Intro to Psychology
A College-Level Online Course
Quick Course Facts
52
Self-paced, Online, Lessons
52
Videos and/or Narrated Presentations
17.8
Approximate Hours of Course Media
About the Intro to Psychology Course
Knowing basic psychology can help you in all areas of your live, both personally and professionally. The ability to understand how and why others think, behave, and even feel is clearly useful, but the the ability to understand ourselves is even more useful. Although the human mind does not come with a manual, this course may be the next best thing!
Take a Major Step In Understanding Human Behavior By Taking This Course
- Learn about the field of neuroscience and what it can tell us about ourselves
- Learn about perception and how the world is very different from what we think it is
- Learn how to learn
- Learn about thinking and understand intelligence
- Understand how humans develop in all stages of life
- Understand personality
- Learn what is abnormal when it comes to psychology
- Learn the basics of social psychology
- Get a crash course on cognitive biases
- Understand stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination
- Debunk 50 psychology myths
Welcome to the Wonderful World of Psychology!
This course comprises the topics found to be most important based on a survey of 761 introductory psychology teachers at 490 schools (Miller & Gentile, 1998). These topics include introduction/methods, neuroscience, sensation/perception, learning, memory, thinking/intelligence, developmental psychology, personality, social psychology, and abnormal psychology. In addition, I have worked in sections on cognitive biases, stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination, along with the debunking of popular psychology myths that just don't seem to die.
By the end of this course, you should have a strong understanding of psychology and be able to put this knowledge to work in your life.
Course Lessons
Full lesson breakdown
Lessons are organized by topic area and each includes descriptive copy for search visibility and student clarity.
Introduction
2 lessons
In this lesson, we will go over an introduction to the course. I will give an introduction to psychology, and a summary of the content. There are two textbooks for this course, both are optional: Grig…
TEDxYouth@Manchester is proud to present its 6th TEDxYouth conference on Wednesday 5th November 2014. Our event is presented to 450 post 16 students from The Fallibroome Academy in Macclesfield, UK an…
The Science of Psychology
2 lessons
Rather than focusing on what we traditionally think of as psychology, therapy, this text seeks to highlight psychology as a science and begins by exploring the four major research perspectives: biolog…
The word "placebo," Latin for "I shall please," is generally understood in modern terminology as an inert (inactive) substance or procedure that affects the outcome of a treatment. The placebo effect …
Neuroscience
5 lessons
In this chapter we look at just how the brain and nervous system are able to control nearly everything we do by starting with the smallest piece, a nerve cell or neuron, and then looking at the struct…
What do we know about the inner workings of the human mind? Surely everything that humans do from designing skyscrapers to composing symphonies... is not the product of simple cellular interactions.
People perceive articles with images of brains that summarizing cognitive neuroscience research more scientifically credible than articles with no images or images other than brains.
The Curious Case of Phineas Gage. A railway worker in the 1800s, a iron rod passed through his head, and he recovered almost fully in a matter of months. I just wanted to tell you the story, no analys…
Split-brain patient 'Joe' being tested by Michael Gazzaniga who worked with Roger Sperry.
Sensation and Perception
7 lessons
To understand and live in the world around us we must first gather (sense) and then interpret (perceive) the information presented to us. We begin our study of sensation and perception by looking at t…
A brief introduction.
Have you ever come home after a long day, realized your house smells bad, but it goes away after a few minutes? Why can’t we smell our own home? Tara is here to explain a phenomenon known as “sensory …
A brief introduction.
A brief introduction.
A brief introduction.
A brief introduction.
Learning
4 lessons
In this section we look at how psychologists have studied learning and what we know about how humans learn looking at how both biological and cognitive psychologists have studied learning. We look in …
Video on Classical Conditioning
The history of psychology is rife with frightening tales of unethical experiments. The 1919 case of Little Albert is particularly disturbing. Josh fills you in on the dark origins of one of the major …
A look at the the social learning theory of aggression with original footage the the 'bobo' doll experiment.
