Psychology of Human Sexuality (Certificate of Completion)

Explore historical factors in human sexuality, learn major theories and research, and explain the current meaning and controversy between sex and gender from biological, cultural, and personal perspectives.

Explore the interdisciplinary study of human sexuality, analyzing diverse sexual behavior across contexts and how religion, science, and culture shape sexual health perspectives and understanding.

Explore how societal factors and individual experiences shape sexual attitudes, behaviors, and identities through functionalism, conflict theory, symbolic interactionism, feminist theory, and queer theory, with insights from sex research.

Explore how culture shapes human behavior through nature and nurture, prenatal and early experiences, language, norms, and shared values that influence development and perceptions of abnormality.

Explore theories and perspectives on sexuality, including structural functionalism, conflict theory, symbolic interactionism, queer theory, and feminist theory, and examine how sexuality shapes social life.

Explore how culture shapes sexuality through cross-cultural variations, taboos, and norms, revealing how different societies regulate sex, attitudes toward premarital and same-gender experiences, and evolving identities.

Explore descriptive, correlational, and experimental methods, including naturalistic observation, surveys, and case studies. Learn how independent and dependent variables, manipulation, and representative sampling reveal causality and correlation limits.

Explore psychology's sex research methods, surveys, observations, physiological measures, interviews, and experiments, alongside ethical considerations and a historical account from van Leeuwenhoek to Kinsey.

Explore how sex research measures sexuality through self reports, behavioral, implicit, and biological methods, compare lab and field studies, discuss sampling, ethics, and surveys like Kinsey, Masters and Johnson, NHSLS.

Explore how psychologists use the scientific method to ask questions, develop theories, formulate testable hypotheses with operational definitions, and apply descriptive, correlational, and experimental research to reveal behavior.

Explore the biology and psychology of sexual anatomy, including physical structures, sex hormones, the sexual response cycle, and how gender roles and perceptions shape sexual identity, development, and body image.

Explore diverse folk beliefs about conception and fertility through mythology and folklore, examining perspectives that reveal how culture shapes conception narratives.

Learn how gonadal hormones regulate sexual motivation and behavior, distinguishing appetitive versus consummatory actions, and examining androgens like testosterone and estrogens like estradiol across sexes.

Explore female genital cutting and mutilation, its WHO-defined types 1–4, health risks, cultural beliefs surrounding virginity and marriage, and the ethics of cultural relativism, medical responses, and reconstructive surgeries.

Explore how the brain drives sexual arousal through the four-stage sexual response cycle, highlighting dopamine, oxytocin, vasopressin, erogenous zones, and Masters and Johnson's findings.

Explore the sexual response cycle—excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution—via Masters and Johnson’s model. Learn how arousal, physiology, hormones, and social factors influence sexual health and care.

Explore sexual maturity in relationships within the psychology of human sexuality, clarifying key concepts for learners and highlighting how maturity shapes romantic partnerships.

Learn about the menstrual cycle, its phases and hormonal regulation, then assess safety, risks, and practical tips for sex during your period, including protection and mess-minimizing strategies.

Explore how singles navigate sexual identity, orientation, and fluidity within social norms, and how communication, responsibility, and intimacy shape relationships and cohabitation.

Examine how marriage reshapes sex through new pressures, fidelity expectations, and evolving gender roles, while addressing desire, routine, and patterns that affect intimacy over time.

Explore biology, psychology, and social influences on sexuality over 40, including hormones, desire, arousal, orientation, gender identity, and cultural norms. Apply these concepts to sex therapy, education, and counseling.

Address ageism by showing that older adults remain sexually active, with good health and regular sexual expression shaping attitudes toward sex in older adults and their treatment in society.

Discover why some people never marry in the psychology of human sexuality, and examine how personal choices and relationship dynamics shape intimate life.

Explore how physical attractiveness shapes our preferences in human sexuality, examining the psychology behind attraction and how it influences partner selection and dating dynamics.

Explore how the need to belong drives attraction and bonds, and how proximity, the reward model of liking, and physical attractiveness shape sexual attitudes.

Explore theories of love within the psychology of human sexuality, using the lecture to examine how love concepts influence human experiences.

Examine the distinct yet connected roles of gender and sexuality, clarify core terms like sex, gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation, and explore biological, psychological, and social influences.

Explore online dating, matchmaking, and safety through a psychology of human sexuality lens, examining digital dating dynamics, relationship formation, and safety considerations.

Explore paraphilias and variations in sexual behavior, including consensual and non-consensual acts, and assess psychological, social, neurobiological factors and treatments like CBT or medication.

Explore the medical, psychodynamic, behavioral, cognitive, and social cultural perspectives on abnormal behavior, including how biology, unconscious conflicts, learning, culture, and cognitive behavioral therapy shape mental disorders.

Explore sexual disorders across the four phases of the human sexual response cycle—desire, excitement, orgasm, and resolution—and examine male hypoactive sexual desire disorder and erectile dysfunction.

Explore how personality traits shape behavior and how personality disorders, including paranoid, schizoid, schizotypal, antisocial, borderline, histrionic, narcissistic, avoidant, dependent, and obsessive-compulsive, cluster into three groups and challenge treatment.

Explore paraphilic disorders, including fetishistic trends, exhibitionism, voyeurism, and pedophilic disorder, and examine sex therapy, DSM-5 criteria, and pharmacological treatments such as SSRIs.

Explore transvestic disorder, a pattern of sexual arousal from cross-dressing, typically starting in childhood or adolescence, with distress or impairment and distinctions from transgender functioning.

Examine voyeuristic disorder, a paraphilia marked by recurrent and intense sexual arousal from secretly observing someone naked or engaging in sexual activity, often beginning before age 15 and risking discovery.

Explain pedophilic disorder as a paraphilia with intense sexual urges toward children, often linked to adolescent development and distorted thinking, with cognitive behavioral therapy and relapse prevention as treatments.

Investigate sexual masochism and sexual sadism disorders, examining arousal from pain and domination, fantasies and behaviors, distress or impairment, and cognitive behavioral and aversion treatment approaches.

Explore the foundations of abnormal psychology, its distinction from clinical psychology, and how dysfunction, distress, deviance, and dangerousness—via DSM-5-TR and social norms—inform mental disorder study.

Explore sex therapy steps 1–9, an integrated, short-term approach to treating sexual dysfunctions through mutual responsibility, education, sensate focus, and addressing psychological and medical factors.

Explore psychological sexual coercion as non-physical manipulation and threats pressuring consent, and examine sex work, prostitution, and venues, along with impacts on trauma, self-esteem, and relationships.

Compare psychoanalytic theory, socio-biology, learning theory, social learning, cognitive psychology, critical theory, and social script perspectives to explain sexuality, gender roles, and sexual scripts in social contexts.

Explore sexually transmitted infections and STIs, their psychological impacts, and how ethics, religion, and law shape sexuality, counseling, and sex law reform.

Examine how the law regulates sexual behavior, including consent, age of consent, digital sex crimes, and the legal status of sex work, with attention to reproductive autonomy and relationship rights.

Explore the WHO's definition of sexual health as holistic well-being related to sexuality, not just disease, and the evolving rights framework including reproductive self-determination, freedom from coercion, and sexual self-expression.

Explore behavior therapy, or behavior modification and cognitive behavioral therapy, focusing on present behavior, learning, and scientific evaluation with reinforcement and conditioning to improve relationships and daily functioning.