Attraction, Love & Sexual Attitudes (Certificate)

Explore the psychology of human sexuality, examining biological, psychological, and social factors shaping desire, arousal, and behavior, including societal norms, culture, orientation, and sex education and therapy.

Explore physical attractiveness and our preferences within attraction, love, and sexual attitudes.

Explore the need to belong, attraction, and the formation of social relationships, including proximity, rewards, similarity, physical attractiveness, and gender and cultural influences on sexuality.

Explore online dating, matchmaking, and safety within the context of attraction, love, and sexual attitudes, helping students navigate dating decisions with awareness and responsibility.

Explores the nature of romantic love across cultures, differentiating liking from loving, and presents major theories—attachment theory, terror management theory, self-expansion model—and Sternberg’s triangular theory and eight patterns of loving.

Explore stages of romantic relationships—self-disclosure, stimulus, value, and role information—and how rose-colored lenses, turbulence, and realism affect long-term satisfaction.

study theories of love and their impact on attraction, relationships, and sexual attitudes, clarifying how different frameworks explain romantic dynamics and intimate bonds.

Explore intimacy and self-disclosure, focusing on how open communication builds connection and trust in close relationships.

Explore how the brain drives the sexual response cycle, detailing dopamine, oxytocin, and vasopressin, and the four phases of excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution, per Masters and Johnson.

Explore emotion and happiness within attraction, love, and sexual attitudes, and how relationships shape well-being.

Examine how culture and nurture shape human behavior from the prenatal environment to social norms and language. Compare how norms and values influence what counts as abnormal behavior across cultures.

Learn about the menstrual cycle and menstrual period, and evaluate sex during your period, including safety, benefits, risks, and practical tips like lighter days, towels, water, condoms, and communication.

Explore how culture shapes sexual behavior and attitudes across societies, highlighting regulation and taboos. Examine cross-cultural variations in sexual practices, premarital sex, and same-gender sexuality.

Explore how operant conditioning uses reinforcement and punishment to modify dating relationship behaviors, detailing primary and secondary reinforcers, positive and negative reinforcers, and punishment types.

Explore sexual maturity and its impact on attraction, love and sexual attitudes within the attraction, love and sexual attitudes course, providing an accessible overview for learners.

Explore how attraction, love, and sexual attitudes inform why some people never marry in modern societies.

Explore how structural functionalism, conflict theory, symbolic interactionism, queer theory, and feminist theory shape sexuality, gender norms, and social outcomes in contemporary society.

Examine medical, psychodynamic, behavioral, cognitive, and social-cultural perspectives on abnormal behavior, including biological causes, learning-based treatments, and culture-related disorders such as anorexia and bulimia.

Explore how individuals solidify sexual identity and orientation, communicate needs with partners, and balance responsibility and intimacy among never married singles, celibacy, and cohabitation before marriage.

Explore paraphilia disorders, including fetishistic trends, exhibitionism, voyeurism, and pedophilic S.A.M. Examine DSM-5 criteria and the role of sex therapy in treatment.

Examine fetishistic disorder, a paraphilia with recurrent intense sexual urges and aroused fantasies involving non-living objects. Objects include shoes, underwear, or books; therapies include aversion and sensitization.

Explore transvestic disorder, its patterns, arousal linked to cross-dressing, and distinctions from transgender functioning, with clinical perspectives on distress, impairment, and learning theories.

Exhibitionistic disorder involves recurrent and intense sexual arousal from exposing the genitals to unsuspecting people. Treatment typically includes aversion therapy, masturbatory satiation, social skills training, and insight therapy.

Explore voyeuristic disorder, where arousal stems from observing others naked or in sex, often beginning before age 15 and involving privacy invasion, with discovery risk intensifying excitement.

Explore frotteuristic disorder, a paraphilia in which arousal arises from touching or rubbing against a non-consenting person in crowded places, typically by men, with fantasies during the act.

Explore how modern sex therapy blends cognitive behavioral, couple and family systems approaches in short-term treatment to address sexual dysfunctions through assessment, education, communication, and physical factors.

The lecture defines abnormal psychology, contrasts it with clinical psychology, and explains the four ds—dysfunction, distress, deviance, dangerousness—within the DSM-5-TR.

Learn behavior therapy, also called behavior modification and cognitive behavioral therapy, focusing on present problems and learning to change current factors through action, reinforcement, and modeling.

Explore the behavioral model behind behavior therapy, distinguishing overt and covert behaviors, including cognitions, emotions, and physiological responses, and learn how therapists translate traits into specific behaviors.

Explore the abc model—the antecedents, behavior, and consequences—and learn to identify maintaining antecedents (prerequisites and prompts and setting events) and maintaining consequences to influence relationship behaviors.

Thank you for completing the course; reflect on the most intriguing takeaways, recall theories, and develop a personal and professional plan to apply insights about attraction, love, and sexual attitudes.