Memory
3 lessons
Memory is essential for life as we currently experience it, allowing us to use what we know to interpret the world. This study of memory will help you to understand how your own memory works, beginnin…
This is an edited version of the BBC documentary 'Man without a memory' (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDNDRDJy-vo). It shows the essence of Clive's disability (and it's pretty sad to watch too!).
Psychologist Elizabeth Loftus studies memories. More precisely, she studies false memories, when people either remember things that didn't happen or remember them differently from the way they really …
Cognitive Biases
3 lessons
Cognitive biases are tendencies to think in certain ways that can lead to systematic deviations from a "standard of rationality" or good judgment. Understanding how your brain misrepresents reality is…
As critical thinkers, it's important to understand how we OUGHT to reason. This is what we learn when we study logic, argumentation and other normative theories of reasoning. But it's equally importan…
I argue that, once we understand how cognitive biases lead us into error, and how scientific methods are designed precisely to neutralize these errors, then we have a compelling argument for accepting…
Thinking and Intelligence
4 lessons
Building on sensation and perception, learning, and memory, this chapter discusses how we think, that is how we process information to solve problems and make judgments and decisions. In this chapter …
So, how many different kinds of intelligence are there? And what is the G-Factor? Eugenics? Have you ever taken an IQ Test? All of these things play into the fascinating and sometimes icky history of …
If you want a suggestion for the free audiobook or for reading a book, here's FightMediocrity beginner's reading list: http://fmediocrity.com/reading-list/
Developmental Psychology
10 lessons
The scientific study of biological, cognitive, social, and personality development throughout the life span is known as developmental psychology. Developmental psychologists usually divide the life sp…
This video, created by Nucleus Medical Media, shows human fertilization, also known as conception. Shown at a cellular level magnification, sperm struggle through many obstacles in the female reproduc…
This is a collection of clips demonstrating Piaget's Stages of development. For Health and Social Care and Psychology.
The work of Lev Vygotsky is increasingly cited as we reconsider the theory and practice of constructivist education. This program introduces the life, vocabulary and concepts of Lev Vygotsky. The vide…
Comparing these two research methods within developmental psychology.
Examples of the stages in his theory. Comments are now moderated so pointless mean comments will be completely ignored. If you have meaningful criticism for the sake of all of us please post. Have a g…
In 1958, psychologist John Bowlby pioneered "attachment theory," the idea that the early bond between parent and child is critical to a child's emotional development. Since then, scientists have disco…
Personality Theories and Assessment
4 lessons
While psychologists cannot entirely agree on one definition of personality, this text uses the definition most people think of when the word personality is used – a person’s internally based, characte…
Sigmund Freud, the inventor of psychoanalysis, appreciated the many ways in which our minds are troubled and anxious. It isn't us in particular: it's the human condition. Find out more by reading our …
Laci Green looks at Costa & McCrae's Big 5 Personality Test, exploring how society may affect the expression of personality traits.
Social Psychology
5 lessons
Social psychology is the study of humans as social animals, that is the way that we influence one anothers’ behavior and thinking. We begin our discussion of this subject by looking at how others’ inf…
Ken shares the implications of 'the bystander effect' for communities and individuals, including how to get help if you need it, but also how major movements begin and create change.
Dr. Philip Zimbardo walks us though a lesson in Cognitive Dissonance. Dr. Leon Festinger's theory shows us the precursor to Justification of Effort.
In the 1970's there was a test done where the people were told they were either prison guards or prisoners. This is that story and how it came to be. A study in Psychosis.
Abnormal Psychology
3 lessons
How do psychologists classify thinking and behavior as “abnormal”? In this chapter we discuss just that by looking at the criteria used by psychologists to determine whether or not a perso…
Every day is a struggle, but I come out on top.
Some schizophrenia symptoms, diagnostic criteria, etc
About Your Instructor
Your Instructor
Your Instructor guides this AI-built Virversity course with a clear, practical teaching style.