigate how the brain is organized to produce actions that serve particular purposes, focusing primarily on voluntary actions. Such actions involve a motivational component, but also cognitive considerations, attention choices, and motor options. For each of these components, decisions must be made. Students explore the different parts of the brain involved in these decisions, in close collaboration with subcortical structures such as basal ganglia. The corresponding practical for this course is Neuronal Basis of Decision Making where students gain hands-on experience with and reflect critically on (a) the selection and administration of tasks that are used to measure these cognitive processes and (b) the analyses of data sets obtained by using neuroimaging techniques (like EEG). During the practical, students are provided with tests and EEG data sets and work in small groups to analyze the EEG data. Questions raised during the practical are: Which steps are needed while analyzing neuroimaging data? Do different brain states induce different decision-making behaviors? How are differences in neuroimaging data or test performance examined? Students also perform statistical analyzes on EEG data sets and write a brief report.