PSY1010: Introductory Psychology

Abstract

COURSE OVERVIEW Psychology is a course about you and me – a course about all of us. We will examine how and why we think, feel, and act as we do. Together we will survey the broad field of psychology, exploring such topics as the brain and physiology, perception, memory, thought, language, emotion, personality, and more. We will discuss leading theorists and their groundbreaking work. Methods of research, and classic and recent findings, will be reviewed. And as a Torah U’Madda oriented course, topics will be presented also from this unique perspective. Finally, we will emphasize how psychology is learned from, and applied to, real life situations.¶ Our online platform allows you to participate in this course anywhere you are. A portion of the course will be asynchronous, which means that it will involve activities that you can work on independently at any time of the day that you wish. However, our course will also include a synchronous component -- time that we will meet together "live" online via Zoom.¶ COURSE LEARNING OUTCOMES By the conclusion of the course, you will understand how: 1. the nervous and endocrine systems contribute to human behavior 2. heredity and environment influence human development across the lifespan 3. we learn; including via both classical and operant conditioning, as well as by observational learning paradigms 4. we think and remember 5. psychologists understand and measure intelligence 6. study of emotion and motivation contribute to an understanding of human behavior 7. psychologists conceptualize and measure personality 8. we think about other people and interact with them 9. psychologists categorize mental illnesses and treat those who suffer from them 10. the new “positive psychology” can enrich our lives