Psychology

This course is designed for students wishing to clarify and advance their career goals through a 16-week internship in Thailand. It provides a structured learning environment to help students make the most of their internship experience. While there are no regularly scheduled class meetings, internships are conducted under the close academic supervision of the Social Policy & Development department at Thammasat University. An assigned internship coordinator provides oversight and guidance for the duration of the internship. The course requires a minimum of 128 total work hours. To facilitate the completion of the internship and maximize skill acquisition, students are required to work at least one full day per week at their internships. Graded Pass/No pass only.

This course examines how features of the natural and urban environments impact cognition, behavior and well-being. It also discusses the psychology of climate change and explores ways to mobilize climate actions. Students complete a research project on environmental stability.

This advanced course focuses on changes that occur within the adolescent, including changes related to biological, socio-emotional, cognitive, and moral development as well as changes in the social context including changes in family relations and peer relations and the larger society. Lectures focus on traditional and new theoretical perspectives, as well as the current environmental conditions impinging on adolescents. Seminars focus on hands-on experience in how to conduct research with adolescents. Specifically, students recruit adolescents for an interview and questionnaires. The final grade for the course is based on grades from exams and written assignments. Prerequisites include one introductory psychology course, one developmental psychology course, and a basic knowledge of statistics and research methods.

This course offers an intensive introduction into the field of economic psychology. After a review of basic principles of rational decision-making under uncertainty, the first part of the course gives an overview of psychological research related to judgment and decision-making. Examples include insights from psychology on how decision-makers assess probabilities and how they evaluate the outcomes resulting from their decisions. Actual patterns of judgment and decision-making are compared to basic principles of rational decision-making in order to detect systematic behavioral regularities and biases of real decision-makers. The second part of the course deals with examples of how psychological regularities influence economic decision-making in the field and the importance of these regularities for law and policy. Finally, the course gives an introduction to the field of neuroeconomics.

This course demonstrates that psychology is a science that encompasses the collaborative efforts of scientists from many different disciplines. Psychology is the study of behavior and mental processes, and as psychologists, we aim to describe, understand, predict, and sometimes change behavior.  This course considers different approaches to understanding the human mind, the brain, and behavior.  Scientific methods of psychological research are introduced by addressing some of the main questions that drive contemporary psychology: How do we experience fear or happiness? How do we (think we) see the world around us? How do we learn, remember, and forget things? Where should we draw the line between normal and abnormal behavior? How social are humans? When do people harm or help others?