Introduction to Psychology
Course Description
Summary
This course provides its students with a deep and expansive exploration of the field of psychology. As a diverse field of study, psychology is broadly defined as the study of human behavior. Psychology has numerous sub-areas of study that take different research approaches to examine biological, social, and cultural factors and how they influence behavior, mental processes, societal characteristics, and individual differences. This introductory course will train students to exercise scientific reasoning to investigate psychological phenomena, interpret, design, and evaluate psychological research, and this course will train students to consider sociocultural factors in learning about the study of human behavior. The thematic emphasis of this course includes an overview of the history and expansion of psychology, foundational understandings of psychology such as the brain, the process of learning, emotion, and human development, and an overview of methodological principles and designs of psychological research. Finally, this course will cover significant ground in exploring sub-areas of psychology, with a portion of the course dedicated to the students deciding other areas of psychology to include in the course.
Learning Outcomes
- Demonstrate a comprehension of the major concepts of psychology.
- Demonstrate a working knowledge of psychology’s major subfields.
- Maintain effective communication and psychological literacy skills necessary in processing and expressing information.
- Identify dimensions of empirical research studies, i.e., hypothesis, independent and dependent variables