Lecture Description
This lecture begins with the second half of the discussion on social psychology. Students will learn about several important factors influencing how we form impressions of others, including our ability to form rapid impressions about people. This discussion focuses heavily upon stereotypes, including a discussion of their utility, reliability, and the negative effects that even implicit stereotypes can incur.
The second half of the lecture introduces students to two prominent mysteries in the field of psychology. First, students will learn what is known and unknown about sleep, including why we sleep, the different types of sleep, disorders, and of course, dreams, what they are about and why we have them. Second, this half reviews how laughter remains a mysterious and interesting psychological phenomenon. Students will hear theories that attempt to explain what causes us to laugh and why, with a particular emphasis on current evolutionary theory.
Course Index
- Introduction
- Foundations: This Is Your Brain
- Foundations: Freud
- Foundations: Skinner
- What Is It Like to Be a Baby: The Development of Thought
- How Do We Communicate?: Language in the Brain, Mouth and the Hands
- Conscious of the Present; Conscious of the Past: Language (cont.); Vision and Memory
- Conscious of the Present; Conscious of the Past: Vision and Memory (cont.)
- Evolution, Emotion, and Reason: Love (Guest Lecture by Professor Peter Salovey)
- Evolution, Emotion, and Reason: Evolution and Rationality
- Evolution, Emotion, and Reason: Emotions, Part I
- Evolution, Emotion, and Reason: Emotions, Part II
- Why Are People Different?: Differences
- What Motivates Us: Sex
- A Person in the World of People: Morality
- A Person in the World of People: Self and Other, Part I
- A Person in the World of People: Self and Other, Part II; Some Mysteries: Sleep, Dreams, and Laughte
- What Happens When Things Go Wrong: Mental Illness, Part I (Guest Lecture by Professor Susan Nolen-Ho
- What Happens When Things Go Wrong: Mental Illness, Part II
- The Good Life: Happiness
Course Description
What do your dreams mean? Do men and women differ in the nature and intensity of their sexual desires? Can apes learn sign language? Why canâ