Global Arc

A central challenge for modern society is to construct individual and group identity in the face of technologies that come ever closer to understanding the mechanisms of thought and feeling. We live in a time when cognitive neuroscience is poised to trace the executive functions of the mind to the workings of the brain, and computer science is coming closer to replicating those functions. This course offers a multidisciplinary introduction to the scientific and social issues that underlie the potential cultural impact of advances in self-understanding. Faculty from a wide range of departments provide lectures. Two lectures, one preceptorial.

The human capacity for rationality is fundamental; however there is ample evidence for irrationality in human affairs--including notions such as hysteria, addiction, lack of self-control, wishful thinking, and self-deception. This course considers both errors and achievements, providing an introduction to a wide array of topics, such as logic, probability, decision theory, relativism, and psychopathology. It provides a background for further study of subjects such as logic, philosophy of mind, cognitive psychology, cognitive science, the psychology of judgment and choice, and the psychology of thinking. One two-hour lecture, one preceptorial.

Science searches for patterns in data. Quantitative methods are tools for finding and evaluating these patterns. This course introduces foundational concepts in quantitative methods, including data visualization and common statistical tests used in psychological research. Two lectures, one laboratory.

This course examines the scientific study of the way ordinary people think about, feel, and behave in social situations and how they influence, and are influenced by, others around them. We will first examine how people think and feel about others and about themselves; then we explore how they induce others to conform, to comply, to obey, and occasionally to see the world differently. Later, we examine how groups influence individuals and how individuals influence groups, how members of different groups relate to one another, and the seeds of attraction, altruism, and aggression. Two lectures, one preceptorial.

Babies, who look like helpless blobs, are capable of impressive feats of learning. 3-year-olds, who can't cross the street alone, know an astounding amount of information about their environments. We will focus on landmark studies that elucidate how children's biology, cognition, language, and social experiences interact to set the stage for what we do and who we are. Is the baby's world a 'blooming, buzzing confusion', or do babies enter the world prepared to make sense of their environments? How can we understand the collaboration between nature and nurture during development? Two lectures, one preceptorial.

The course will survey discoveries and progress made over the past 50 years of research, from classic experimental findings and fundamental theoretical principles to the cutting edge of research that lies increasingly at the interface of psychology with neuroscience (neural mechanisms underlying cognitive processes), computer science (artificial intelligence and machine learning), and mathematics (formal models of complex processes). Topics will include perception, attention, memory, decision making, reasoning, problem solving, language, and cognitive control. Two lectures, one laboratory.

A survey of major approaches to the study of personality, including psychodynamic, social learning, and trait-theory approaches. The focus will be on the assumptions made by each approach, relevant techniques for collecting and analyzing data, and theoretical and practical implications. Two lectures, one preceptorial.

The goal of this course is to illuminate the interactions between the brain, body and behavior over the course of development and how this shapes a species' evolution. We will first explore developmental events at the cellular level that are shaped by parental behavior. We will then see how these events influence the developing circuits of the brain. Finally, we will learn about influences at the level of niche or culture, where the changes that organisms make to their environments and to themselves influence and modify the patterns of behaviors exhibited in the next generation.

This course will expose students to approaches and methods used in psychology research in an effort to provide foundational knowledge and prepare undergraduates for independent research. The first half of the course will address issues pertinent to all psychology research (experimental design, literature review, ethics, statistics and data interpretation) and the second half of the course will focus on specific approaches and methods used by different subfields of Psychology. The second part of the course will be team-taught by experts in the given area with the assistance of graduate students and postdocs in running the precepts.

Cultural psychology as a discipline strives to understand and identify universal principles of human thought, feeling, and behavior. The major goal of this course is to examine a range of psychological areas from a cross-cultural perspective, designed to provide opportunities to increase awareness and sensitivity to global similarities and differences in human functioning. The course will survey theoretical perspectives, empirical studies, and methodological issues pertaining to psychological study of culture. Topics to be covered include culture and gender, morality, personality, social cognition, motivation, the self, social interaction,