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Research Methods and Scientific Reasoning

The scientific toolkit the rest of the course uses from the first day: comparing how the major psychological perspectives explain the same behavior, spotting everyday reasoning biases, telling experiments from non-experimental designs, taking apart an experiment's hypothesis, variables, sample, and controls, judging whether a study treated its participants ethically, reading descriptive and inferential statistics in tables and graphs, and building an evidence-based argument from summarized studies. Topics: Perspectives and Thinking Biases, Research Designs, Elements of an Experiment, Research Ethics, Reading and Interpreting Data, Building Arguments from Evidence.

Biological Bases of Behavior

How the body produces behavior and mental processes: the interplay of heredity, environment, and evolution; the divisions of the nervous system and the neurons that carry its signals; neural firing, neurotransmitters, hormones, and how psychoactive drugs alter them; the structures of the brain and the methods used to study them; consciousness, circadian rhythms, sleep stages, dreaming, and sleep disorders; and how each sensory system turns physical energy into neural messages. Topics: Heredity, Environment, and Evolution, Organization of the Nervous System, Neurons, Neurotransmitters, and Drugs, The Brain, Consciousness and Sleep, Sensation and the Senses.

Cognition

How the mind organizes, stores, and uses information: the internal and external factors that shape perception, Gestalt grouping, attention and its failures, depth and motion cues, and perceptual constancy; concepts, schemas, heuristics, decision-making traps, and problem-solving; the types and models of memory, how memories are encoded, stored, retrieved, forgotten, and distorted; and how intelligence has been defined, measured, and misused, along with the mindsets that shape achievement. Topics: Perception, Thinking, Judgment, and Decision-Making, Memory, Intelligence and Achievement.

Development and Learning

How people change from before birth through late adulthood and how experience changes behavior. Topics: Themes and Physical Development, Sex, Gender, and Socialization, Cognitive Development, Language and Communication, Social-Emotional Development, Classical Conditioning, Operant Conditioning, Social and Cognitive Learning.

Social Psychology and Personality

How people explain, judge, and influence one another, and what makes each person consistently themselves. Topics: Attribution and Person Perception, Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Attitude Change, Social Influence and Persuasion, Groups, Culture, and Helping, Theories of Personality, Motivation, Emotion.

Mental and Physical Health

How stress and everyday behavior affect the body, what positive psychology has learned about well-being, and how psychological disorders are defined, explained, sorted into categories, and treated. Topics: Health Psychology and Stress, Positive Psychology, Defining and Explaining Disorders, Categories of Disorders, Treatment of Disorders.