Foundations of Psychological Science
What you'll learn
- Gain a College-level Understanding of Psychology and Behavioral Science
- Discover What Drives Human Behavior and How to Learn Faster and More Effectively
- Apply Psychological and Behavioral Insights to Our Everyday Lives
- Know How to Influence and Persuade, Become More Attractive, and Understand Your Own and Other's Emotions
- Develop Key Foundational Knowledge of Human Psychology with Real-World Relevance From an Award-Winning Instructor
Requirements
- No prior experience needed. This is an introductory course!
- This is a real university course recorded during the 2020 pandemic when all teaching went online
Description
What is this course?
This course provides an introduction to human cognition and behaviour, addressing foundational topics in psychological and behavioral science. These foundational topics include key concepts such as evolution, genetics, neuroscience, human evolutionary biology and anthropology, and specific topics, such as perception, memory, heuristics and biases, decision-making, child development, psychopathology, personality and individual differences, emotion, attraction and sexuality, cross-cultural differences, social relations, stereotypes and prejudice, norms and attitudes, social learning, social influence and persuasion, and group processes.
The course will offer an integrated perspective on these topics, investigating the evolution and variation in human psychology over time, across cultures, and over the lifespan. The course will introduce the history of the study of humans and human psychology, offering students the historical context to trends in research. By the end of the course, students will have a broad knowledge of key topics in psychology and related disciplines. Students will be prepared for more in-depth investigations of more advanced topics in later courses.
By the end of this course you should:
• Have an introductory understanding of the psychological and behavioural sciences.
• Have an understanding of how the psychological and behavioural sciences connect to other closely related social and biological sciences.
• Have developed “mental models” of human behaviour that you can apply to understanding interactions in your everyday lives and events occurring in the world around you.
• Be able to connect different levels of understanding such that you can zoom into the individual brain, zoom out to the societal-level and contextualize both in the breadth of human history and depth of evolutionary history.
This course was recorded for students during the 2020 pandemic year when all courses were delivered online. Profits will be donated to an educational charity.
Who this course is for:
- This course is perfect for learners interested in understanding human behaviour in a variety of different contexts, and applying these insights to personal, academic and professional realms.
- University students, professionals, and all learners curious about human behaviour and psychology!
- Those with an interest or even background in psychology wanting an up-to-date refresher
Instructor
- 4.1 Instructor Rating
- 12 Reviews
- 97 Students
- 1 Course
Michael Muthukrishna is a professor of economic psychology at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), an Affiliate of the Developmental Economics Group at STICERD and the LSE Data Science Institute. He is also the founder and director of LSE Culturalytik, providing cultural analyses and behavioral science to companies and governments.
Michael has won numerous awards for his research and teaching, which has appeared in a variety of media outlets including CNN, BBC, Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Scientific American, PBS, Vice, Newsweek, New York Magazine, Nature News, and Science News, and in the UK in the Times, Telegraph, Mirror, Sun, and Guardian.
He is the author of A Theory of Everyone: The New Science of Who We Are, How We Got Here, and Where We're Going, which has received widespread praise from the world's best professors and practitioners in psychology and behavioral science, economics, history, anthropology, philosophy, and more.