This seminar primarily focuses on heterosexual friendship between men and women, and the methodological issues of investigating such relationships. The scope for sexuality and romance in heterosexual opposite-sex friendship will be explored, as well as the possibility that men and women perceive opposite-sex friendship differently from each other. The ramifications of sex, romance, and incongruent perspectives in these relationships will be discussed, as will intimacy, competition, homosexual friendship, and same-sex friendship.

This intensive, discussion-based seminar will equip you with useful insight and critical analysis about Positive Psychology by emphasizing scientific literacy. The workload for this seminar requires intensive reading. To excel in this seminar, students must be willing to enthusiastically read, dissect, and critique ideas within Positive Psychology. This requires students to articulate various ideas in verbal and written form.

This seminar introduces students to common quantitative methods used to study cognitive processes based on behavioral measurements. The course covers experimental design, data analysis and visualization, and an introduction to basic models of cognitive behavior. Students will get to know common experimental designs to test cognitive behavior, how to perform hypothesis testing, and apply and fit theoretical models such as signal detection theory, ideal observer models, and drift-diffusion models. Throughout the course, students will independently analyze cognitive behavioral datasets, culminating in a research paper that showcases their ability to use the learned methods for an unbiased and effective analysis and interpretation of cognitive processes, and to visualize and present their results.
A key emphasis of the course is on scientific rigor: students will learn to avoid common mistakes in analyzing, interpreting, and presenting data that have substantially harmed the reputation of cognitive and psychological sciences within the scientific community as well as the general public (e.g. the “reproduction crisis”).

This course focuses on the current state of our knowledge about the neurobiological basis of learning and memory. A combination of lectures and student seminars will explore the molecular and cellular basis of learning in invertebrates and vertebrates from a behavioral and neural perspective.

This discussion-based seminar will focus on the neural bases of cognitive development.
Each week the class will discuss a selection of papers that consider the roles of genes and environment on topics including the development of perceptual abilities, language, and cognition. The course will cover several aspects of pre- and postnatal brain and behavioral development with particular emphasis on animal models. This course is intended for students interested in neurobiology, cognitive psychology, evolutionary psychology and development.

Consciousness is our subjective experience of the world, including both perceptions and felt internal states. In this seminar, we will explore the the burgeoning scientific literature on the neural basis of consciousness. We will focus in particular on three topics: What are the neural systems underlying visual awareness? What are the mechanisms that control the progression of conscious contents to create our stream of thought? What is the relationship between consciousness and behavior?

Our understanding of markets, governments, and societies rests on our understanding of choice behavior, and the psychological forces that govern it. This course will introduce you to the study of choice, and will examine in detail what we know about how people make choices, and how we can influence these choices. It will utilize insights from psychology and economics, and will apply these insights to domains including risky decision making, intertemporal decision making, and social decision making.

Thinking, judgment, and personal and societal decision making, with emphasis on fallacies and biases.

Thinking, judgment, and personal and societal decision making, with emphasis on fallacies and biases.

This course will serve two primary academic goals. First, to provide students with a contemporary introduction to empirically supported treatments for mental health conditions, with a particular focus on psychotherapeutic approaches. Second, it will teach students how to think about and evaluate research that tests the efficacy of interventions and explore how they work.